The Rise Of Jeri Thompson

"They've been a team since they got married," one friend said of Jeri and Fred Thompson. (By Steve Helber -- Associated Press)

In the end, Schneider said, he and Kehn wound up hosting a single Web chat between Thompson and constituents, at a cost of about $4,000.

But Kehn would soon have more success breaking into Washington. In 1998, she was hired at the Republican National Committee by Clifford May, then the head of the public affairs office, who said she came recommended to him by Mitch Bainwol, then the RNC's chief of staff and later chief of staff to Thompson's fellow Tennessee GOP senator, Bill Frist. "She didn't have a lot of political or media experience, but struck me as a really bright and energetic person I was willing to take a chance on," May said.

How much Kehn's ties to Thompson helped her in Washington is hard to gauge. May said it was no secret that Kehn was dating Thompson, who divorced his first wife in 1985 and developed a reputation as a ladies' man linked to, among others, country singer Lorrie Morgan and cosmetics executive and GOP fundraiser Georgette Mosbacher.

"A smart, good-looking woman in Washington in her 30s dating a member of Congress doesn't come as a shocker," May said.

Kehn, he said, was adept at arranging for Republican figures to appear on cable news shows. "She had a good sense of where the news was going, the differences among the various shows," May said.

Despite the unglamorous nature of her first job in Washington, Jeri Thompson's supporters today describe her as a powerful political operative. Whether that label fits her roughly five years of full-time work here is hard to determine, given the relatively low profile she kept at her various jobs. An exception was a 1999 appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" to criticize a skit that President Bill Clinton did the night before at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. "I'm certain that I'm not the only American that was incredibly appalled at the fact that Bill Clinton is more credible as a clown than he is as a president," she told O'Reilly.

From the RNC, Kehn moved to the Senate Republican Conference, and from there to the public relations and lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller, where she worked full time from February 2001 to January 2002.

According to two people who have worked for Burson-Marsteller, one currently and another formerly, Kehn got the job at the behest of Kenneth Rietz, the head of the firm's Washington office at the time, as a favor to Rietz's friend Fred Thompson. (Rietz, now retired from the firm, is a Thompson campaign adviser.)

But Charlie Black, chairman of BKSH & Associates, a lobbying subsidiary of Burson parent WPP Group, disagrees. "We had to recruit hard to get her to come to Burson," said Black, an adviser to McCain's campaign.

By the time Kehn and Thompson married in June 2002, she had moved to a political consulting job at Verner, Lipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, a law firm whose partners included former senator Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.). But she left that job and has generally been less visible on the D.C. social and political scene while raising her children -- until her emergence in recent months at the center of the campaign.

Back in Huntsville, Schneider said that, even as a Democrat, he is enjoying the sight of his onetime business partner in a leading role.

"She's a very bright lady, and she can be a dynamo," he said. "I'm watching it with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm. She's been getting a bit of attention for her physical appearance, but that's not giving her nearly enough credit. She's a taskmaster."

Staff writer Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, staff researcher Madonna Lebling and special correspondent Theo Emery contributed to this report.