"I just love that he is a Christian man!" Don't put down the Mary Kay folk, people.
Bush, at Home Among The Well-Heeled in Texas
By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page D01
DALLAS -- There are hours to go before President Bush slips into a hotel ballroom here and thanks Texas for pouring $7 million into his reelection fund. Places, everyone:
An army of valet parkers gets final instructions. The merry band of protesters claim their corner out by the access highway, far from the entrance to the sprawling Wyndham Anatole Hotel. They wave American flags and hoist "Peace Is Patriotic" signs.
The Dallas police face them in a line, their motorcycles parked with precision at the hotel entrance: 24 identical Kawasakis at the same angle, each white helmet hung on each right handlebar.
In the cavernous kitchens, thousands of pre-grilled shrimp are threaded onto skewers. They will be tough and dry by serving time. Secret Service agents fan out through the hotel.
And fluttering like butterflies amid all this practiced efficiency on Friday afternoon are hundreds of Mary Kay Cosmetics conventioneers, who, it turns out, have taken over the hotel for most of the month. The ladies are everywhere, peppy, pretty and very pink -- pink being the signature Mary Kay color -- and they are delighted that their president is visiting. "We wanna know something," demands Nancy Brock of Alabama. "Is there ever a bad-looking Secret Service agent?" She giggles, and so do her mother, Caroline Sagunsky of Oregon, and her sister, Emily Sims of Florida. The trio have just stepped through the hotel doors after posing for a picture in front of the backup presidential limo, a popular photo op throughout the afternoon, with its Presidential Seal on the door and its gold-fringed flags on the hood.
The three would prefer to see the man and not just his car. They love him. Voted for him last time, can't wait to do it again, and "have you ever had a facial?"
Yes, once, it was wonderful, but here's a question: Are they concerned the administration might have emphasized false intelligence to build a case for the war against Iraq?
"I don't care about it at all," says Sims, while her mother and sister nod in agreement, "because we don't know anything about this [classified] intelligence. We can't know, as ordinary citizens, and we don't want to know -- it's scary -- and that's why we have leaders, and they worry about that for us. I trust him to lead. I trust that he's doing good things in the Oval Office and not bad things, if you know what I mean.
"And I love that he's a Christian man."
This is the bedrock of the Bush presidency, trust and leadership, and the president enjoys no bigger devotion anywhere than in Texas. The first big fundraiser of Bush's first governor's race was held in this very ballroom a decade ago, recalls Israel Hernandez, the president's longtime aide. He looks around the room and marvels for a moment about back then -- Dallas resident and Texas Rangers owner Bush was considered by many to be on a fool's errand trying to unseat Democrat Ann Richards -- and now.
Now seems easy. Another tenet of Bush strategy is underestimation, and campaign officials take great care to not appear overconfident of victory, with the election so far away. But the truth is the money started gushing like an oil well as soon as Texas finance chairman Fred Meyer and vice chairman Jeanne Johnson Phillips started drilling. In eight weeks, Texans contributed $7 million, Meyer said Friday night, through appeals tied to fundraisers here and last night in Houston.
The campaign's fundraising operation is not unlike that of Mary Kay's. The cosmetics firm promotes directors who recruit new salesladies and earn credits for those recruits' sales -- prizes such as tiaras and pink Cadillacs. The reelection campaign has Pioneers, charged with recruiting donors to tote up $100,000, and Rangers, responsible for bringing in $200,000. Past prizes have included ambassadorships.
Phillips has been proving herself as a Bush money-shaker since the first gubernatorial race. She ran the president's inauguration, and then he sent her to Paris as representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a role that conferred on her the title the Hon. Jeanne Johnson Phillips. Having moved home just a few weeks ago, she finds her husband teasing her by calling her "the formerly honorable."
There are 1,598 Texans who have maxed out at the $2,000 individual contribution permitted by law, according to federal election records. Campaign spokesman Dan Ronayne says 900 of them are here at the Wyndam. They glide up to the valet parkers in very clean luxury cars.
