(FORTUNE Small Business) – If you had walked through the bustle of Faneuil Hall Market in Boston back in 1980, you might have bumped into a gangly, mop-haired fellow named John Kerry. He and a buddy owned a small business that sold cookies and muffins. Their enterprise, Kilvert & Forbes, never quite brought the guys into a league with Mrs. Fields, but it survives to this day and was successful enough for Kerry to pocket a small profit when he sold his share a decade later.

In his current bid for the White House, Senator John Kerry doesn't mention his entrepreneurial background as often as his military and Senate experience. But that may change now that he's the presumptive Democratic nominee and will be stumping against big-business champion George W. Bush.

Muffins aside, Kerry's reputation among fellow small-business veterans is mixed at best. As the ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and during a brief reign as chairman in 2001-02, Kerry took positions on issues ranging from taxes to ergonomic rules and the minimum wage that earned him the enmity of the small-business lobby. The National Federation of Independent Business and the Small Business Survival Committee say Kerry voted on their side of issues in only 25% and 7%, respectively, of the votes they tracked. Says SBSC chair Karen Kerrigan: "When it comes to issues like tax relief, regulatory reforms, and health-care reform, Senator Kerry just hasn't voted in our interest." David Wade, a spokesman for Kerry, responds, "Too many of these so-called small-business lobbies are nothing but Republican front groups. The truth is that under Bush, small-business bankruptcies are up, jobs are down, health-care costs are up. They ought to be ashamed of his record."

Kerry speaks more eloquently than Bush about the need to simplify the tax system--a growing concern for small proprietors who have to pay tax preparers by the hour. Yet Kerry's policy prescriptions (like Bush's) involve a hodgepodge of tax credits. Kerry offers tax subsidies for everything from employee health-insurance premiums to startup costs for pension plans and firms with 50 or fewer employees that have military reservists who are called up for active duty.

One of Kerry's boldest proposals involves rolling back the Bush tax cuts for those who earn more than $200,000--a measure that would hit hard at many entrepreneurs who pay individual income tax rather than corporate tax on their business income. Kerry has called for elimination of inheritance taxes on estates as large as $10 million. But he opposes permanent elimination of the tax--a stance that puts him at odds with Bush and with owners of many family businesses.

On health insurance, the issue that ranks first among the concerns of most entrepreneurs, many will probably applaud Kerry's proposal to give small firms access to the health insurance plan available to Congress--a move he claims will cut their health-care costs by 15%--and his scheme to let small businesses participate in a pooled pension fund to help lower administrative costs.

Kerry has voted for every trade pact presented for ratification in the past decade. But when those trade deals and the loss of jobs to foreign outsourcing became big issues in the Democratic primaries, Kerry promised, if elected, to reassess all trade agreements, including NAFTA. His one concrete proposal on the issue of stanching the flow of jobs abroad is a requirement that companies give workers 90 days' notice before shuttering any operation and shipping its jobs abroad. That seems on the face of it a reasonable measure, but it does add yet another layer of regulation.

"It's too early to assume that his campaign focus will mirror his record on small business in the Senate," says Jarvis C. Stewart, a Washington-based lobbyist for small business and a Kerry supporter. "Come fall, I think voters will take to his vision." But long before the fall, Kerry is likely to be called upon to make that vision clearer--and square it with his Senate record.