Empress Donna Sachet arrived and posed with Chrissy in the 4th Floor Lobby outside the Ceremonial Room. (Donna, by the way, is a man known as the empress of San Fransisco) These people are frelling nuts!
Posted on 01/17/2004 5:27:30 PM PST by freedom44
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- The ladies in bright red bonnets and purple dresses were delighted that Chrissy Gephardt had dropped in on their luncheon at the cafeteria at Westdale Mall.
"I'm a farmer's wife and we need Dick Gephardt as president," declared Jo Ann Neuzil, who slapped a Gephardt 2004 sticker on her singing teddy bear.
The daughter of the Democratic presidential candidate and longtime congressman from neighboring Missouri circulated among the tables, charming the 50 or so members of the Red Hat Club. None asked about her coming out as a lesbian.
"It's interesting. Most people, either they don't know or it's just not an issue. I'm Dick Gephardt's daughter and I'm talking about the issues that matter to them," she said.
When she told her parents that she was gay and divorcing her husband of five years to be with another woman, she feared their reaction and the implications.
"I thought they would disown me. It was scary. I worried that it would ruin his career," she said.
Instead, she said, her parents were "totally supportive" and even added her partner, Amy Loder, to the family's Christmas card picture last year. She has temporarily left her job as a social worker in Washington, where she grew up during her father's long congressional career, to campaign full time for him.
This isn't her first stay in Iowa. The family moved there briefly in 1987, when her father was making his first presidential run.
"We were bad," she said of herself and siblings. "We would try to get out of events."
This time around, she's working a lot harder on her father's campaign. Dropping in at St. Mark's United Methodist Church after her soiree with the Red Hats, she greeted Sam and May Allen, who had come to a meals program for the elderly.
"Do you want some literature about Dick Gephardt?" she asked.
"I can't read it. My eyes are bad. That's why I can't drive to the caucus," replied Sam Allen, 84.
"We'll get you a ride there," Gephardt promised.
Back at her father's Cedar Rapids campaign headquarters in a machinists union hall, she spent a few hours making phone calls to likely caucus-goers who favor him, trying to get them to work on their less-committed friends.
During a break, she talked about the Iowa voters with whom she shares a special bond.
"Of course there's definitely a gay population here. We've done some outreach to them," she said. But they're not all focused on gay marriage -- an issue on which she differs with her dad, who wants to limit same-sex couples to civil unions.
"Gay people also want jobs. We also want to take care of our loved ones. We also want health insurance," she said.
That evening, she headed to a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial dinner at Des Moines' African-American Historical Museum. Again, Gephardt moved from table to table.
"You don't see many children of candidates out stumping around like her," said Dorian Petty. He asked the hard question, though.
"If your dad doesn't win in Iowa, what's he going to do?"
"He's going on to other states," she promised.
Later, it was back to headquarters for more phone calls, stretching late into the night.
At the same time, she used a Blackberry wireless computer to e-mail answers to the "Ask Chrissy" section of her father's campaign Web site, www.dickgephardt2004.com.
But she was still marveling over her enthusiastic welcome that morning at the Red Hat Club. The members, all over 60, have few rules except to wear red hats and never talk about their weight.
"What do y'all do?" a visitor asked them.
"Whatever we please," replied a woman in a red hat.
Chrissy Gephardt liked that.
Sorry Jo Ann, Gephardt will be lucky to win Iowa, forget about licking Bush in the fall.
Inatspecial.
I'm sure this young lady has been licking bush already. ...ahem.
Empress Donna Sachet arrived and posed with Chrissy in the 4th Floor Lobby outside the Ceremonial Room. (Donna, by the way, is a man known as the empress of San Fransisco) These people are frelling nuts!
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