The Love Song of Dennis J. Kucinich
No Wonder the Candidate Saw a UFO. He's Been Up There on Cloud Nine.
By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2007; Page C01
HART'S LOCATION, N.H. One day last spring, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio
Democrat and long-shot presidential candidate, and his young British wife,
Elizabeth, were sitting in an Italian restaurant in Dupont Circle.
They were by the window. They were holding hands. Elizabeth Kucinich was
looking lovely, as usual -- the red hair, the luminous skin, the green eyes,
the fine cheekbones. Dennis was looking, as usual, like Dennis Kucinich.
This guy passed by the window. He stopped. He stared at Elizabeth through
the glass. Then he came into the restaurant and walked right up to their
table.
"Doesn't even look at me!" Dennis is saying, grinning, as he retells this
story between campaign stops. "He looks at her and he says, 'You are the
most incredibly beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life!' I'm sitting
right there, you know?"
"We're holding hands!" Elizabeth exclaims, in her elegant accent. She's
lounging in front of the inn's fireplace, all six feet of her, looking like
Botticelli's Venus, only with clothes on.
"He says, 'I've never done this before, but what are you doing for dinner?'
" Dennis says.
"I just said, 'I'm sorry, I'm with my husband.' " Elizabeth says.
And the guy got all embarrassed and apologized and walked away.
"He was such a sweet soul," Elizabeth says tenderly. "I hate breaking
hearts!"
Dennis Kucinich wears the look of a man who's just won the sweepstakes. He
says a colleague from the House told him it didn't matter how he did in the
presidential race because he'd already won.
He'd won Elizabeth.
"I responded, 'Now you know why I think I can be president?' " Dennis says.
"If I can marry this incredibly brilliant, beautiful woman, I mean, why
wouldn't I think I can be president of the United States?"
Dennis Kucinich is the happiest candidate in this race. True, he is polling
in the low single digits, doing about as well as he did during his 2004
presidential run. True, he was recently the butt of jokes for admitting in a
presidential debate that he once saw a UFO.
But he has Elizabeth, whom he met 2 1/2 years ago. It was love at first
sight, during a meeting on monetary reform. "Soul recognition," they both
call it. Less than four months later, they were married. He is 61. She is
30. He is short, at 5-7, and she is -- wow, she just keeps on going. And
they are happy, so happy, that to see them together holding hands, grinning
wildly, is to understand why they talk as if the universe has a plan for
them.
So if the six-term liberal congressman is nearly invisible during his second
presidential run, if his tall, elegant, improbable wife receives most of the
press, if cameras cut to her face during a presidential debate, and rival
candidate Sen. Joe Biden says, "Dennis, the thing I like best about you is
your wife," and reporters schedule interviews to ask about her tongue stud,
and "The Daily Show" does a segment about how hot she is . . . if she is the
reason people stop and stare -- well, so be it.
He is just as wowed by her.
The story of Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich involves: Indian nuns, a bust of
Gandhi, a portrait of "conscious light," a mystical opal ring, congressional
legislation, an Indian guru and the meeting of souls. Also: Dennis's good
friend for decades, Shirley MacLaine, the actress and New Age author, who
played host to the couple's second date.
But let us begin here on the couch, the day after Thanksgiving, 2007. The
happiest presidential candidate and his wife are relaxing at an inn two
hours north of Manchester that happens to be located in the smallest town in
New Hampshire. (This is symbolically appropriate, given that Kucinich -- a
high school football player -- is used to being the smallest guy on the
field.)
They are as close as can be without lap-sitting. Dennis is holding
Elizabeth's hand in both of his. Elizabeth's other hand is snaked around
Dennis's back. She says to him: "You start."
He says: It was an ordinary day in May 2005. There he was, Dennis Kucinich,
congressman, twice divorced, looking for love, as always. He was on the
floor of the House, doing ordinary congressman things.
"Tell her about the morning," Elizabeth says helpfully.
"Ooh! That's right!" Kucinich says. Here's the amazing part. (Things
involving Elizabeth generally tend to be amazing.) That very morning,
believe it or not, guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who teaches peace through
meditation and rhythmic breathing, had come to town. Dennis and Ravi have
known each other for a long time. Ravi asked about Dennis's love life.
