Presidential hopeful, Senator John Kerry, appears to have softened his Bermuda-bashing stance after his overwhelming victory on "Super Tuesday".

Kerry, of Massachusetts, has been pledging to clamp down on corporate "Benedict Arnolds" that reincorporate offshore to places like Bermuda to save taxes.

But now he is expected to be the Democrat who will go head to head with President George Bush in this year's US general election in November ? and will have to appeal more to business leaders to gain financial backing.

"Just as we predicted earlier, now he has the nomination he appears to be backing off from his anti-Bermuda rhetoric because he will have to appeal to a broader base of Americans," said Deborah Middleton, chief executive officer of Bermuda International Business Association.

"He will need to move more to the right and win over corporate America if he wants to be able to raise money and compete with Bush." And he dropped any mention of Bermuda from his victory speech on Tuesday night ? the first time he has not had a go at Bermuda in weeks.

"My campaign is about replacing doubt with hope, and replacing fear with security," he said.

"Together we will build a strong foundation for growth by repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to cut the deficit in half in four years and invest in health care and education.

"We will repeal every tax break and every loophole that rewards any corporation for gaming the tax code to go overseas and avoid their responsibilities to America.

"We will provide new incentives for manufacturing that reward good companies for creating and keeping good jobs here at home."

Ms Middleton said that there was a change in tone in the Kerry speech, which meant he was not going after big business directly.

"Interestingly, instead of talking about penalising companies, he's now talking about rewarding them with incentives if they stay in the US," she said."There is the belief that he will concentrate on the issue of outsourcing which does not affect us, except that in one of his speeches he confused outsourcing with corporate inversions and we all know, there's not much manufacturing in Bermuda!"

But Ms Middleton said that it was too early to speculate on what it would mean to Bermuda if Kerry won the upcoming election, which was a long way off.

"In any event, it's early days to speculate on what a Kerry Administration would mean to Bermuda," she said. "First he's got to win, then he's got to get his initiatives through a Republican Senate and Congress.

"BIBA will be holding a forum right after the US election in November with a US political analyst commenting for us on what we can expect from the winner's administration."

Senator Kerry had recently been more vociferous in his use of Bermuda for his own gain in the political campaign trail ? and remarks made in Ohio just last week continued on this vein.

He said: "If I'm president our government won't provide a single reward for shipping our jobs overseas, or exploiting the tax code to go to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes while sticking the American people with the bill."

But these are just the latest in a long line which started in spring 2003 in which Kerry has pledged to try to stop companies moving to Bermuda to avoid taxes and has threatened to take government contracts away from Bermuda companies.

Kerry has been positioning himself as the candidate for the workers and pledged to stop jobs from being shipped overseas or "offshore".