COLUMN ONE : A Web of Woes for Waldholtz : Savvy lawmaker is expected to use a ‘ditsy housewife’ defense to explain campaign finance problems, bounced checks linked to her husband. But polls show Utah voters have their doubts.

It’s hard to know whether the strange saga of Rep. Enid Greene Waldholtz (R-Utah) is a profound personal tragedy or an uproarious political farce.

Maybe there is no great difference.

In the eyes of many here, only a writer of tragedy or slapstick could have invented lead players like this: the earnest first-term congresswoman and her conniving husband with the bogus fortune, caught in a skein of unbridled ambition, false identity and ingenious deceit.

There is no denying the pain Waldholtz has suffered in the month since her fleshy husband ditched her at a Washington airport--taking the car keys and leaving her alone with an infant daughter, the rent unpaid and the FBI conducting a full-blown probe into her personal and campaign finances.

Along with her abandonment, she has suffered intense and uncharitable media scrutiny, seen her sparkling political career grow dim and faced the likelihood of a protracted criminal investigation and possible indictment.

Her husband, Joe, meanwhile, reappeared after six days on the lam and is busy bargaining with the feds, hoping to cop a plea that keeps him out of jail while putting the heat on his soon-to-be-ex-wife.

Bad times for sure for Enid.

Why, then, are so many Utahans laughing?

” It’s kind of funny when a high politician in Utah, who has adopted such a holier-than-thou stance, falls off her perch. It’s like a comedy pratfall,” said Salt Lake City attorney Edward J. McDonough.

“It’s because of the sanctimony that it’s humorous rather than tragic,” he said. “Here’s someone who was donating part of her salary to reduce the national debt at the same time her husband was bouncing checks all over town. I can’t help it. I think that’s kind of funny.”

Although many in Salt Lake City think it’s already too late, Waldholtz, 37, will try to salvage what’s left of her political career and her dignity in a news conference here Monday. Since her husband’s disappearance on Nov. 11, Waldholtz has refused all interview requests, communicating with the outside world only by press release or through her spokeswoman.

She promises a “full accounting” of the financial questions swirling around her, not the least of which is the source of the $1.8 million in last-minute campaign funds that helped catapult her into Congress last year as one of the brightest stars in the large GOP freshman class.

But perhaps the most important unresolved question involves the extent of her knowledge of all the dubious financial transactions she and her errant 32-year-old husband have been involved in since their ill-starred romance began four years ago at a Young Republicans convention in Newport Beach.

Since Joe went underground, Enid has steadfastly maintained her innocence and ignorance of all the bounced checks, the broken promises, the erroneous campaign finance reports, the misleading personal financial statements, the unpaid bills and the red-letter warnings of the past two years.

All Joe’s Fault?

All of it was Joe’s fault, she insists; she has been the victim of “an incredible level of deception” by the man she made the mistake of marrying. She has filed for divorce and is seeking sole custody of their 3-month-old daughter. She is reclaiming her maiden name. And she wants the man she so recently loved punished severely “for what he has done to me, my family and the people of Utah.”

Many here are having trouble swallowing this pose of perfect victimhood. The Enid Waldholtz who twice ran for Congress from Utah’s 2nd District presented herself as anything but an innocent dupe.

Enid Greene, as she was then, ran in 1992 as a tough corporate litigator who had unraveled complicated financial transactions for Utah’s biggest banks. She was the political operative in the office of Gov. Norman H. Bangerter, who helped him navigate the shoals of state fiscal scandal. She was the aggressive protector of the lives of the unborn and the rights of overburdened taxpayers. She lost to Democrat Karen Shepherd in 1992, then took the seat away from her in 1994 in an exceptionally expensive and hard-fought campaign.

“Her whole persona is the bright and articulate public advocate,” said Steven Taggart, who worked as a senior aide in both of Waldholtz’s congressional campaigns before resigning last year after his warnings of potential fraud in the handling of her campaign accounts went unheeded.

“Now she’s trying the ditsy housewife defense. Now she says ‘I didn’t know anything’ and it’s just crap. It just doesn’t fit with what everyone knows about her.”

Voters Skeptical

Public opinion polls mirror Taggart’s assessment. In a survey conducted in mid-November by the Salt Lake Tribune, 53% of voters in Waldholtz’s district said they believed that she was fully aware of her personal and campaign finance problems. Another 20% said she may not have known the full extent of the problems, but she should have.

Only 19% said she knew very little about the financial mess.

The voters also blamed her for the errors and unanswered questions in the financing of her 1994 campaign, for which Joe Waldholtz served as finance director. Almost half said she was responsible for the campaign finance reports she submitted, and another 40% said she shared responsibility with her husband.

Half of the voters in her district said she could no longer be an effective voice for them in Congress and should resign; nearly two-thirds said she should not seek another term.

“By at least an 80-20 margin, people aren’t buying her story,” said Tom Barberi, host of Salt Lake City’s most popular call-in radio show. “She’s a bright lady and performs very well. But don’t let her fool you. She didn’t fall off the turnip truck last week. She’s quite aware of the requirements of campaign finance reporting. To plead ignorance at this late date rings more than a little hollow.”

Yet that appears to be the defense Waldholtz and her advisors are preparing to mount before a skeptical press and public.

Her only fault, said her spokeswoman, friend and political consultant Ladonna Lee, was “loving and trusting Joe Waldholtz.”

