Des Moines Register
01-07-07
A very active first lady' opens her next chapter
By KEN FUSON
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Christie Vilsack loves stories, so here's one:
In 1999, shortly after Gov. Tom Vilsack took office, his wife addressed a group in
the old Waukee Public Library.
"The library is the soul of the town," Christie Vilsack told them.
That quote now appears on the front of the new Waukee Public Library, along
with sayings from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass and
author Mary Pope Osborne.
Linda Mack, the Waukee library director, said Vilsack's visit inspired townsfolk to
work harder to build the new library, which opened in 2003.
The moral: When Gov. Vilsack's eight years in office end this week, he won't be
the only member of his family who is leaving a legacy.
Many say Christie Vilsack, the most visible and politically active Iowa first lady in
at least 50 years, has greatly expanded the role. And she has already
established herself as a powerful asset in her husband's campaign for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
She has accomplished this while remaining popular, and largely escaping the
criticism and controversy showered upon other active spouses in American
politics - most notably, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
How did she pull it off?
That's another story.
AT 499TH LIBRARY, SHE ASKS: 'WHAT ARE YOU READING?'
"Look at this crowd. The whole town is here."
Christie Vilsack enters the Curtis Memorial Library in Wheatland. It's Nov. 14.
This is the 499th library she has visited since becoming Iowa's first lady. Later in
the day, the Lowden Public Library will become No. 500.
Vilsack has focused on literacy - a term that she says encompasses books,
reading, storytelling, libraries, family histories, and uniting communities, not just
the ability to read - during her eight years as first lady.
Her efforts have included giving away more than 300,000 books, most of them to
Iowa kindergartners; establishing an interactive, online book club for middle
school students; helping persuade the Iowa Legislature to spend $1 million a
year in direct aid to public libraries; inviting children to a Spring Fling at Terrace
Hill, the highlight of which was seeing the governor dressed up as a book
character; and visiting as many libraries as she possibly could.
"It's been wonderful to have the role of libraries highlighted so clearly," says Mary
Wegner, the state librarian.
About 50 people fill the Wheatland library for Vilsack's visit.
"What are you reading?" she asks a young girl.
This is Vilsack's favorite question. It's the sort of question one might expect from
someone who sat in trees reading as a girl in Mount Pleasant, who would grow
up to teach English in the same classroom where she once was a student, who
was an educator for 30 years but also describes herself as a feature writer.
"Asking somebody what they're reading is a really good way in 10 minutes to feel
like you know somebody," she explains later. "So asking people what they're
reading, and talking about reading, perhaps created a sense of community for
me. It connected me to all the people of Iowa."
Back to Wheatland. The girl says she is reading a book called "George
Washington's Socks."
" 'George Washington's Socks'?" Vilsack says, excited. "I don't know that one. I
think I need to read it, though. Absolutely. Are you doing that as a class?"
"Yes."
"Is it a chapter book?"
"Yes."
"OK, I'll find it. That sounds great."
And there it is - a tiny glimpse of the Christie Vilsack charm. It's why Lt. Gov.
Sally Pederson says she can vividly remember the first time she ever met her.
"She made an impression on me," she says.
While Gov. Vilsack often appears more relaxed addressing large groups - his
notion of small talk includes statements like, "There are three reasons I'm
running for president" - the 56-year-old Christie is exactly the opposite.
"Give me a group of people I've never met before, and I'm happy as a clam," she
says.
She wants to know what you're reading, and where you're from, and what grade
you're in (if you're a student) and what grade your children are in (if you're a
parent), and what you do for a living, and then remembers the answers the next
time she meets you.
"What they like to say about Christie is, it's hard to get her out of the room,"
Pederson says, "because there's something she can find to talk about with every
single person in the room."
Childhood friend Mary Elgar of Mount Pleasant says, "There are just those
people you remember in school who are genuinely nice. They are interested in
everybody. Christie was that way. She's always been interested in other people's
stories."
And others outside of Iowa have noticed.
"I think she is just a splendid person," says New Hampshire state Rep. Jim Ryan.
He said Vilsack sent books to his three daughters after she met them, and he
expects New Hampshire voters to like her as much as his children now do.
