WASHINGTON -- When Bob Hunter, a Riverside, Calif., businessman, would hear of a conservative's campaign that needed volunteers, he would pile his family into the station wagon and drive off to ring doorbells. Hunter's son Duncan grew up believing in retail politics. When Hunter returned home after serving as an alternate Goldwater delegate at the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco, he told Duncan about chatting with another alternate, an amiable fellow, some actor, named Reagan. Who two years later was elected governor. Duncan learned early on about rapid upward mobility in politics. In 1969, he dropped out of college,...