CONCORD, N.H. ? Mitt Romney's wife gushes about his silly side and devotion to their five sons and 16 grandchildren. Rick Santorum's college-age daughter opines online about missing the campus coffee shop and chats with friends. Jon Huntsman's daughters generate much-needed buzz for him with a joint Twitter account and online videos.
Days away from voting in the Republican presidential race, the path to the nomination is quickly becoming a family affair, with spouses and offspring pitching in and doing far more than smiling from the sidelines.
Ann Romney, Anita Perry and Callista Gingrich are starring in new TV ads for the husbands they have loyally campaigned for.
Ann Romney extols her husband's character and says, "To me, that makes a huge difference" in a candidate. Anita Perry tells the "old-fashioned American story" of how she and her husband were high school sweethearts who had to wait until he was done flying airplanes around the world for the Air Force before they could marry. Callista Gingrich wishes the nation a Merry Christmas "from our family to yours" in husband Newt Gingrich's new holiday-themed TV ad.
Candidate kids, including those born to Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, are acting as surrogates, strategists and, in some cases, sounding boards for parents competing for the right to challenge President Barack Obama next fall.
"There are times when I wonder why I'm not sitting in the coffee shop on campus with my friends, lightheartedly discussing ('Saturday Night Live') videos, how bad the cafeteria is, what our plans are for Friday night or how absolutely swamped we are with school work," Santorum's daughter Elizabeth lamented in a recent blog post. "But this is where God wanted me."
She has taken time off from her junior year at the University of Dallas to serve as a self-described "field staffer/phone banker/chauffeur/surrogate speaker," for her father, primarily in Iowa.
Her father, who hopes Iowa's socially conservative voters turn out for him on caucus night Jan. 3, rolled out an ad late last week featuring the entire Santorum clan, including the family German shepherd, Schotzy. The spot highlights his 21-year marriage to his wife, Karen; notes that he has coached Little League; and introduces viewers to the youngest of the couple's seven children, Isabella, born in 2008 with a genetic disorder.
Sometimes, family members campaign with the candidates and other times they go it alone.
Such family involvement carries risks and benefits. The stories they tell often humanize the candidates and help voters relate to them. But the things they say, and do, can sometimes cause headaches for the campaign advisers who are left to try to figure out a way out.
Earlier in the year, as Bachmann rose in public opinion, her husband, Marcus, defended his Christian counseling business from claims that its therapies included "curing" people of being gay. With Bachmann now near the back of the Republican pack in polls, Marcus Bachmann joined her at the start of her bus tour of Iowa's 99 counties but was quickly replaced by four of their five children.
"My husband had to go home. We're small-business owners, and someone had to go home and mind the store," Bachmann told one crowd.
Source: http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_19619418?source=rss
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