Mrs. Dole-“Liddy” to her friends-has brought the same single-mindedness to her husband’s campaign. A compelling speaker with a soft Southern accent, she can rattle off the senator’s talking points more cogently than he can. But there is one challenge that will be difficult to prepare for: the inevitable comparisons with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Luke Hillary, Mrs. Dole is a deeply religious, focused Ivy League law grad (Harvard ‘65). If anything, the 59-year-old Mrs. Dole is even more accomplished: she is on a one-year leave from her job as president of the American Red Cross and has presided over two cabinet departments–Transportation under Ronald Reagan and Labor under George Bush.
Mrs. Dole has already taken one step toward distinguishing herself from the current First Lady. She has announced that if her husband is elected, she will go back to the Red Cross rather than attempt anything like Hillary’s health-reform task force. But Mrs. Dole may not be able to avoid the financial scrutiny that has mired Mrs. Clinton in Whitewater.
Since 1975-the year she married Dole-Mrs. Dole’s personal fortune has grown from about $200,000 to at least $2 million, partly from inheritance. Over the last four years, she has made $850,000 from speaking fees, haft of which she gave to charity. At the same time, she has made profitable investments. The press is poking into her relationship with David Owen, a former Dole intimate who managed her investment s and her blind trust- and who wound up in federal prison on income-tax charges. In the ‘88 campaign, the Bush camp raised questions about a deal Owen cut for Mrs. Dole’s trust that put her in business with John Palmer, a Kansas City minority contractor and former Dole aide. Senator Dole had earlier helped Palmer.land a lucrative $26 million Small Business Administration grant.
Though there is no evidence of wrongdoing on her part, the issue could come back. And Mrs. Dole does not like to be asked about Owen. When NEWSWEEK raised the subject with her in New Hampshire last week, she visibly darkened. Her eyes, usually wide and inviting, narrowed. She pursed her lips, flecking her front teeth with bright red lipstick, and insisted she had no knowledge of what Owen was up to. “It was a blind trust,” she told NEWSWEEK. “Finances are not my area of expertise.” But reporters aren’t the only ones interested in her money matters. Democratic “opposition researchers” are hoping to do something no one has done yet: catch Liddy Dole unprepared.
