‘I Won’t Be Tinkerbell of Campaign’ : Schroeder Seeks Answers in a Question-Mark Effort

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) watched with amusement as the genteel guests of the Georgia Women’s Political Caucus were browbeaten into putting down their lemon tartlets and taking out their checkbooks.

“This is shock fund raising,” Atlanta political consultant Beth Schapiro declared, using an off-color joke, feminist guilt and the threat of locking all doors to coax the 70 or so sweltering guests to pay up.

Checks, the candidate noted, should be made out to “Schroeder 1988?” and don’t forget the question mark.

Pat Schroeder--eight-term congresswoman, senior member of the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees, the Joan Rivers of politics--is running for President.

Sort of.

Maybe.

Well, almost.

In this question-mark candidacy, Schroeder is stumping across the country as fast as the airlines she deplores will allow her, “trying to see if we can do in two months what everyone else did in two years.”

The question, according to the 47-year-old liberal, is whether she can generate enough money, volunteers and public enthusiasm to make it worth her while to join the seven Democrats already vying for the party nomination. She would be the first woman to seek the top spot on the ticket from a major party since Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) ran in 1972.

The answer, she promises, will come in late September, the deadline she set when she launched her exploratory campaign in early June with a pay-as-you-go, no-debt framework that can be a source of both pride and embarrassment.

Schroeder initially vowed to enter the race only if she could raise $2 million by summer’s end, a figure her worried staff now warily tiptoes around. She is far short of her goal.

“Getting in late, you don’t get a discount,” she told about 20 women at a rainy picnic in Portland, Me. “I’m really not interested in getting in just to make it interesting.

“If I do it, I want to be absolutely mainstream, absolutely viable.”

Response to Schroeder on the road appears to be warm but cautious, with her most enthusiastic support seeming to come from anti-nuclear and feminist camps.

Recalls 4-H Club Days

In rural Iowa, Democrats at a party fete in Black Hawk County beamed as Schroeder recalled her days in the 4-H Club during her childhood in the state. In Bangor, Me., Schroeder retreated inside the rambling mansion of author Stephen King for a private meeting with the horror novelist’s wife. In New Hampshire, she smiled as mosquitoes devoured her at a pool-side reception.

Her style is an enigmatic blend of pragmatic and peculiar. She talks tough on such issues as defense spending, trade and ethics in government, but the impact is sometimes skewed by some unique Schroederisms. She is Joe Friday with a Valley Girl vocabulary:

--Schroeder advocates a burden-sharing plan that would force America’s allies to spend the same percentage of their gross national product on defense as the United States. Failure to do so, she warns, would prompt a Schroeder Administration to make up the difference by imposing a tariff on imports.

‘Then Tough Munchies’

“And if they don’t like it,” she adds, “then tough munchies.”

--Schroeder blasts the reflagging of Kuwaiti vessels in the Persian Gulf, angrily charging that the Kuwaitis have a higher per-capita income than the United States, but the tankers’ fuel is the only cost the Kuwaitis bear for the U.S. Navy escort operation.

“Well, yippy skippy,” she deadpans.

--Lt. Col. Oliver L. North is regarded as “this summer’s Hula Hoop,” and defense contractors are “welfare queens.” The national debt is “a two-ton marshmallow” and President Reagan is the “Teflon President.”

“Pat is much more complex than people want to deal with,” press secretary Andrea Camp said. “Yeah, Harvard Law and ‘tough munchies’ (messes) up people’s minds.”

‘Rendezvous With Reality’

Schroeder’s slogan is the somewhat ambiguous “rendezvous with reality,” which she uses to mock what she describes as the Republican Administration’s “delusions of rainbows and unicorns.”

“I’m not going to be the Tinkerbell of this campaign, bring out the magic poofle dust and everything’s OK. I will run if we’re ready to have a rendezvous with reality.”

When asked by a supporter if there were any skeletons in her closet, Schroeder, who served as co-chair of Gary Hart’s ill-fated presidential campaign, wryly noted that “29-year-old men do not throw themselves at me.”

“That does not mean I’m not corruptible,” she joked. “The opportunity is just not there. I’m not a saint. I’m somewhere between Imelda Marcos and Mother Teresa.”

