The House: Women at Work

Chemistry of a Name

Her opponent campaigns aggressively in bowling alleys and at factory gates. She prefers cozy chats in private homes, where 30 or so guests can listen to her speech while munching on tuna sandwiches and fruitcake. Republican Elise du Pont, 48, wife of retiring Governor Pierre S. du Pont IV, is seeking her first elected office by running for Delaware's sole House seat against the Democratic incumbent Tom Carper. Most observers think that the former housewife's fortune and famed last name give her a strong chance of winning. She insists rather plaintively that this view works against her.

The Du Pont wealth stems from the chemical company that is the state's largest employer. Initially, Elise du Pont was so eager to dispel the notion that she was riding on her husband's coattails and checkbook that her campaign billboards advertised her only as "Elise." When voters failed to respond, campaign strategists added her surname. Even though her husband has studiously stayed away from the campaign, her popularity is inexorably linked to his. Pierre du Pont, completing his second term, has an approval rating of some 90%. "Pete du Pont has turned the state around," says Rotarian John Newcomer. "And that has to rub off on her."

Elise du Pont, educated at Miss Porter's School and Bryn Mawr, entered politics late in life, having raised four children before she started law school in Philadelphia at age 40. Her volunteer effort for the Reagan-Bush 1980 campaign won her a high-level appointment to the Agency for International Development in Washington in 1981. Rich, well bred and painstakingly polite, Du Pont hopes to coast in on the President's popularity in the conservative state. She has been coached on tax cuts and the balanced-budget amendment by G.O.P. Supply-Siders Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich.

In contrast, Carper relishes his non-U public-school background. A Viet Nam veteran, he served three terms as state treasurer before unseating Republican Congressman Tom Evans in 1982. He tools across the state in his beat-up Plymouth Horizon, listening to classical music, and boasts that he has now shaken every hand in Delaware. Carper professes not to mind that Du Pont plans to spend $300,000 more than he, insisting, "I'm used to being outspent. I overcome it by an intense, person-to-person grass-roots campaign." Carper, who supported Gold water in 1964, is a fiscal conservative who is bullish on defense. On most issues, the two candidates appear to agree. Carper is gambling that his experience and folksy manner will play well against Du Pont's gilded edges.

Sheriff vs. Schoolmarm

They are such improbable rivals that even a TV sitcom writer might be embarrassed to cast them. A prim, perky Republican, Judy Petty, 41, teaches Sunday school and on occasion has lectured schoolgirls on etiquette. Her Democratic opponent in the close race for Arkansas' Second Congressional District is Tommy Robinson, 42, a roughhewn, tough-talking sheriff who once suggested that a bounty hunter be sent to the Soviet Union to bring back the man who last year shot down the KAL airliner.

Petty worked her way up from the party ranks before making her debut as a candidate ten years ago. Given little chance of winning, she challenged the formidable chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Democrat Wilbur Mills. His reputation was tainted during the campaign by his escapades with Washington Striptease Artist Fanne Foxe. In normally Democratic Arkansas, Petty lost, but won a respectable 41% of the vote. A divorcee with one daughter, Petty launched a public relations firm in her Little Rock home before winning a seat in the state legislature in 1980. After two terms, she again set her sights on Capitol Hill.

A cheery, 18-hour-a-day campaigner, Petty often works parades, tirelessly darting between marching bands to grab spectators' hands on either side. The conservative Petty draws heavily on Reagan's popularity in the state, merrily proclaiming, "I'm a supply-sider." She radiates the President's brand of apple-pie patriotism and insists, "I won't make a left turn when I cross the Potomac."

Robinson is prickly and proud of it: his record testifies to his suspicion of any authority but his own. He twice left chained prisoners outside a state penitentiary after officials refused to accept inmates from his overcrowded Pulaski County jail. When a black federal judge dispatched an official to oversee Robinson's facilities, the sheriff ousted the appointee and called the judge a "token."

Held in contempt of court, Robinson was arrested, then released and given a hero's welcome at his office. The sheriff trades heavily on his good ole boy charm, stumping hard in rural areas and bellowing, "The Republicans can call me a cowboy, or they can call me Sue, but they are fixin' to get a tiger in their tails like they've never had before!"

Amid all the clamor, independent Challenger James Taylor's painfully earnest pleas for nuclear "sanity" are muffled. Taylor, 34, a former newspaper reporter who refuses all PAC campaign contributions, is so strapped for cash that his first campaign signs were hand-lettered. Though he may get some votes from Democrats repelled by Robinson's rowdiness, the race remains either Petty's or Robinson's to win. Impartial observers cautiously favor the sheriff, but Petty says bravely, "I'm running as if it were neck and neck."