"I certainly think they are going to warm to her very easily, because she herself is
a warm, energetic person."
SHE 'EXPANDED ... WHAT A FIRST LADY SHOULD ACT LIKE'
The spouses of presidents and governors have much in common. They are
unelected and unpaid, but they are expected to perform certain public roles.
Those roles, outlined by Dianne Bystrom, who heads the Carrie Chapman
Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, include hosting
events, serving as a surrogate for the spouse, and supporting some
noncontroversial cause, like promoting libraries and encouraging children to
read.
"Christie would fit that model of not only doing the social and project-type duties
of the first lady, but she's also taken an activist role," Bystrom says.
It's difficult to imagine Vilsack's predecessors Billie Ray and Chris Branstad
traveling 500 miles, five or six days a week, to champion their favorite causes,
the way Vilsack has.
For one thing, they had children to raise, while Vilsack's two sons were out of
high school when Tom Vilsack became governor in 1999. For another, they
seemed less comfortable in the spotlight.
Christie Vilsack is different in another respect. She has been perfectly willing to
wade into intramural presidential politics, endorsing Al Gore and John Kerry. She
gave Kerry a much-needed boost in Iowa that propelled him to a caucus victory,
and eventually to the Democratic presidential nomination.
"I don't think her role in the Kerry campaign can be overstated," says Gordon
Fischer, who was Iowa Democratic Party chairman then. He adds, "I don't think
there's been a first lady who's been more public or more active in our lifetime."
Kerry rewarded Vilsack at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 by inviting
her to give the first-ever prime time convention speech by a governor's wife. She
says she was petrified, but earned good reviews.
"I've never been one to turn down a challenge, even if I'm scared to death," she
says. "You just do it."
While Iowans appeared to accept Vilsack's political activism without question,
she found herself a target at the Democratic convention. A Boston newspaper
found a 10-year-old column she had written for the Mount Pleasant newspaper.
In the column, Vilsack wrote about the different ways people from other cultures,
or other regions, speak. But the controversy, such as it was, quickly faded.
"Activist first ladies walk a very fine line," Bystrom says. And they cross it, she
says, when their actions cause voters to ask: Who elected you?
Bystrom believes that's what happened initially to Hillary Rodham Clinton,
another activist first lady whose husband had served as governor of a
Midwestern state. Voters did not accept the notion they were getting "two for
one" when electing Bill Clinton president, she says, and overseeing health-care
reform was not the sort of pet project Americans expected their first lady to
undertake.
Christie Vilsack has never crossed that line, Bystrom says, "yet she has
expanded our notion of what a first lady should act like."
Vilsack says she has not been involved in day-to-day policy decisions, and has
never considered herself to be a campaign manager.
Of Clinton, who could become one of her husband's Democratic presidential
opponents, she says, "I think we're very different people. I saw my role as
someone who could help create the climate for what the governor and lieutenant
governor wanted to do."
A 'BIG, BIG ASSET' ON PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN TRAIL
More than 100 people waited in a Marshalltown hotel's meeting room for Gov.
Tom Vilsack to appear at a mid-December campaign rally. But he was running
late, meeting in another room with community leaders concerned about the
recent raid at the Swift meatpacking plant.
Christie to the rescue.
"I'm the warm-up band," she says before addressing the rally.
She vamps for more than a half-hour. For someone who often says she was too
scared as a little girl to give a book report in front of her classmates, she seems
remarkably poised.
"It's that genuineness," says David Giese, Christie Vilsack's high school speech
teacher. "Mixed into the genuineness is this gentle spirit that says, 'This is who I
am. I'm not trying to be somebody or something that I am not.' "
Everyone laughs when Vilsack mentions the potluck supper that the couple's
friends in Mount Pleasant organized on the night before her husband announced
he would run for president. "They're still talking about the green bean casserole."
She tells the group that no matter what state she's in, the questions remain the
same about the country's future. She mentions her husband's appearance on
"The Daily Show," saying, "I think everybody in the United States who watched
got to see the person that I know: a pretty serious guy who can go toe-to-toe with
anybody on any issue, but also has a pretty quick wit and has a quiet, selfdeprecating sense of humor."