Dennis said he was still looking for that special someone.
"And his response was, 'Stop looking and then she will appear,' " Dennis
says. "And I said, 'Okay, I'm going to stop looking.' I said that. And that
afternoon -- "
"I walked through the office door," Elizabeth finishes.
She was Elizabeth Harper then. She'd grown up in a village in the county of
Essex, outside London. Her dad ran a security fencing firm. Her mom was a
New Age healer who practiced aromatherapy and reflexology.
By the age of 27, Elizabeth had: Been known as the "Jolly Green Giant" in
high school for her height and her love of environmental causes. Ministered
to orphans and the poor at one of Mother Teresa's charity homes in India.
Worked in Tanzania for 16 months with a British organization similar to the
Peace Corps. Volunteered as a refugee caseworker for the British Red Cross.
Become pen pals with a prisoner on death row in Texas. Earned a master's
degree in international conflict analysis from the University of Kent, in
England. Worked as a fundraiser for a pastoral service and as a care
assistant for an accident victim who couldn't speak or walk. Sold gas and
electricity contracts door-to-door.
And finally, Elizabeth had moved to America to take a job as assistant to
Stephen Zarlenga, who runs an obscure New York-based organization called the
American Monetary Institute. (Zarlenga advocates a sweeping overhaul of the
banking system and has written a book purporting to expose those who've been
"embezzling from society" and using "economic theory as a tool of class
war.")
So, anyway, Elizabeth traveled to Washington with her new boss for a meeting
with a congressman. She didn't know anything about Dennis Kucinich. She
didn't know he was a lefty who had opposed the Iraq war and the USA Patriot
Act from the beginning. She didn't know he had divorced for the second time
in 1987, or that he had a daughter four years younger than her, or that
during his last presidential run there was actually an Internet contest to
find him a girlfriend. (It didn't work.)
She didn't know that he was attuned to the mystical, like her, or that he is
vegan and has consulted a woman who teaches "expanded consciousness," and
generally carries a tea bag in his suit pocket.
Her first inkling that Kucinich might be different from the run-of-the-mill
congressman was the presence of two Indian nuns from the Brahma Kumaris
World Spiritual University in Kucinich's reception room. She chatted with
the nuns about India and felt herself being "opened" up by the conversation.
Then she and Zarlenga were called into Kucinich's office.
Dennis watched the young woman's eyes. First they went to a bust of Gandhi
sitting on his bookshelf. Then they went to a picture given to him by the
Hindu nuns -- a burst of brightness against an orange background meant to
depict "conscious light." Then her eyes went to his.
"That was it," Dennis says now. "One, two, three." He knew.
"As soon as I met him I knew my life had changed," Elizabeth says. "I knew
that he was my husband."
On the couch, they lean in for a kiss.
So Elizabeth's boss and Dennis discussed monetary policy for about eight
minutes. As Dennis later told his buddy Shirley MacLaine, he had to stop
looking at Elizabeth for fear he'd declare his love for her right then and
there.
"Did I give the slightest indication?" Kucinich asks his wife on the couch.
"Tell me -- I didn't."
"Maybe not consciously," Elizabeth says, "but I did walk out and I phoned my
grandmother and said, 'I've met a congressman and he's fallen in love with
me.' "
Dennis gives a deep belly laugh. He seems amazed once again. Elizabeth
caresses the spot above his ear where the black hair is turning gray. "I'd
fallen in love with him, too, but I didn't tell her that bit," she says.
Kucinich gave the redhead and her boss copies of a bill proposing a U.S.
Department of Peace. And he gave them his e-mail address, hoping she'd get
the hint. They left.
He ran down to the floor of the House beaming.
He told his friends: "I met her." He didn't say who. He didn't explain what.
He just said, simply: "I met her."
"I said, 'Well, Dennis, this is deep,' " recalls Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones
(D-Ohio).
"I didn't know what he was talking about," recalls Rep. Maxine Waters
(D-Calif.).
Against the Odds
The improbable journey of Dennis Kucinich:
Oldest of seven. Grew up so poor in working-class Cleveland that the family
sometimes had to sleep in the car. As a kid, he scrubbed floors and shined
shoes. He and his siblings lived briefly in an orphanage. He was short, he
stuttered, he had asthma, and he had Crohn's disease, a chronic and painful
inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. In high school, he played
varsity football at 4-foot-9 and 89 pounds. (His teammates tossed him into a
garbage can.) When he was 21, doctors removed eight feet of his small bowel
and colon.