“When you love somebody, you believe what they say,” said Lee, president of the Eddie Mahe Co., a Republican political consulting firm. “That’s the only mistake she made that she’s aware of.”

Trickery Alleged

Waldholtz’s defenders suggest that her husband tricked her into signing fraudulent documents, including income tax returns, campaign finance reports, financial disclosure forms and bank loan applications. They say she fell victim to a cunning con artist with a brilliant criminal mind who deceived some of the largest financial institutions in the United States.

Joe Waldholtz, they point out, is accused by his own family of looting his senile grandmother’s trust account of $600,000. In the days before he fled, Waldholtz had a friend tape a message for a telephone answering machine to trick his wife into believing that he was the beneficiary of a fictitious entity called the Waldholtz Family Trust, according to Mike McConnell, the Pittsburgh friend who made the recording. Joe Waldholtz filed bank loan applications and tax returns indicating hundreds of thousands of dollars of income from the trust, according to his wife’s attorneys.

He bounced $60,000 worth of checks to a Salt Lake City jewelry shop, stiffed American Express for $47,000 and persuaded a congressional staffer to charge another $45,000 of his personal expenses on the aide’s credit card, Enid charges in a series of press statements in which she details her allegations against her estranged husband.

He somehow persuaded Enid’s father, the wealthy and astute investor D. Forrest Greene, to give the couple as much as $4 million in exchange for unspecified assets Joe Waldholtz held in Pennsylvania that could not be readily converted to cash.

Joe Waldholtz has not responded to the allegations. His lawyer, Harvey Sernovitz of Philadelphia, is declining media inquiries while negotiations with federal authorities are underway.

“On Dec. 11, she will tell a story that is as bizarre as anything you’ve ever heard in American politics,” said Stanley B. Parrish, chairman of the Utah Republican Party, who recently spoke with the congresswoman. “I suspect there will be some real surprises. It’s likely she will say that numerous records were destroyed by Joe and therefore a full accounting is impossible.”

But this defense requires the voters to accept Waldholtz’s contention that she had no idea what her husband was up to, even as she was being dunned at home and at the office for unpaid bills and as her staffers were complaining of rubber paychecks.

It requires belief that the miraculous infusion of more than $1 million in cash into her 1994 campaign just before the election was a legitimate gift from her father and not an illegal campaign contribution. Waldholtz’s only explanation to date of that decisive fiscal event is that “we were blessed.”

Campaign Rot

And it requires the belief that she was unaware of the rot in her campaign even after Gov. Mike Leavitt and former U.S. Atty. David J. Jordan warned her in July 1994 of problems and urged her to keep her husband as far away from the account books as possible.

“Is it conceivable that this very, very bright, insightful woman was unaware of what was going on in her campaign at a time when her father was pouring all that money in? The answer is no,” said Taggart, who quit in the middle of the campaign after repeatedly confronting the Waldholtzes about the money problems.

What may have blinded her, Taggart now believes, was a deep-seated paranoia. She believed that she was the target of both her opponents and her supposed friends in the Utah Republican Party. She believed that the allegations of mismanagement were dirty tricks to throw her campaign off stride. Taggart said her delusions drove her to hire a private detective during the 1994 race because, she said, her office was bugged and she and her husband were getting death threats.

The real reason the detective was brought in, Taggart said, was to spy on her rivals’ campaigns and investigate rumors of cocaine use by Democratic incumbent Shepherd. The rumors were never substantiated.

Shepherd has been circumspect in her public remarks about the case, in part because she’s a candidate for a seat on the Federal Election Commission, which might have to rule on the matter.

But she cannot hide the bitterness she felt about both her campaigns against Waldholtz, the winning effort in 1992 and the loss two years later when she was swamped by a last-minute advertising and direct-mail blitz paid for by the “blessed” $1 million.

“The first time I met Enid [in 1992], she refused to take my hand,” Shepherd said. “She never spoke to me unless other people were around. She would make snide remarks to others in my presence; she was just horrendously unfriendly.”

Shepherd added that her husband and Waldholtz’s mother, Gerda Greene, almost came to blows one night after Mrs. Greene accused the Shepherds’ son of stealing Waldholtz’s yard signs.

“I’ve long since gotten over the disappointment of feeling the election was stolen,” Shepherd said unconvincingly. “It’s worth a novel. The human part is so interesting to me.”

Gerda Greene, who emigrated from Denmark to escape the Nazis and lost most of her family to German torpedoes, refused to discuss the matter in detail. But she predicted that at the end of the day, the voters of Utah will accept and believe her daughter’s story. She too has blamed Joe Waldholtz for deceiving her daughter by, among other things, claiming to be Episcopalian when he was in fact the son of a prominent Jewish dentist from Pittsburgh.

“I think everyone knows what Enid stands for,” Gerda Greene said. “I have no fears. She has no reason to be contrite.”

‘The Final Act’

Russ Behrmann, executive director of the Utah Republican Party, was more earthly in his assessment of Waldholtz’s chances for political resurrection. “She’s already had her first act. This is the final act. She’d better perform.”

But admitting error and putting aside her pride may be the most difficult things Enid Greene Waldholtz can do. Taggart and other aides quit because she ignored their pleas to clean up her act.

“You can’t imagine the feeling of betrayal. I was in her wedding party, and she refused to listen to me,” Taggart said. “This is a story of incredible arrogance.”