Free American Evita: Hillary Clinton's Path to Power by Christopher P. Andersen Page B

make sure there are no screwups.”
    None of which sat very well with veteran political operative Paul Fray and Fray’s wife, Mary Lee, who were managing Bill’s campaign. With her take-charge manner and frequently belligerent tone, Hillary instantly made enemies. She also resisted any attempts on the part of Bill’s mother and Mary Lee Fray to get her to change her image. Hillary still refused to wear makeup, brighten up her wardrobe, ditch her glasses, or even shave her legs.
    Now that she was in Arkansas, Hillary presented another problem to the campaign. She had lived openly with Bill while attendingYale, but that kind of cohabitating could sink a candidate in the Bible Belt. So Bill stayed behind in his tiny bungalow in Fayetteville while she moved into a spacious contemporary lent to her by an Arkansas lawyer who had served with her on the impeachment staff.
    Hillary believed that Watergate was the most formidable weapon in Bill’s arsenal. Hammerschmidt had been a friend of Nixon’s and one of his most outspoken defenders. Now was the time, Hillary told Bill, to “really let him have it. No one who backed Nixon through this thing should be allowed to remain in office. No one.”
    Perhaps. But Arkansas voters were often swayed by other, less weighty issues—like the appearance of the candidates’ wives. Hillary’s decidedly unfeminine look and humorless demeanor was anathema in a state where political wives were expected to hide behind thick coats of makeup and frozen smiles. Before long, there was talk among members of both parties that the Yankee Bill Clinton had chosen to marry was gay.
    “The lesbian rumors were really starting to hurt us,” said Fray, who felt he had no choice but to ask Bill if they were true. Incredibly, Bill would not deny them. Instead, he merely shrugged.
    When Fray asked Hillary, she fired back that it was “nobody’s goddamn business.” When Fray pointed out that the gossip was losing Bill votes, Hillary blasted him again. “Fuck this shit!” she screamed before turning to leave, slamming the door of the campaign office behind her.
    Hillary was proving to be a handful for other reasons as well. The Frays were expending a considerable amount of time and energy trying to conceal Bill’s numerous infidelities from Hillary. The list of “Special Friends” kept by Mary Lee swelled to include scores of names—many the wives and daughters of some of his most ardent supporters. Hillary periodically vented her frustration by raiding Bill’s desk, searching for his girlfriends’ phone numbers, then tearing them up in a frenzy when she found them.
    It was not atypical behavior for either Hillary or Bill. Both hadhair-trigger tempers, and neither seemed to care if there was an audience on hand or not. Campaign organizer Ron Addington remembered pitched battles between the two—not over Bill’s flagrant womanizing (“He had a woman in every county, and there were thirty counties”), but over differences in how to run the campaign.
    “Politics, not sex, is what really got Hillary worked up,” Paul Fray said. During one argument at campaign headquarters, Hillary picked up a book and flung it at Bill, catching him in the ribs. “She was frightening—she liked to yell, and man, did she like to throw things,” Fray recalled. “Hillary could just scare the living shit out of you if she wanted to, and I mean that.” Ironically, Fray and his wife were sucked into the same argument and wound up hurling projectiles and invective until Mary Fray detonated a megaton bomb. They had been given the onerous task, she told Hillary, of hiding the fact that Bill was “sleeping with half the district.”
    Hillary did not react with histrionics; she barely seemed to react at all. Her response led the Frays to conclude that she had been well aware of the nature of Bill’s extracurricular activities, if not the scope. Still, in the aftermath of her explosive statement, Mary Fray waited for