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Fund-raiser extraordinaire: Dole campaign has “can-do” woman on the job

BY ROSE POST
SALISBURY POST

She hasn’t been back to the grave.

Or the word.

She can.

And she does.

Whatever she chooses to do.

And she does it quickly.

National finance chairman of Elizabeth Dole’s race for the GOP presidential nomination, she talks fast, walks fast, thinks fast.

So fast that by afternoon she occasionally hears herself shortening the name she prefers — her hyphenated maiden-married name — to a quicker, “This is Bonnie Hunter,” when she answers the telephone.

“And sometimes,” she says, “by the end of the day it’s just Bonnie.”

Truth is it’s always just Bonnie once the introductions are over.

That’s what all the 200 or so — mostly women — employees call her, even if she is the founder, president and chief executive officer of Greensboro’s $77.6 million Pace Communications, listed among the nation’s top businesses headed by women in the June issue of Working Woman.

And she certainly doesn’t have time for more than that right now because she spends every day, all day, talking to dozens of people all over the country to raise money and support for Salisbury’s Liddy Dole.

But she’s glowing with the results of last weekend’s straw poll in Iowa — and she believes her slogan embroidered on a small sofa pillow in her office and another large one at home.

“Life is short,” it says. “Hell is hot. And the stakes are high.”

So she wastes no time.

By 7 each morning she’s in her unique office in the old Blue Jim jean factory, a two-story brick building plus basement filled almost entirely by Pace Communications.

The building’s factory roots still show in the immense windows and soaring 25-foot ceilings supported by steel girders.

But the company’s growth — from one magazine for Piedmont Airlines 26 years ago to nine now for United, Delta, US Airways and other specialty markets reaching more than 10 million readers a month — is reflected in hundreds of framed covers and awards on office partitions.

By 8 each morning she’s on the phone, following up on fund-raisers past, locking in specifics for fund-raisers present, asking people to sponsor a fund-raiser future.

“I can really feel the momentum picking up, largely because of women standing up and contributing,” she says. She’s ecstatic with George Will’s after-the-straw-poll comment on ABC’s “This Week” that Dole was the biggest winner and is expanding the party with her appeal to the group Republicans lose sleep over, that half of the electorate called women.

“That’s a classic,” she says. “I’ve got it on my desk, and I’m going to keep it there.”

It reflects what happened in Iowa.

“People who have not been part of politics were willing to give their resources, time, and commitment to Elizabeth Dole,” she says. Traditionally 25 percent of a woman candidate’s supporters give at the magic “large” contribution level of $200 and above.

“In Elizabeth’s case, it’s 43 percent,” she says, many of them part of Liddy’s “invisible army” of people never in politics before.

Bonnie is one of the invisible army herself. When recognition heads her way, she wants to be invisible. And she was never in politics before, nor were she and Liddy Dole friends.

They’d met once briefly backstage when they were both speakers in Portugal. Bonnie had seen her another time, and admired her “my entire life,” she says. “She has that special generosity of spirit. I thought she was the complete package — attractive, warm, articulate, a leader who had sort of blazed the trail for a lot of other young women.”

But she got into the campaign because she saw an article in the April 17 issue of the Wall Street Journal.

“At the end was a chart that showed fund raising for the first quarter of this year.” Dole was at the bottom, behind Gary Bauer. “I hadn’t even heard of Gary Bauer. How can someone who has had such a distinguished career not be at the top of the list?”

She had to do something.

“What do I do to get involved?” she asked North Carolina’s GOP chairman, who introduced her to Jake Alexander of Salisbury, who’s been with campaign finances from the beginning. Jake suggested she be a part of the Charlotte fundraising event. She’d help more, she said, with an event in Greensboro.

So he introduced her to the national finance director.

“I asked him what I could do to help,” Bonnie says, “and he said, ‘Can you raise $100,000?’ I swallowed, and then in a higher voice, I said, ‘Ye-e-s,’ and hung up the phone and called Jim Melvin, former Greensboro mayor and Democrat.”

“I need your help,” she said.

“He made calls, and I made over 100 telephone calls personally,’’ she says, “and we raised $115,000. Not a seat was available in the City Club downtown.”

And she was asked to be Liddy’s national finance chairman.

Meeting the candidate

First, she says, “I wanted to meet Elizabeth personally. I wanted to know her. I wanted to understand what her mission was. Why was she running for president?”

So after the Greensboro event, she went to Washington and they talked. She came home convinced Elizabeth Dole is the best qualified candidate for president and wants to win.

And Bonnie knows she can raise money.

Two years ago she and her husband, attorney Bynum Hunter, bought the palatial home of Spencer Love, founder of Burlington Industries. It’s elegant, luxurious — and has the historical distinction of being the first house in North Carolina that was air conditioned when it was built in 1936.