A fair number of trophy blondes hang on the arms of older men, which is so last-decade Dallas, but there it is. They have well-toned legs that end in Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos. Their heels are higher than the Mary Kay ladies', and their eye makeup not as colorful. There are the old Texas oil money Republicans, the young professional Dallasite Republicans and the evangelical Republicans.
Here is Bill Lee getting out of the back seat of a black Mercedes sedan -- the chauffeur is driving -- and chucking his cigar into the ground cover before entering the hotel. He's an independent oilman, the former head of Triton Energy. His wife, Antonia, originally from Turkey, says they have been Bush supporters "since the father," meaning the first President Bush.
Here is interior designer John Turner, a former Ann Richards supporter who thought George W. was just "the doodah son." Then he and his wife attended a charity event in the early 1990s where the amusement was a problem-solving scavenger hunt.
"Everyone else was drinking and partying, and George was fixed on unraveling this spool of thread, part of the puzzle, and he unrolled and unrolled, and when the spool was empty, there was the answer," says Turner. "I'll never forget it, his focus was such. And that is the focus I know he brings to this giant task of his."
Here is Angela Punzi Levi, a native of Argentina, whose business card pronounces her "Official Texas State Adviser to the Nation," a title that she seems to have bestowed upon herself. She has a prophecy for the president: "I told him before, and I want him to hear it again: He is gonna lose this election if he doesn't do something about the interest rate." She wants it higher, because senior citizens are seeing their savings slip away. She suggests that Alan Greenspan "should go jump in the lake."
Here are Brit Smith and Karen Wilson. He's in technology and she's in real estate, and this is their first Bush fundraiser. They have been following carefully the aftermath of the war, and they say it's important that people be patient. "We don't live in a perfect world. Hard choices have to be made," says Smith, "and he's willing to do that." And here, in a fabulous black hat and burgundy dress, is Connie Ware, who remembers vividly the first time Bush walked into a room to stump for governor "and I thought he was just magic. He's a good and honest and decent man." She volunteered then, and drove him "all over East Texas at 80 miles an hour," and he sat in her front seat and blew giant gum bubbles. When Ware raised an eyebrow at him, Bush said with a grin, "I know a thousand ways to embarrass my mother."
Every time she sees him, he plants a kiss right on her lips, "which my husband puts up with." And tonight is no different. After speaking, Bush leans across the rope line and does it again.
Outside, about 75 protesters mill about. They want Bush's motorcade to notice them when it passes.
There are signs saying "Regime Change Begins at Home" and "500 Billion Deficit IS a WMD." Some protesters lift oversize cards like the ones distributed to soldiers fighting in Iraq to help them identify wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime. The president is the four of clubs, because, says Crawford resident John Wolf, "we don't think he really ranks that high in this administration."
Every time a limousine approaches, the protesters jump up and down and run up and down the sidewalk. Every time, it's just more Mary Kay ladies inside the limo, enjoying another high-sales reward. The protesters don't know it, but the presidential motorcade arrived around the back of the hotel hours ago. Bush has been in a private suite ever since, posing with first lady Laura Bush for pictures with special donors.
After the donors drink their whiskey and white wine and have their fill of shrimp and chicken tenders, the president and his wife hit the stage. Bush says: "It is great to be home. It's really fun for us to see a lot of our old buddies." There is applause.
And: "I came to this office to solve problems, not to pass them on to future presidents and future generations." More applause.
And: "Terrorists declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got." Big applause.
And: "To get the economy going again, we have twice led the United States Congress to pass historic tax relief for the people of this country." Bigger applause.
And: "For the sake of our health-care system, we need to cut down on the frivolous lawsuits which increase the cost of medicine." Biggest applause of all.
The president finishes at 6:40 p.m. with a resounding "Thank you!" A scratchy recording of "Stars and Stripes Forever" comes over the speakers, and, taking their cue, people literally run for the exits, the women in the highest heels taking the shortest steps, fast, on their tippy-toes. See, it's a democracy: No matter who you are, you get one vote, and you get your car back in the order you arrived in the valet line.
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