All aboard the Condi Mobile!
Condoleezza Rice says she's not running for president, but that doesn't matter to the gang aboard one very special motor home.
By Alex Koppelman
Read more: Republican Party, George W. Bush, Politics, News, Iraq, South Carolina, Condoleezza Rice, Iraq War, 2008 election, Alex Koppelman
Salon image. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst photo
May 24, 2007 | COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Just before the 10 Republican presidential candidates debated here last Tuesday night, Crystal Dueker was standing across from the auditorium where the event was held, stumping by herself for a candidate who would not be on the stage, and who has no intention of running. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said repeatedly that she will not be a candidate for president in 2008, and on the night of the debate she was 6,000 miles away, in Moscow. Dueker was out on the sidewalk on Rice's behalf anyway, emerging from her 29-foot motor home, a "Condi Mobile" plastered with Condi stickers and signs, holding a Condi sign and proudly displaying the pro-Rice buttons on the lapels of her jacket to a crowd marching by.
The marchers were streaming out of a rally being held down the street from the debate in support of the "FairTax," a proposal to replace federal income and payroll taxes with a single flat sales tax. Many of the attendees gave Dueker a thumbs up or an encouraging shout: "I'd vote for Condi!" "Gotta love her!" "If she'd run, I'd vote for her!" Some stopped to talk or to get one of the buttons. As Dueker began to run low on her small supply of buttons, and hesitated to give out more, a young African-American woman with short, spiky dreadlocks stuck out her chest, pointing to where she had cut away the FairTax T-shirt most of the marchers were wearing to make something vaguely resembling a halter top, and said she planned on wearing the button right there. Dueker laughed and gave her one.
But most people passed Dueker, a blond, middle-aged Midwesterner in a red blazer and skirt and pearl earrings, without acknowledgment. There were also a few puzzled reactions from the crowd. One man, who stopped to talk after seeing the North Dakota plates on the motor home, noting that he was originally from Fargo himself, said that if Rice ran, he'd vote for her. But when Dueker told him her plan -- "we're going to draft her like Eisenhower" -- his face turned confused, then fell, and the conversation was over. Another man didn't even stop; he just gave Dueker a quizzical, almost pitying look, said, "But she's not running," and kept on walking.
It wasn't long ago that there was significant support for Rice's entry into the the presidential race. In 2005, as it became clear the Democrats would likely have at least one female in the race for their 2008 presidential nomination, Rice was being discussed as the woman who could neutralize her. By then the war wasn't popular, certainly, but it wasn't the lead anchor it would soon become for Republicans -- especially those Republicans closely linked to the Bush administration. Rice's approval ratings had yet to be tarnished by her association with Iraq. But then came the midterm elections of 2006, and the attendant Republican massacre, and suddenly even the most loyal of Republican presidential candidates began to scurry away from anything that smacked of George W. Bush. At the South Carolina debate, just one of the 10 men onstage -- Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the lone antiwar candidate -- even mentioned Bush's name, and then only once. But there are still some Republican Party stalwarts who refuse to say die -- who, dissatisfied with the declared presidential candidates, want someone who will pick up the Bush administration's mantle and flourish it without apology. They're out there, and in surprisingly large numbers; it's just that they've been shunted offstage and into a 14-year-old motor home.
Dueker is the communications director for ThinkCondi, a group she founded to build a groundswell that will sweep Rice into the race. Now in charge of the organization is its chairman, Richard Holt, of Ohio, also in Columbia for the debate; Dueker brought Holt in a few months after she started the group.
It wouldn't be fair to describe either Holt or Dueker as naifs, but they are not hardened political operatives either. Though 52, and a veteran Republican volunteer -- she has photos of herself, longtime boyfriend David Butler and various Republican heavyweights, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Arizona Sen. John McCain, dotting the interior of her motor home -- Dueker has never before progressed beyond the volunteer level in a campaign. In her professional life, she's mostly done office work. Normally she bounces between Florida's Gulf Coast and the frigid Upper Midwest with Butler, who is retired, but since she's started working part time to focus more on ThinkCondi, she has also spent more time away from North Dakota, going to events around the country.
Holt is just 26. Maybe it's the mustache, maybe it's the suit, white shirt and striped tie, but he looks older than his age. And he looks like the one with real hands-on, paid campaign experience, which, of ThinkCondi's volunteers nationwide, he is. While he was a teenager in West Virginia, he became involved with Republican politics because, he says, he loved Ronald Reagan ("I used to draw pictures of him in the White House") and Ronald Reagan was a Republican. After moving to Ohio for college, where he was involved with the College Republicans at Ohio University, he got into politics. He ran for Ohio's state Legislature in 2004, losing handily to a Democratic incumbent in a heavily Democratic district. He now earns his living as a political consultant. Of mixed ethnicity -- his mother is white, his father is African-American -- he has worked for the National Black Republican Association and Republicans for Black Empowerment, among other organizations.