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BRLINGTON, Vt., Jan. 12 — Eddie Kasperowicz, 74 and retired from the Seabrook, N.H., auto plant that Howard Dean was touring the other day, had a question unrelated to his union's hot-button issues of trade and health care. "When," he wondered, "will America have a chance to meet your bride?" No time soon, Dr. Dean told him, "unless you get sick in Shelburne, Vt., in which case she'll probably see you." In 23 years of marriage, 18 of which Dr. Dean has spent running for, or serving in, office, his wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, has developed an unusual role for...

Eddie Kasperowicz, 74 and retired from the Seabrook, N.H., auto plant that Howard Dean was touring the other day, had a question unrelated to his union's hot-button issues of trade and health care. "When," he wondered, "will America have a chance to meet your bride?" No time soon, Dr. Dean told him, "unless you get sick in Shelburne, Vt., in which case she'll probably see you." In 23 years of marriage, 18 of which Dr. Dean has spent running for, or serving in, office, his wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, has developed an unusual role for the political spouse: invisible.

<p>SHELBURNE, Vt. -- While her husband was flying over Iowa en route to Michigan, fresh from a recent harmonica-playing gig on the chaotic campaign trail, Judith Steinberg sat behind an office desk, waiting for the phone to ring. A doctor in family practice, Steinberg was on call in this tony town just south of Burlington last Saturday, and quite content, far from crowds and cameras, with only her patients to fret about.</p>

NYT PAGE ONE SPLASH SET FOR TUESDAY: Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean has developed an unusual role as political spouse: Absent... Steinberg has stood by her husband's side at a political event exactly once... Dean, for his part, rarely utters her name, even to say thanks, in public speeches... She skipped Dean's birthday-party fund-raiser, the family-oriented Renaissance Weekend, even the emotional repatriation ceremony of his brother's remains in Hawaii... Though Steinberg and their children are Jewish, Dean campaigned through Yom Kippur... Steinberg has been asked why she does not accept new Medicaid patients...

So little is known about the personal lives of Howard Dean and his wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg, even the liberal New Yorker Magazine says in its recent profile of Dean that they remain an enigma despite the media spotlight. For example, Dean’s wife, who has stubbornly kept her maiden name, gets only a passing mention in the lengthy profile. The magazine says during Dean’s days as Vermont’s governor his wife was "barely visible.” "So far in the Presidential campaign, she has proved equally elusive,” the New Yorker adds. Parenthetically the New Yorker adds a comment that deserves much more...

ALTOONA, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Howard Dean said Tuesday that the public will get to see his politically shy wife as the presidential campaign progresses, but he will not force her to become a "prop on the campaign trail." Dean said his wife, Judy, will do television interviews and possibly appear in a campaign commercial. But if he wins the nomination, her life will remain focused on her medical career and caring for their teenage son still living at home, he said. Judy Dean, 50, is a doctor with a full-time practice in their hometown of Burlington, Vt., where she...

Wife of Presidential Candidate Values her Privacy The Associated Press February 15, 2003 By Christopher Graff As Howard Dean crisscrosses the country in his frenetic pursuit of the presidency, his wife Judy tends to patients in her medical practice. They speak nightly, discussing their children, her patients and the weather, but not politics. That's the way it's been for the Deans: He pursues his politics and she practices her medicine. In the nearly dozen years Howard Dean served as governor of Vermont, Judy Dean was all but invisible. No speeches. No interviews. No campaigning. No public appearances. This unconventional arrangement...

Howard Dean's wife Judith Steinberg accompanies Dean and their son Paul to a courtroom hearing last month. This was a rare public appearance by the former first lady of Vermont. Shown at right is a publicity photo released by the Dean Campaign.

Howard Dean has an Israel problem. Last week, in the presidential free-for-all in Baltimore, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) blasted Dean for saying during a campaign stop a few days earlier that he wouldn't take sides in the Middle East. Dean added that he'd be "evenhanded," which in standard State Department English means pro-Palestinian. Later, Dean pleaded ignorance of the significance of the coded phrase. If so, his lack of diplomatic sophistication makes the pre-presidential George W. Bush look like Henry Kissinger. Lieberman also accused the Vermont Volcano of breaking a tradition of bipartisan presidential support for the Jewish State that...

If you did not recognize this woman, you would not a alone. She is Howard Dean's wife Judy, and she is "coming out" into the primary season, accompanied by puff-pieces like the one below from AP: Judy Dean, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, sits in her medical office in Shelburne, Vt., Feb. 6, 2003, where she is an internist in private practice. If her husband wins the presidency, America's next first lady could be a doctor tending to her patients while her husband tends the country. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, file) Howard Dean's wife is...