The first of two articles on the wives of leading presidential contenders. Today: The Democrats.
BOISE, Idaho - Politicians out here joke that you could put every Idaho Democrat in a phone booth, with room to spare. This state is so Republican that Democrats on the national ticket don't bother to campaign here, and efforts to lure party bigwigs to Boise almost always come up short.
So snagging Ernestine Schlant Bradley, wife of the presidential candidate Bill Bradley, to speak at the Ada County Democrats' biennial dinner Thursday, was a huge coup. Then, suddenly, Tipper Gore, wife of Al Gore, caught wind of the invitation and offered to show up, too, hoping to deny Bradley any edge in the state's March 7 caucus.
It was the first face-to-face duel of the Democratic spouses, and although both were too charming and cautious to draw blood, the competition and chill between them, as each touted her husband's superior vision, character, and record, were hard to miss for the 700 people who had packed the Boise State University ballroom.
''I see nothing other than a friendly rivalry,'' Mrs. Gore said coolly, as she kept a safe distance from Mrs. Bradley all night.
''I would call it a friendly encounter,'' Mrs. Bradley crisply corrected, adding that she had greeted Mrs. Gore with a little air kiss, ''as is customary.''
Accomplished and telegenic, articulate and energetic, the wives are proving to be the real ''alphas'' in the unexpectedly lively contest for the Democratic nomination. It's only November, yet Mrs. Gore and Mrs. Bradley are campaigning almost nonstop, traveling solo to Democratic strongholds and to out-of-the-way places, and serving as the most prized of surrogate speakers to groups of political independents, party activists, and women. Each is on a mission to humanize her husband, convey marital harmony, and build personal connections, particularly with female voters, by sharing their personal traumas (clinical depression for Mrs. Gore; breast cancer and a mastectomy for Mrs. Bradley) and glimpses of their private lives.
''Right now we are at opposite ends of the playing field, so to speak, but I really think Tipper and I are united in that we are campaigning for our husbands, who are dearest to us,'' Mrs. Bradley said in Boise, adding that she doubted the wives would ''put ourselves through this'' for anyone else.
The pollster John Zogby says love and devotion may not be the only motivators. ''Baby-boomer voters need to bond with the candidates, so here we have their wives, merging the personal and the political and being the ones to say, `We all have our problems, we aren't running as Ken and Barbie.'''
In recent interviews, Mrs. Gore and Mrs. Bradley emphasized that they are not reluctant participants in the 2000 campaign, or silently suffering spouses pulled into the political maelstrom by their husbands' egos or ambitions. Unlike their Republican counterparts, who say they'd be just as happy to return to homemaking after the 2000 campaign, Tipper Gore and Ernestine Bradley are in this race completely, aggressively, to win the White House.
''At home this morning I said something to Al about the campaign - I wasn't criticizing him - and he said, `Gosh, well, I'll try not to blow the election for you,''' Mrs. Gore said as she sipped Diet Coke in her spacious, photograph-filled suite in the Old Executive Office Building in Washington. ''It was very funny and kind of cute. But it was also like he just realized how much this meant to me, how passionately I am campaigning for a lot of issues I care deeply about, and he appreciated my working so hard.''
After being part of two national campaigns, and spending seven years as vice presidential spouse, Tipper Gore, 51, was ready for her husband's biggest race: She was primed on the issues and prepared for the separations and strains that a campaign puts on a marriage and family. Last spring, she revealed that she had been treated for depression and taken medications after a 1989 car accident that nearly killed her young son.
What Mrs. Gore did not expect, however, was to have her husband in the kind of fight that has sent her canvassing for votes in New Hampshire, and dashing through five Iowa towns a day.
''This is more like his first race for Congress,'' Mrs. Gore said, recalling how she went door-to-door in her husband's Tennessee district in 1976, jotting down names of potential supporters and typing thank-you letters after the couple got home at night.
Ernestine Bradley, 64, a professor of German and comparative literature at Montclair State University in New Jersey, was involved in her husband's three Senate campaigns. But it was never like this, never a year's leave of absence from a 35-year academic career, to sleep in a strange bed in a different city nearly every night.
''To give up my job, to be on leave, is something very different for me,'' Mrs. Bradley said as she rested in a Pittsburgh hotel room between four public appearances that day. ''I don't think that some of the other wives are working this hard. It's personal - it's about the way they see their husbands, their relationship, the need. Every wife can sort of call her own shots, and I think that is good.''
Mrs. Bradley, a German-American who speaks with a slight accent, said she ''could not conceive of not wanting to be totally there'' for her husband when he decided to run for president. After all, she said, he had stood by her ''any day, any hour of the day,'' when she had cancer, and there had been ''no question'' about Professor Schlant remaining in New Jersey to teach when Senator Bradley moved to Washington in 1979.
''I don't mean to say he has been there for me, therefore I am there for him. But we have the kind of relationship that if you can help the other person, that's what you do,'' Mrs. Bradley said. ''If Bill, who is the soul-searching type, said he was ready to offer his services to the country, I just do not feel that I could now say, `Yeah, but I'm not ready.'''
Spouses in the spotlight
In the past decade, the public has come to expect a prospective president's wife to behave more like a political surrogate and policy advocate than a smiling, seen-but-not-heard spouse. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elizabeth Hanford Dole showed that candidate wives can be savvy and have opinions, and a relentlessly probing press has put spouses in the spotlight for details of their private family lives.
