Some of the First FOBs Gather for a Reunion

They were older, grayer and so much in danger of being unrecognizable to one another that their name tags read “I Used to Be . . . .”

It also seemed as if they had little in common today--having worked together briefly 23 years ago on the losing senatorial campaign of a clergyman-turned-candidate. Not only that, but their main claim to fame, a fellow campaign worker named Bill Clinton, was not even among them Sunday night. (Rumor had it that he was down on the Mall, celebrating his induction as President.)

But the 100 or so guests who descended on the home of Joseph Duffey, onetime Democratic senatorial aspirant from Connecticut, and his wife and former campaign manager Anne Wexler, were too ebullient to dwell on Clinton’s absence. With hugs and shrieks of 23-years-later amazement, this gathering “In Honor of the First Duffey Campaign Worker to Be Elected President of the United States” had the distinct feeling of a family reunion where everybody actually liked each other.

“I didn’t go to my law school reunion, and I didn’t go to my Yale undergraduate reunion,” said writer and movie critic Michael Medved, who traveled to Washington from Santa Monica for the occasion. “To me this is much more important. I grew up in the Duffey campaign.”

Medved went on to become a political conservative, a 180-degree tilt from the 20-year-old who left Yale Law for a year to become Duffey’s speech writer. But he said the spirit that infused Duffey’s unsuccessful race against Republican Lowell Weicker (now the governor of Connecticut) has stayed with him.

“Here we were, this band of political irregulars,” Medved said, remembering a ragtag group of idealists whose mean age was about 22. “We really felt we were making history.”

He smiled. “We didn’t feel it. We knew it.”

Though he was acquainted with Clinton, Medved said he has stronger memories of classmate Hillary Rodham. “She was intense, but nice, one of those people who always wrote thank-you notes,” he said.

Barry Wanger, a “Valley Boy who moved East” to volunteer for Duffey, recalled the future President as “the only one on the campaign with a Southern accent.” Bob Baskin, now chief of staff for another ex-Duffey volunteer, Rep. Sam Gedjenson (D-Conn.), said he “didn’t know until now that Clinton had been a Duffey worker, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

The sense of purpose that marked Duffey’s bid for the Senate “is what made Bill Clinton happen,” said Los Angeles gay activist David Mixner, another Duffey veteran. (His name tag read: “I Used to Be . . . Straight.”)

“Those of us who were 22, 23 years old developed the skills to become organizers, to become leaders.”

Judi Gold (“I Used to Be . . . Anne Wexler’s Driver”) echoed a theme that reverberated through the evening when she talked about the uncommon allegiance among Duffey’s volunteers. “No other campaign that I have worked on since has brought that kind of loyalty,” said Gold, now a staffer for the Denver City Council.

In part it was their youthful optimism that distinguished these political neophytes, Gold said. “The only two people in the campaign who were old enough to rent a car were the candidate and the campaign manager,” she said.

Joseph Lieberman, now a Democratic senator who holds the seat Joe Duffey once coveted, traced his own political beginnings to the Duffey era. “A lot of us were like Clinton and me--we had gotten excited by John F. Kennedy,” Lieberman said. The Duffey campaign “sort of began to bring it all together. It created the momentum that helped me get elected.”

After long days on Duffey’s campaign trail, Mickey Dornenfeld recalled how she used to telephone Chuca Meyer to make predictions about the young man in charge of Duffey’s New Haven office.

Dornenfeld said Bill Clinton had a “mystique” about him that convinced her “this guy’s going to be President someday.”

“You knew he had a vision for himself,” said Dornenfeld, a registered nurse.

Meyer, now a lawyer in Washington, interrupted. “He had vision, not just for himself.”

Sheila Rothman, who served as treasurer of Duffey’s campaign, walked by with a delirious grin on her face.

“I have been hugged and kissed by Bill Clinton!” she announced--even though these intimacies occurred 23 years ago. Rothman blushed and added: “Wait, everyone on the campaign was hugged and kissed by Bill Clinton. He’s a huggy kind of guy.”

Duffey, now the president of American University here revealed political roots as he climbed on a kitchen stool to address his guests. As a candidate, Duffey joked, he couldn’t have talked to that many people without asking for money.

He looked out at the roomful of 40-something men and women who had put their lives on hold 23 years ago to work on his campaign. Certainly, he said, it wouldn’t be appropriate to refer to them as “kids” anymore. And he cautioned against “Big Chill” romanticism. “There should be no nostalgia for that period in our country’s life,” Duffey said. “It was so divisive, with one generation pitted against another.”

But Duffey said the unusual--and long-lasting--camaraderie of his campaign had proven to be a portent of political candidates to come. “What we all sensed then was what Bill Clinton sensed last year, that politics can either divide people or bring them together,” Duffey said.

He quipped that though it had taken the election of Bill Clinton to bring his volunteers together after 23 years, this was only the group’s first reunion.

“Looking at you, I’m sure there’s another President here,” Duffey said. “And I’m sure we’ll all be together again when she is inaugurated.”