Full tank of premium

National | POLITICS: $3-a-gallon gas? Kerry attacks, Bush counters -- but Carter-era prices at the pump may fuel the Democratic challenger | Bob Jones

John Kerry may have stopped for gas on March 30, but he never detoured from his campaign message for the day. When the Massachusetts Democrat, en route to a San Diego stump speech, stopped to fill up his nine-car caravan at a Shell station, TV cameras were there to capture the stalled traffic on the busy street -- and the spinning dials on the pump.

The price per gallon at Sen. Kerry's station of choice: $2.15 for regular and $2.37 for premium. Those are the kinds of prices that make consumers wince and Democrats smile.

"If the gas prices keep rising at the rate they're going now, Dick Cheney and George Bush are going to have to car-pool to work," Sen. Kerry later told a crowd of students at the University of California-San Diego. "Those aren't Exxon prices. Those are Halliburton prices," he said, getting in an extra dig at the vice president's former company.