He worked his way through college and a master's degree in speech
communications, and then he worked his way through the Cleveland City
Council and the city post of clerk of the courts. In 1977, at age 31, he was
elected "boy mayor" of the city.
His term was tumultuous, and the city slid into default when Kucinich
refused to sell off the municipal electric system. He lost his reelection
bid. For years, he worked in consulting and in various business ventures
while trying for a political comeback. In time, many came to conclude that
his decision not to sell the electric system had saved customers money and
Kucinich claimed vindication. He was elected to the state Senate in 1994
(slogan: "Because He Was Right") and to Congress in 1996.
A feisty and combative populist, Kucinich is comfortable as an underdog,
which may explain why he sees that flap about his UFO sighting in
David-and-Goliath terms. He's still thinking of things he should've said in
response to Tim Russert, the moderator who asked him about it during an
October debate. He's convinced Russert was trying to "smear" him out of
pressure from his corporate bosses at NBC and NBC's owner, GE, who fear his
antiwar stance. (He believes this also explains why Russert hasn't invited
him on "Meet the Press" in years.)
(Here's his account of the UFO: Twenty-five years ago, he saw three objects
in the sky over MacLaine's house in Graham, Wash. He says he doesn't know
what they were. MacLaine, who believes in alien visitations and has claimed
that in a past life she was emperor Charlemagne's lover, recently wrote a
book saying that when Dennis saw the UFO he "heard directions in his mind."
Kucinich says that part isn't true.)
But Kucinich believes that, despite the UFO issue and the long odds, the
people of New Hampshire are responding to his message. Indeed, he says, his
challenge is to make sure he can manage all the new recruits.
"People are starting to move into our campaign at a rather fast clip," he
says.
"The question," for many people, "isn't whether Dennis is the right person,"
Elizabeth says. "Everyone knows that Dennis is the right person. The
question is whether they have the courage to vote for what it is they want."
Dennis Kucinich is for reducing the country's carbon footprint, ending the
war, establishing a universal not-for-profit health-care system, withdrawing
from the World Trade Organization and impeaching Vice President ***** Cheney.
In front of a group of 100 in the tiny village of Center Sandwich, he speaks
of "human unity," invokes Wordsworth and reads from his pocket-size
Constitution. Elizabeth watches from the front row with a beatific smile.
He's in the midst of a long, wayward answer to an audience member's question
about environmental stewardship when Elizabeth raises her hand to help him
out. Dennis lets her take the floor. Elizabeth has been campaigning full
time for her husband; she considers America her cause these days. She has
the ability -- rare even among practiced politicians -- to speak
extemporaneously in full paragraphs, without rambling or backtracking. Now
she gives a succinct, eloquent speech about the need for new environmentally
friendly technologies and sustainable architecture.
The crowd applauds.
"As you can see, I'll have help," Dennis says, grinning. A few moments
later, they share a long kiss. More applause.
All of this is invisible to most of America, who know Mrs. Dennis Kucinich
(if they know her at all) via caricature: the wife of that wacky UFO
candidate, the hot redhead who -- oooh, a tongue stud!
Television interviewer: "Can we see it?"
Elizabeth: "No, you can't. Sorry."
Dennis: "That's my privilege."
Falling Into Place
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After their first meeting that day in his office -- that Dennis hoped was
soul recognition, but feared was wishful thinking -- Elizabeth walked out of
the Longworth Building, found a place to sit and read the paper he had given
her. It was his proposed billto establish a Department of Peace. She thought
it was amazing. Dennis understood the "interconnectedness and
interdependence" of humanity.
"I didn't expect the bill should actually be so . . . conscious," she says.
Days passed.
"I was still thinking about Elizabeth about two weeks later, sitting,
working late in my office as I'm wont to do," Dennis says. (We're back in
the tiniest town in New Hampshire, and Dennis and Elizabeth are on the couch
at the inn, sitting close as always.) "It was about 7:30 at night and I was
just sending a message out to the universe saying, 'Where is this woman? If
there's anything to be done here, I need a sign.' "
And at that moment --
"At that exact moment, I get an e-mail."
