Running Mates

A big career is an asset, unless she won't give it up. Her family has to come first -- but the campaign is paramount. He says she's his rock, his compass, that he couldn't do it without her. She says... well, that's just the point. The role of the candidate's spouse is being rewritten as the campaign rolls on. But no one -- not the voters, not the press, and certainly not the spouses themselves -- can agree on the script.

First Wives Club

By NANCY KEATES
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Gertrude Clark
AGE: 60
PROFESSION: Homemaker
At campaign stops, she holds her husband's coat. Referring to him in public, she often calls him "General Clark." And when asked to sign an autograph, she tried to avoid putting her name above the candidate's. "I shouldn't put my signature above General Clark's," she explains. [Gertrude Clark]

In a campaign marked by spouses who have cultivated separate identities -- whether politically active or not -- Gertrude "Gert" Clark stands out for a surprisingly traditional approach. Indeed, as a military wife she is practiced at the art of showing support without upstaging her husband, whom she met at a military dance after high school (she has a certificate from Drake Business and Secretarial School). Wesley Clark's rise through the ranks took her to postings as far afield as Panama and Brussels, and her role was often the hostess. Looking back, she says the years her husband spent as a four-star general commanding forces in Europe weren't that different from being on the campaign trail. "I was on the road 220 days a year, so I feel prepared," she says.

Still, acquaintances say Mrs. Clark was initially reluctant about the idea of her retired husband returning to public life, but warmed to the idea partly at the urging of her son, Wesley Clark Jr. Now she is active in standing with her husband at campaign events and making some solo appearances, too. Basically, she says, she shows up when asked, and uses her time on the road to keep up with family business -- on one evening in New Hampshire, she planned to stay in the hotel to pay bills that had been Fed-Exed from home. Overall, she says, she actually prefers the road. "If I'm home by myself and he's campaigning, that's hard."

Judith Steinberg Dean
AGE: 50
PROFESSION: Physician

"I wouldn't say I'm that shy," says Judith Steinberg Dean. "I think it may just be a myth." Maybe so, but the perception that Dr. Dean is private and reclusive has become one of the defining issues of the Dean campaign -- and perhaps the biggest example yet of just how crucial the role of the spouse is for presidential hopefuls. By now millions of television viewers have seen Dr. Dean in a sudden flurry of interviews and campaign events in the past week, expressing support for her husband and attempting to counter concerns about her low profile. [Judith Steinberg Dean]

So where has she been all this time? In a pale-yellow house in Burlington, Vt., with a dented mailbox out front; in the driveway there's a blue Ford Explorer that she drives to her medical office in a renovated creamery. (The neighborhood is situated on Lake Champlain, though the Deans' home isn't on the waterfront side of the road.) Neighbors say she has kept up a schedule of parental duties of late, hosting a party for her son's hockey team a few weeks back. At Burlington High School, Principal Amy Mellencamp says Dr. Dean has stayed active in monthly meetings of the parents' group. "She's my most faithful participant," Ms. Mellencamp says.

The product of a two-doctor marriage in Roslyn, N.Y., Dr. Dean earned a degree in biochemistry at Princeton University and studied medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., where she met her husband. They eventually set up a joint medical practice in Vermont, which she continued with another doctor after Howard Dean became governor in 1991. While the campaign's new direction is clearly to make Dr. Dean more visible, that may not play to all of her husband's supporters. "She's got her own patients," says Sandra Kurt, 42, an engineer from Akron, Ohio, who attended a Dean rally recently. "If she were my M.D., I wouldn't want her running all over the country."

Elizabeth Edwards
AGE: 54
PROFESSION: Lawyer
She's a lawyer who met up with her spouse in law school and plays a central role in the campaign, at times brokering key deals with rivals. Sound familiar? No one is suggesting she has political aspirations along the lines of Hillary Clinton, but it's clear Elizabeth Edwards is one of the most involved spouses in Campaign 2004. In one recent example, following Richard Gephardt's withdrawal from the race, it was Mrs. Edwards who reached out to Peter Burling, Democratic leader in the New Hampshire House, for advice on winning over the Gephardt supporters. [Elizabeth Edwards]

For years, Mrs. Edwards was on a fairly intense career track of her own. At the University of North Carolina Law School, she was articles editor of the law review (the No. 2 spot) and one of 20 women in a class of 200. "She was beautiful and brilliant," says David Kirby, an attorney in Raleigh and longtime friend. "We were all putty in her hands." Following law school, she clerked for a U.S. district court judge and worked for the North Carolina attorney general's office before moving to a Raleigh, N.C., law firm. But in 1996, the older of their two children was killed in an automobile crash. After that, Mrs. Edwards quit her job and had two more children (she was 50 when the youngest, now age 3, was born); their older daughter is a senior at Princeton.