They loved it, but ...

“But we said, ‘How can anyone possibly live in a house like this without making a commitment to people who can’t afford a roof over their heads?’ So we raised $1 million for Habitat for Humanity before we moved in with a fancy ‘formal’ construction party in the house.”

People came dressed in a combination of formal and construction clothing, a hard hat with an evening dress, a bow tie and cummerbund with overalls — and contributed $1 million to Habitat. Bonnie and Bynum personally contributed five Habitat houses.

Similarly, she got more Greensboro women to contribute $10,000 each to belong to the United Way’s honor society than any other community in the nation — and convinced Merrill Lynch to sponsor a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal honoring them that has prompted similar action in other communities. “She can raise money,” her husband says.

He’s her chief cheerleader but a maverick political partner — a registered Democrat who’s never voted for a Democratic candidate for president.

They met in 1977. She had moved to Greensboro to begin her first magazine. Both were newly divorced. He had two daughters. One day a friend called and told him he ought to call Bonnie, who is 25 years younger.

“I thought about it — for 15 seconds,” he says.

Another commitment

They were married in 1980 and have one son, 16-year-old Bynum, who plays tennis like his dad.

Bonnie doesn’t. She walks 40 minutes four or five times a week and easily maintains her slim “under 130 pounds” on a 5-foot-8-inch frame.

Born in Columbia, S.C., she is 49, the oldest of three children of a school teacher and a former Air Force U2 pilot. She grew up in eight states and Germany, graduating from all-girl Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., with a degree in business administration.

Since her father’s death two years ago, her mother, Madeline McElveen, lives with whichever child she wants to live with at the moment.

“She’s in big demand,” Bonnie says, still dropping her “pearls of wisdom” wherever she thinks they’re needed but “expects us to know them all by heart” from childhood like that classic that required the backyard funeral for the word “can’t.”

“Can’t,” she always told them, “is a word that doesn’t exist.”

Her mother’s reaction to Bonnie’s decision to be Liddy Dole’s national finance chairman was just as definite.

“It’s divine intervention when we volunteer to help get a job done,” she says, adding quickly that “responsibility is your response to God’s ability.”

Bonnie’s response when she came back from her meeting with Liddy Dole in Washington was to get Bynam’s approval first and then talk to her staff.

“I brought all my people, all 200 of them, together and told them I felt this was an opportunity and a responsibility and I wanted to do it, but not without the blessing of my staff, so I was asking for their permission — and they gave me a standing ovation.”

She figures 90 percent of her time is going to Elizabeth Dole. That surprises no one, least of all Bonnie.

“I’m extremely self motivated,” she says. “If I believe in something, I’m passionate about it. I grew up believing that with God’s help there’s nothing you can’t do. I’ve been called the quintessential optimist.

“I also believe that with the help of a lot of other people, we can change the world. Nothing ever gets done by one person. It’s always people willing to put their efforts together that make it happen.”

Like former Salisbury Mayor Margaret Kluttz and Jake Alexander and so many others in Salisbury. “The list goes on and on.”

Like her daily telephone lists.

On this day, she’s at her big desk in her office in front of a table covered with pictures of family and friends and big moments — both her Bynums, a kindergarten self-portrait of son Bynum, her parents when they were young holding a little Bonnie, a big Bonnie with Omar Sharif and Gen. Colin Powell.

A giant bulletin board is covered with notes and letters and drawings from the children of members of the staff. A massive two-month calendar on a standing easel is loaded with dates of events to come. A huge antique breakfront is jammed with books. Hundreds of magazines conceal a long fabric cutting table salvaged from the old factory. “Our research center,” she calls it.

She started the day with 22 names and numbers, not counting incoming calls, for fund-raisers of all kinds, including three back-to-back receptions at 5, 6, and 7 p.m. on Sept. 22 in New York.

In her first four weeks, the campaign got commitments for over $1 million.

And her assistant, Connie Talcott, wasn’t surprised.

“She’s always enthusiastic and passionate about what she does,” Connie says. “Her energy level is 150 percent, and it infects other people.

Promotions job

Working with Elizabeth Dole’s campaign, Bonnie says, is like being “in the promotions business. She’s a superb product. Without a superb product, it wouldn’t make any difference how good we are.”

But with it?

“We’re the little engine that could,” she says. “We think we can, we think we can, we think we can. And we can. We’re moving full strength and full steam ahead. Not just focusing on women but on getting men and women involved. We’re bringing people who have not been part of the system into the party. That’s good for the campaign, good for the party, and good for our country.”

And, says Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, so is Elizabeth Dole.