Then there is the matter of The Question hovering over Schroeder’s political ambitions: Is America willing to elect a woman President?

Opposition Dropping

A recent poll by the National Women’s Political Caucus found resistance to a woman President dropping dramatically among voters. But almost a third of the respondents thought a woman would “have more problems” being President than a man would. In theory, Schroeder faces the daunting task of winning an election with one-third of the vote already in doubt.

And Schroeder cannot count on an outpouring of support from other women simply because she is a woman. Many female political activists have already signed up with other candidates. Still, the National Organization for Women is only a step away from endorsing her: NOW President Molly Yard said the organization would not support any current presidential candidate although it could be persuaded to back Schroeder.

The feminist factor is a touchy subject for the pro-choice, pro-ERA congresswoman, who cringes at the mere words “woman’s candidate.”

“It’s a real put-down,” Schroeder said in an interview. “It’s not like I just came in and all I talk about is day care. If my name were Patrick Schroeder, I’d be the one who knew the most about defense policy.”

Those brave enough to ask her if she is “running as a woman” are likely to get an acidic response.

‘Things Were Predetermined’

“I didn’t know I had a choice,” Schroeder replies. “I thought these things were predetermined from the moment of conception.”

Claibourne H. Darden Jr., a prominent Atlanta-based pollster, believes the South would perceive Schroeder “as the worst of both alternatives--a woman and a liberal. The South is not ready overall to elect a woman to the presidency yet.”

Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young pledged to give Schroeder “all the support I could if she were running.” His wife, Jean, said “women candidates are held in a much more positive light than a few years ago in the South.”

Schroeder herself claims “our response has been 50-50 male-female,” but far more women than men were evident at a recent series of appearances in New Hampshire, Maine, Iowa and Georgia.

At the Black Hawk County Democrats’ Fiesta in Iowa, Schroeder gets a standing ovation from the crowd and suspicious glares from campaign workers for the declared Democratic contenders.

‘Articulate, Intelligent’

“She’s a very presentable, articulate, intelligent individual. I just haven’t figured out where her base is,” said Rep. Dave Nagle, the Waterloo Democrat who was the party’s state chairman during the 1984 presidential caucuses.

“If she’s not going to run as a woman’s candidate, then what? It’s her most natural base,” he said. “But I thought I heard a candidate’s speech there. I’d be surprised if she didn’t get into it. She has a great deal more to offer than Geraldine (Ferraro),” the 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee.

Nagle added: “Winning is very, very important in this crowd. Can she enter? Can she win? We want something different, but we don’t know what it is.”

Schroeder believes that the high-profile governments of Philippines President Corazon Aquino and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher have primed Americans for the possibility of a female leader.

“All of those things tell me there may be a freight train coming,” she concludes. “I tend to think the American people might be ready.”

Freight Train Hits

Not even Schroeder’s own family was quite ready for the freight train that hit them last spring.

Schroeder said she began mulling over a presidential bid after the Hart debacle, when, she said, “more and more people started calling” to urge her to run.

Jamie Schroeder remembers her mother always “laughing off” such suggestions in the past, saying “you’d have to be crazy to do something like that.”

After Hart’s withdrawal, Jamie, a 17-year-old high school senior, detected a new attitude. “We’d be doing the dishes and talking or something like that and she’d say, ‘What are you going to do when I’m President, ha ha ha.’

“I never, ever thought my mother would consider something as crazy as that.”

Three Pages of Reasons

Schroeder’s husband, Jim, scribbled out a three-page memo for his wife before leaving on a business trip, outlining the reasons why she should consider running.

He found out how much she took it to heart when he picked up a newspaper in Thailand and read about her decision to launch an exploratory campaign. She made him head of the exploratory committee.

Schroeder said she expects to powwow with her family during a two-week vacation before announcing her decision.

“The family and you and everybody around you has to be ready to go,” she said while sipping a diet apple soda in her Washington office. “The hard part is to try to project to the family what to anticipate.”

Schroeder’s children--Jamie has a 21-year-old brother, Scott--”have never been made to campaign. It’s their choice.”

