On Background: Rising GOP Stars

P H I L A D E L P H I A, July 31, 2000 -- — The spotlights beaming down on the podium of George W. Bush’s convention are illuminating more than just the GOP’s presidential ticket. A whole new generation of Republican stars rising to leadership roles in the party will get high visibility in prime time.

Powerhouses of the GOP, including former Gen. Colin Powell and former presidential candidate John McCain, are outnumbered at the rostrum by fresh faces with messages designed to resonate with a broad spectrum of voters.

And the accent is distinctly on diversity for a party represented by convention delegates who are more than 80 percent white and 60 percent male. Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s foreign policy adviser, is a young, African-American academic. George P. Bush is the handsome nephew of the candidate with the MTV-good-looks and a prime-time slot, to address the nation in English and Spanish, at the convention’s finale.

There also are a host of “real people” who have a rare moment to share stories about the convention theme of opportunity.

“We chose to feature real people who personify the principles of George W. Bush,” convention Chairman Andrew Card told ABCNEWS.

Here’s just a sampling of each evening’s promise:

Monday

One of the first featured rising stars when the convention hits prime time is an aspiring politician. Paul Clinton Harris is an African-American elected to the same seat in the Virginia legislature once held by Thomas Jefferson. What’s more, the 36-year old Harris tells ABCNEWS his message is an up-from-poverty success story.

Raised in low-income housing by an unwed mother who put a premium on education, Harris graduated from college and law school, and he insists now that people must “not allow lower standards and lower expectations for the underpriviledged. That’s just a trap,” Harris says.

At the age of 8, Elaine Chao could not speak one word of English when her family arrived by freighter from Taiwan. Chao credits strangers in her Queens, N.Y., neighborhood for helping the family adjust. She became a banker and a protégé of Elizabeth Dole, who was secretary of transportation at the time. Chao rose to become deputy secretary.

She was later hired as CEO of the troubled United Way charitable organization, and she married Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Chao says her convention message on civil society is a celebration of immigration and “America’s tradition of strangers helping strangers.”

Tuesday

Condoleeza “Condi” Rice, on the big-name line up of national security speakers, is no stranger to the White House. A decade ago, the young black scholar was President Bush’s Soviet expert. She then rose to the top ranks of Stanford University’s administration, the youngest, first female, and first minority to be named Provost.

Rice grew up in segregated Birmingham, Ala., the great-granddaughter of slaves. Birmingham’s city symbol is Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, and her foreign policy team at the campaign bears the nickname Vulcans.

Wednesday

Hector Barreto is a second-generation Republican. He says his father deserted the Democratic Party in frustration during the years the family struggled to run several businesses in the restaurant, food-importing, and furniture industries. Father and son founded Hispanic business associations, and Barreto — now running a financial services firm in California — says the number of Latin-owned companies in the United States has grown from 80,000 to 440,000 businesses in Los Angeles alone.

Kim Jennings joins what the convention calls the “Ordinary Americans” line up Wednesday night to speak about the need for tax relief. She is 26 years old and raising 6-year-old daughter Burgundy in the town of Rogers, Ark. Jennings tells ABCNEWS she wants the convention delegates to know what she would do with a Bush tax cut while she is working several jobs and going to John Brown University. Jennings’ bottom line: “hard work, determination, and motivation.”

Thursday

One of the few senators to get a shot at the limelight is Bill Frist, a Harvard-trained surgeon who pioneered heart transplants for 20 years in his homestate of Tennessee. Frist then turned to politics, elected as a U.S. senator (his father, also a doctor, turned to business, creating one of the nation’s biggest managed care companies.) Frist, who was on Gov. Bush’s short list as a possible running mate, speaks as the GOP’s point man on one of the Democrats’ prime issues — health care and the Patients’ Bill of Rights legislation.

Only a few other elected officials will be featured onstage as introducers, including Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a decorated veteran who supported John McCain, and Gov. James Gilmore of Virginia, a leader in the effort to control new taxes on the Internet. J.C. Watts, the former college football star and Oklahoma congressman, is another up-and-comer being given high visibility all week in Philadelphia.

As the convention winds up for the big finale, the Bush family will be represented by its brightest political star in the next generation. George P. Bush has the Mexican roots of his mother Columba and the political genes of his father, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, his grandfather, President Bush, and great-grandfather Prescott Bush, who was senator from Connecticut. After teaching in an inner-city school for a year, George P. is scheduled to break with family tradition and head to law school.

People magazine dubbed the 24-year-old as one of the country’s “most eligible bachelors.” During the campaign he’s been chairman of the Bush campaign’s youth outreach, a bridge to the next generation.