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WITH HIS BULLYING persona and his total opposition to abortion, Pat Buchanan may well be Public Enemy No. 1 to many women political activists across the nation. Now for the paradox: the two people who seem to have the most influence over the candidate and his campaign are women--Buchanan's younger sister, Bay, and his wife, Shelley. Like her brother, Bay Buchanan is intense, outspoken and passionately committed to Buchanan's style of in-your-face conservatism; friends joke that Bay is "Pat in a dress." Shelley Buchanan seems just the opposite--a self-effacing woman who plays the stereotypical role of Adoring Wife. But appearances are deceiving. Despite her reticence, Shelley Buchanan is a political junkie, and she has long been a full partner in her husband's career. "You do not roll her over," Bay Buchanan says.
Pat Buchanan credits his sister with forcing his decision to run for president in 1996. That was in early 1995, when Buchanan says he was waffling a bit. "Listen," Bay told him. "The stationery is already printed--"Buchanan for President'--and if you aren't going to run, I am." He calls her his Bobby Kennedy. "Bay is very bold in terms of strategy, and she's a risk-taker," says Buchanan. She is now campaign manager, operating for the most part from headquarters in McLean, Va. The divorced mother of three boys 13, 11 and 8, Bay juggles her parental responsibilities with the demands of a full-tilt presidential campaign. She is a tough, demanding boss and nobody's neophyte: she was treasurer for Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980, became U.S. treasurer, worked for California Gov. Pete Wilson and has run for statewide office in California. (She lost.) "Bay is the engine that drives this," says Buchanan campaign treasurer Scott McKenzie. "Pat is the gas."
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Shelley travels with the campaign as her husband's all-purpose executive assistant. A Detroit native and a University of Michigan political-science graduate, she got her first taste of practical politics as a Nixon campaign staffer in 1960. She worked for Nixon again in 1968 and 1972 and was a White House assistant to Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's personal secretary. She met Buchanan, a Nixon speechwriter, during the '68 campaign and they married in 1971. The Buchanans, who have no children, are also partners in Pat's career as a columnist and TV commentator: they work long hours together, are rarely at home and typically eat in restaurants in Washington or McLean, Va., the suburb where they live. Shelley holds no formal title in the campaign but takes part in all meetings of the tiny inner circle, speaking rarely but hearing everything. "She listens to it all and absorbs it all," Pat Buchanan says.
Both women are utterly loyal to Buchanan and very comfortable with each other. On a recent morning when Bay went on CNN to talk about the campaign's prospects, Shelley called on the car phone to tell her sister-in-law, who had been nervous about her TV appearance, that she'd done an excellent job. Shelley is "very different from the Buchanans--she's much more gracious than we are," Bay says. Shelley, meanwhile, insists that her husband is not at all threatened by women. "The anti-woman thing is such a huge myth," she told NEWSWEEK. The proof, she implies, is the fact that at the center of the Buchanan high command is a troika consisting of Pat, Bay and herself--and that Buchanan, for all his swagger, depends heavily on two women who know exactly what they think.
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