Son in College

She wonders if a presidential run would prompt Scott to drop out of his last semester at Georgetown University to work for her, something she would view as good experience for his degree in international relations.

Jim Schroeder is wondering if he will have to take a leave of absence from his law office if the woman he met at Harvard Law School and married 25 summers ago decides to run for President.

The vacation “will give her a chance to relax and recharge her batteries, sit back and reassess where she’s at,” he said.

She believes that her family can cope with the critical attention a presidential drive will place on her and her family.

“After the Ferraro thing, people are paralyzed,” Schroeder told a group of supporters in New Hampshire, referring to probes of the finances of John A. Zaccaro, Ferraro’s husband, after Ferraro was nominated. Zaccaro has since pleaded innocent to charges of bribery in the awarding of cable television franchises.

‘They’re Hard to Get’

“Oh, you have a husband?” she said, imitating a questioner. “Yeah, and I’m excited about it, they’re hard to get. I mean, a husband is not a conflict of interest.”

Schroeder’s exploratory committee consists of about half a dozen paid staffers and an ever-fluctuating number of volunteers and interns. There are no pollsters, no media consultants, no analysts.

At times, the machinery seems to cry out for a little oil. Jim Schroeder spent about a month out of the country and readily admits that he is not up to date on the question-mark campaign.

Schroeder’s own travel plans and appearances sometimes were up in the air 24 hours before she left. Press queries about the amount of money raised and the number of appearances she has made would take days to answer, and the responses might be confusing.

For instance, Schroeder repeatedly told gatherings the week before she left on vacation that she had visited 27 states. Camp said there were only 20.

$250,000 in the Bank

At the Atlanta reception, Camp told reporters that the latest figures showed Schroeder had “$250,000 in the bank and $650,000 in checks and pledges.” When asked why checks would be included with pledges instead of with cash, and to separate the two, Camp replied that $650,000 was the total--$250,000 in the bank and $400,000 in pledges.

In Denver, Max Snead, treasurer of the exploratory committee, said Schroeder had raised about $265,000 before going on vacation, with another $350,000-$400,000 in pledges. The average donation is $63, he said.

But only $22,000 has come in from the $350,000 pledged by the National Organization for Women at its Philadelphia convention in July, according to Snead.

Fund-raising efforts are expected to get a last-minute boost from a series of “Run Pat Run” rallies planned nationwide on Sept. 20, and Schroeder also has reported a promise by oil and entertainment billionaire Marvin Davis to host a major fund-raiser.

Schroeder staffers speculated that the NOW pledges are slow to materialize because some of the money reflected not individual contributions but projected proceeds from fund-raising events that still may be in the planning stages.

4% Response to Campaign

Two direct-mail campaigns are under way, Snead said, with the first 25,000-piece effort generating a 4% response.

Jim Schroeder and Andrea Camp both describe the $2-million figure as a target and say that establishing a steady stream of donations is more important than hitting the goal.

Schroeder herself has offered upbeat assurances to her audiences that fund raising is going “very, very well” and that grass-roots response to her quasi-campaign is “just tremendous.”

Despite a grueling itinerary that might demand as many as a dozen appearances in three states in two days, Schroeder projects an energetic, cheery image.

Frequent flight delays and cancellations prompt her to hint darkly that an industry shake-up “is the first thing I do” if elected.

Makes Joke of Hardship

Although Jim Schroeder worries that the breakneck schedule is “killing her,” Schroeder typically makes a joke of the hardship.

“I’m turning my body into a chemical waste dump during this campaign,” she notes between mouthfuls of a hot fudge sundae that serves as lunch-to-go in Atlanta.

“Sugar, caffeine, sugar, caffeine, sugar, sugar, salt, sugar,” she intones. “I use salt to break it up.”

In one Iowa appearance, Schroeder milled with the crowd, undaunted by the (Massachusetts Gov. Michael S.) Dukakis bumper stickers in the parking lot or the (Tennessee Sen. Albert) Gore volunteers hovering at her elbow.

Someone asked her if she really wants to be President. There was an uncharacteristically long pause.

“Oh yeah,” she said softly.