Brother's Helper

By DAVID ELLIS

The Pat Buchanan campaign began with a phone call last December, when the commentator discussed the possibility of a run with his sister Angela. She urged him on, and even volunteered to leave home and hit the road to help coordinate the effort against George Bush. In the three months since then, Angela ("Bay") Buchanan has become the candidate's most important adviser.

Buchanan has moved in conservative circles for most of her 43 years. Thanks to her brother's Republican contacts, she found a job working for Richard Nixon's re-election in 1972, then served as an accountant and treasurer for Ronald Reagan's quests for the presidency in 1976 and 1980. For her efforts, Bay was rewarded with the post of Treasurer of the United States in 1981, becoming, at 32, the youngest person to hold the largely ceremonial job. After leaving the Reagan Administration, she managed several G.O.P. campaigns in California and launched her own unsuccessful bid for state treasurer in 1990.

She is one of the few women on a campaign team dominated by white males and staffed by only 60 paid workers nationwide. While a spokesman concedes that the candidate's wife Shelley has a role limited to "taking care of the man running for office," Bay's presence looms large. She is largely responsible for the seat-of-the-pants strategy that complements her brother's smooth stump manner and plays to his strengths. She helped create the effective antitax TV spot that parodied Bush's "read my lips" pledge on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. And it was Bay who advised Pat to pillory the President for < delaying the $500 middle-class tax cut he had promised in the State of the Union address.

Her nearly constant presence at her brother's side represents something of a homecoming for Bay. In 1982 she abandoned Roman Catholicism and married into the Mormon faith. On her father's orders, many family members -- including Pat -- did not attend the ceremony, and the marriage ended in divorce. Today the Pat-Bay relationship is close again, strengthened by their common mission: restoring the party to what they consider to be Reaganite conservatism.

With reporting by Nancy Traver/Washington