Press accounts have tended to label her image as matronly or even frumpy. But unlike Mrs. Clinton, who became known for remaking her look, so far Mrs. Edwards has stuck with her simple hairstyle and no-frills wardrobe. Indeed, at times she seems to play to this image, which may help women voters identify with her. "I've never been to a spa," she says. "I don't know anyone who's been to a spa." But while she's effective at campaign appearances in keeping "on message," friends say that is harder than it looks for her. Bonnie Weyher, a Raleigh attorney who was a bridesmaid in the Edwards' wedding and is godmother to their 5-year-old daughter, says Mrs. Edwards is a reluctant public speaker who "really had to work at it."

Teresa Heinz Kerry
AGE: 65
PROFESSION: Philanthropist
Is there such a thing as too much information about a candidate's wife? In a campaign where any effort to keep a low profile draws attention in the media, Teresa Heinz Kerry often seems to hold little back. Already, voters are familiar with everything from her net worth ($500 million, inherited from her first husband, ketchup heir and senator John Heinz) to the work she's had done (Botox, laser eye surgery). [Teresa Heinz Kerry]

More than any of the other wives, Mrs. Kerry's campaign commentary tends to focus at least as much on her own opinions as those of her husband. At a single event in New Hampshire last week, she held forth on everything from acid rain to school uniforms. "If I had my way, they'd all wear school uniforms," she says. "I wore a uniform, and I couldn't be more independent." Even more unusual, she willingly takes some credit for her husband's success. Asked about her contribution to Mr. Kerry's win in Iowa, she replies, "I was an intrinsic part of it."

Of course, in contrast with many of the other spouses, her partnership with Mr. Kerry is relatively young, and she has had years of experience in the public eye without him. She grew up in Mozambique, attended university in South Africa, went to the University of Geneva's interpreter school and worked at the United Nations. She married Mr. Heinz in 1966, moved to Pittsburgh and had three sons. In 1991, her husband died in a plane crash; two years later Mrs. Heinz began dating Senator Kerry. She has one hobby that has mostly escaped notice: knitting. When her son Andre was a "Dr. Who" fan in 1987, she made him a scarf like the one the show's actor Tom Baker wore, about 14 feet long; according to his brother Chris, Andre still has it.

Hadassah Lieberman
AGE: 55
PROFESSION: Consultant
On the campaign trail, Hadassah Lieberman says she shows up where she's asked but otherwise opts out of things like strategy sessions. "It's his candidacy, I'm his spouse," says Mrs. Lieberman, who was introduced to that spouse in 1982 by a mutual friend. At the time, she was divorced from her first husband, a rabbi (it was also the second marriage for Joe Lieberman, who was running for attorney general of Connecticut at the time). [Hassasah Leiberman]

In some 15 years as a Washington wife, Mrs. Lieberman has often kept to the sidelines of the political social circuit. Friends say her hostess duties tend more toward Friday night Shabbat dinners than Capitol Hill cocktail parties. "She's not interested in the glitz," says Mindy Weisel, a Georgetown neighbor and close friend. Still, she has already been through the pressure of a presidential campaign, when her husband ran as Al Gore's vice-presidential candidate. Her sister-in-law Judy Freilich remembers extending Thanksgiving dinner one year out to the garage, serving an extra turkey to 20 Secret Service agents trailing candidate Lieberman. Rather than cooking, Mrs. Lieberman preferred to help clean up, Mrs. Freilich says.

Gearing up for a push in New Hampshire did require some domestic work, Mrs. Lieberman says. The couple rented an apartment in Manchester they dubbed the "Manch Ranch," and Mrs. Lieberman stocked it with supplies including bottled water, peanut butter and canned salmon, which she calls one of Joe's favorites. She also lined up a rabbi to kasher the kitchen (making it kosher).

Kathy Jordan Sharpton
AGE: 47
PROFESSION: Singer
While Judith Dean's low profile in the campaign turned into big news, Kathy Jordan Sharpton's absence has drawn little notice. Even compared with the pre-New Hampshire Dr. Dean, Mrs. Sharpton has taken the approach of a recluse, declining interview requests and rarely appearing in public. Of course, Mrs. Sharpton's husband, the Rev. Al Sharpton, hasn't been a vote-getter at the level of others still in the race. [Kathy Jordan Sharpton]

Of all the spouses, Mrs. Sharpton, a former beauty queen, may have some of the most intense experience with the spotlight -- as a singer, she toured as a backup vocalist for James Brown, whom Rev. Sharpton managed briefly. More recently, she made appearances in New York City area nightclubs like Copeland's and the Cotton Club (among her favorite tunes: "I'll Take You There" and "Wind Beneath My Wings"), though now she limits herself to singing gospel in church.

Friends say she has little interest in the campaign media frenzy. "When you were a singer with James Brown, you've had your success," says Sylvester Leaks, a longtime friend of the family. "She's not sitting down beneath Rev. Al's tree waiting for the leaves to fall to fertilize her."

--Paula Szuchman and Heather Won Tesoriero contributed to this article.

Write to Nancy Keates at nancy.keates@wsj.com

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