''There has definitely been an evolution in the wives' roles,'' said Dianne Bystrom, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. ''What makes Mrs. Gore and Mrs. Bradley unique is that while they come from quite different backgrounds, both are very comfortable communicating with the public, and both are very bright and caring.''
At the Boise dinner, Mrs. Gore, who was greeted by dozens of blue-and-white ''Tipper!'' signs provided by the Gore campaign, impressed the audience with polish, poise, and professionalism. Mrs. Bradley, who seems to flaunt a certain political naivete, spoke with such passion and animation that some listeners said they would consider supporting her husband.
Mrs. Bradley is a scholar who spent 10 years writing ''The Language of Silence,'' a book about the near-absence of images of the Holocaust in West German literature. Mrs. Gore is an advocate for the homeless and the mentally ill who a decade ago drew barbs as she led a fight to clean up record lyrics. Both women are grandmothers, yet both giggle when asked how they spend private moments with their husbands.
''We obviously do pleasurable things with each other - you know what I mean!'' Mrs. Gore said with a wide grin. Among those pleasures was a rare day off recently when the Gores had lunch together, played pool with their 17-year-old son, Albert, and just talked. Mrs. Gore said she purposely took on extra campaign duties this fall so her husband wouldn't miss any of Albert's high school football games.
''It's the kind of trade-off that a lot of people don't believe it is possible to make in a presidential campaign,'' said Mrs. Gore, who also has three grown daughters, ''but we do it.''
The 25-year Bradley marriage, like Mrs. Bradley's campaign role, by some measures has not been traditional. For Mrs. Bradley, it was her second marriage; she was 39, he was 31. The couple lived apart while each pursued careers, and their only child, Theresa Anne, 22, lived with her father from the age of 10. At a luncheon in Pittsburgh, women applauded Mrs. Bradley when she talked about her commuter marriage and how she would ''cook all weekend'' in Washington, filling the family freezer with food.
The Bradleys may seem like a cerebral couple, but really, Mrs. Bradley said, ''mundane'' things dominate their conversations. ''When we are together, we talk a lot about the issues - so many questions come up, and I don't always know the answer - and we talk about, uhm, personal matters,'' she said, playfully rolling her eyes. ''And we ask each other questions, like `How do you feel, are you OK, are you exhausted?'''
The character question
Both Mrs. Gore and Mrs. Bradley seem never to tire of vouching for their husbands' character or sketching the human dimension of two men who sometimes seem wooden and wonkish. Their other role is to persuade women voters, who provided the margin of victory for the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992 and 1996, to stick with a Democrat in 2000.
Both call their husbands ''authentic,'' one of the buzzwords of the 2000 campaign.
''My husband is making a transition from being a sitting vice president - dutiful, steadfast, loyal, hard-working, been there on policies that have benefited women - and now he is leaving behind being in the shadows, and he is emerging as his own person with his own views, his own vision, his own record, his own life story,'' Mrs. Gore said, complaining that the press ''distorts'' Gore's image and isn't giving him ''a fresh start.''
''Al is a great guy, compassionate, very smart,'' said Mrs. Gore, who met Gore at a school dance and married him in 1970. ''Obviously character matters, but I think it does come through, and I hope people get an authentic view of what kind of person he is.''
Mrs. Bradley sums up her husband in three words: ''absence of charisma.''
''If you are looking for some rah-rah-rousing kind of personality, well, Bill is much more low key, more subtle,'' said Mrs. Bradley, who speaks with some animation and looks listeners in the eye. ''I say he is authentic because he is not posturing, he is not trying to fulfill some kind of expectation that others have of him. He is sincere and presents himself as who he is.''
Polls show that Bradley, a former basketball star with the New York Knicks, has a gender gap: He is much more popular with men than women. While Mrs. Bradley denies she has been deputized to close the gap, she often speaks to women's groups, and she particularly likes talking about women's health issues and meeting with breast-cancer survivors.
''Bill loves strong women. In fact, the stronger they are, the better he likes them,'' Mrs. Bradley said. ''The reason he isn't known that well to women is that women don't care about basketball.''
Their husbands' maleness
Ernestine Schlant was doing research for a film company in New York when she met Bradley, who was nearing the end of his Knicks career. She had never seen him play basketball. She laughs at the recent ruckus over the feminist author Naomi Wolf advising Gore to be an aggressive ''alpha male'' because, Mrs. Bradley said, she wasn't sure exactly what kind of male her own husband was until she saw him on the court.
''As a person, Bill was always gentle and kind and soft-spoken, always considerate, and I would say to myself, `My gosh, I hope they are not going to push him over,''' Mrs. Bradley said. ''Then when I saw him playing basketball, using these elbows and everything else. I felt very good and thought, `That man is OK!'
''He was a very aggressive basketball player,'' Mrs. Bradley recalled, ''so maybe he doesn't need to be an aggressive male off the court.''
The alpha maleness of her husband definitely is not Mrs. Gore's favorite subject. She will discuss his political record, his family history, his positions on the issues with a gravity and authority that clash with her perky, cheerleader image. But asked to comment on Wolf's campaign advice, Mrs. Gore said: ''I am not going to go there.''
''Oh, please,'' she snapped. ''Number one, it's a media flap, and number two, I think it's sexist. That is all I am going to say. It's a distraction that nobody needs.''
Nor will she be trapped in what Mrs. Gore called ''a ridiculous, National Enquirer kind of mentality'' that, in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, demands that politicians discuss the intimacies of their marriages.
''People in public life should be looked at and judged on their records,'' Mrs. Gore said. ''We are focused, and we will continue to be focused in this campaign. I am not going to let anything get us off track.''