Watching this, it's clear how helpful Christie Vilsack can be in her husband's
presidential campaign, particularly in Iowa, where he has lagged behind John
Edwards and Barack Obama in polls. She has probably shaken as many hands
during the past eight years as her husband has.
"She has fans all over the state," says Fischer, the former Democratic state
chairman. "I think she's going to be a big, big, big asset to Governor Vilsack as
he runs for president."
When the governor finally enters the rally, he says, "I do want to thank you for
being patient. And Christie, thanks for holding the crowd. I sent the A-team."
'WE'RE A TEAM. ... WE'VE ALWAYS BEEN A TEAM'
Christie Vilsack says everybody has a story to tell. This is the abridged version of
hers:
Girl grows up in Mount Pleasant, riding her "trusty blue Schwinn bike" around.
Father, Tom, is a lawyer. Mother, Fyrn, raises three children.
When she's 3 years old, the girl meets Harry Truman, but refuses to shake his
hand. She relents when he offers her a pen. It says, "This pen swiped from Harry
Truman." The girl holds it in her hand when she grows up and addresses the
Democratic National Convention.
When she's 10, she tapes a magazine photo of John F. Kennedy to her bicycle,
her first political campaign. She starts a Young Democrats Club in high school.
She goes to New York for college because her older brother said it would be
good to live someplace else for a while. She meets a young man, Tom Vilsack,
who asks her who she's supporting in the 1968 presidential election.
"Humphrey," she says. Good answer. They click.
She brings Vilsack to Mount Pleasant for a potluck supper. As she tells the story,
to the delight of Iowa audiences, "he saw all that food and never left." They get
married, buy a house on Main Street in Mount Pleasant, raise two boys. He's a
lawyer, she's a teacher.
When the Mount Pleasant mayor is shot and killed, her husband is asked to run.
He wins. Then he becomes a state senator. Then governor. He's an underdog
every single time.
And this is why Christie Vilsack refuses to view a presidential victory for her
husband as a fairy tale.
"You just have to have the confidence that you've got something to offer," she
says. "That's what we decided - we've got something to offer. We think we'd be
good for the country. We think he's got the rhetorical skills and persuasive ability
to bring people along with him and make them feel part of solving the problems
that we have to solve."
Notice how often she used "we."
"We're a team," she says. "I think it has to be a team. We've always been a
team."
Longtime family friend Lennis Moore of Mount Pleasant says, "It would have
been very odd to have Tom Vilsack as governor and not seen Christie as a very
active first lady. It's just the way that they function as a couple."
In the White House, "I would assume that she would be even more active, if that
would be possible," he says.
LEAVING A LEGACY OF LITERACY, MUCH MORE
The Vilsacks have five more nights in Terrace Hill. There's still too much to pack,
she says. Christie has at least 1,000 books to move. "I can't throw any of them
away."
The Vilsacks will divide their time in Iowa between their home on Main Street in
Mount Pleasant and an apartment in Des Moines, but they'll be on the road,
campaigning apart most days.
"BlackBerry helps," she says.
In some ways, she says, this presidential campaign began two years ago, when
Kerry nearly chose Tom Vilsack to be his vice presidential candidate. They had
to consider then how their lives would change. "We've been about as close to it
as you can get without having your name on the ballot," she says.
She knows she will be remembered most for her literacy efforts, but Vilsack also
is proud of her work with teenage girls and on health issues, as well as the First
Ladies of Iowa exhibit. It's on a lower level of Terrace Hill, an exhibit that includes
photographs and brief biographies of Iowa's 42 first ladies.
"Some people think I've been the first first lady who's been active politically, and
that just wouldn't be true," she says.
At all those library visits across Iowa, Vilsack has advised young women not to
grow up wanting to be a first lady, because they have no control over that.
Instead, she tells them to dream bigger. Maybe they could be governor someday.
And her? "I think she could very easily run for office," Pederson says. Others
echo her.
Vilsack has never ruled out running for elective office, but she has other priorities
now. A new chapter has started. After Friday, she'll no longer be Iowa's first lady,
but she'll still be Tom Vilsack's best friend and biggest supporter.
"We're right back where we started," she says. "Tom, Christie and a tank of gas."
Reporter Ken Fuson can be reached at (515) 284-8501 or kfuson@dmreg.com