It was from Elizabeth. A sign. Her automatic signature included a quote,
something about her heart being as open as the sky. Another sign. They began
exchanging e-mails. They discovered they were both scheduled to be in New
Mexico shortly. Dennis was going to visit MacLaine and Elizabeth was
accompanying her boss, who was giving a lecture. They arranged to meet. In
the meantime, Elizabeth, propelled by a feeling that she should buy herself
a blue ring, found one in a store and bought it. She called it her "Dennis
ring."
Why?
"I really don't know," she says. "I just saw it and called it my Dennis
ring."
They met up in Albuquerque. They stayed up all night talking in the lobby of
her hotel.
After that, everything fell into place. Dennis invited Elizabeth and her
boss to have lunch with him and MacLaine the next day in Sante Fe, and then
MacLaine asked everyone back to her Sante Fe home. Elizabeth's mom called
and got on the phone with MacLaine to thank her for putting her on the path
towards complementary medicine in the '80s through one of her books --
which, as it happens, is a book Dennis helped edit. ("Amazing," says
Elizabeth.) Elizabeth and Dennis stayed up all night again talking at
MacLaine's, at which point Dennis told Elizabeth he loved her, and the next
morning, upon leaving, Elizabeth said she loved him.
None of which surprised Shirley MacLaine.
"They were basically spiritual soul mates; that was very clear," MacLaine
says.
And after leaving, Elizabeth looked down at her Dennis ring and realized
that the silver design inscribed on her blue opal, which had previously
looked like just an abstract pattern of triangles, was in fact -- if one
looked hard enough -- two K's, back to back.
"Kucinich and Kucinich," she says. "I thought, 'Okay! So I bought myself my
own engagement ring!' "
And when she moved into his place in Cleveland, the two-story frame house
he'd bought in 1971 for $22,500, Dennis was cleaning out the closets and
discovered a cardboard tube he'd never opened before. What he saw inside
stunned them both. It was a handmade banner that supporters had given him
during his 2004 run for the presidency, with all sorts of figures painted on
it, and in the middle was a redheaded woman --
"Long, straight red hair, standing in the middle, head and shoulders above
everybody else, under the word 'imagine,' " Elizabeth says.
"I mean, you can't make this stuff up," Dennis says.
Their days are filled with these sorts of moments, as when they go out for
Chinese food and the fortune in Dennis's cookie tells him he has "integrity
and consistency." ("Isn't that amazing?" Elizabeth says.) And then they turn
the fortune over, and Dennis's Chinese word is "hat," and amazingly,
Elizabeth just bought a hat before lunch.
And even the three-decade age difference, which could theoretically be an
issue, doesn't register for the Kuciniches -- "I've never seen myself as
time-bound," Dennis has said -- and that's why Elizabeth's father, who is
three years younger than Dennis, calls Dennis "Son," and Dennis calls
Elizabeth's father "Dad."
(Though the Kuciniches do have different tastes in music. "He really likes
polka," she says.)
"I never really understood 'love at first sight,' " Dennis says. But when he
met Elizabeth, he became a believer. And as he's talking, it suddenly occurs
to him what pithy riposte he should have thrown back at Tim Russert: " 'I
don't know about those UFOs, but let me tell you about love at first sight.'
"
The world can be cynical, which is all the more reason why a long-shot
presidential candidate must be pure and unwavering in his faith, must be
unmoved by the vagaries of the public and the media -- by its interest in
the superficial, in things like height and tongue studs.
"It's pathetic," Elizabeth says of the nation's fascination with her
piercing. "I really wish people would -- "
She stops.
"Actually, it works okay with the young people," she says. She says some
time back she was out in Los Angeles, visiting an organization that works
with at-risk youth and former gang members.
"This young lad was taking me around, Hispanic chap. And he was really
nervous," she says. "We just, like, chatted initially, and at some point I
laughed and he said, 'Oh my God, you've got a tongue ring! That's so cool!
I'm going to get everyone to vote for your husband!' "
"Ha!" says Dennis Kucinich, looking amazed.
The happiest presidential candidate laughs and laughs.
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