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Posted: August 10, 2007 12:26 PM
Fred Thompson's Wife Jeri Grabs Headlines
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As many Republicans await the entrance of former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., into the presidential race, this week his wife Jeri Kehn captured most of the attention.

The New York Times reported that Jeri, a former political consultant who worked at the Republican National Committee, is playing an active role in her husband’s startup campaign and is involved in everything from his travel schedule to fund raising and staffing decisions.

She also reportedly played a role in the departure of her husband’s chief campaign officer, which led to other aides leaving, according to a New York Times article.

But an unnamed adviser told the New York Times that she was trying to play “peacemaker” and became caught in the “crossfire.” “There is and there was clearly friction between some of the old and some of the new. I think she got somewhat in the middle of that trying to quell it and irritated people on both sides,” the article quoted the adviser as saying.

Another anonymous source told the Washington Post that Jeri Thompson is working from home in McLean, “running the campaign from the kitchen table.”

The Washington Post article described how Jeri Thompson’s connections to her husband may have helped her Washington career. The article also mentioned past financial difficulties including a county court’s garnishing of Jeri’s wages in 1996 and 1997. Jeri met then-Sen. Fred Thompson in 1996 at a Fourth of July party in Nashville, Tenn. Roger Schneider, an Internet entrepreneur who was working with Jeri at the time, described to the Washington Post that Jeri and Thompson began dating some time in the next year. “She said, ‘I’ll be speaking to Senator Thompson this weekend,’ and I said, ‘Oh, really?’ She said, ‘Yes, we date occasionally.’”

The Thompson startup campaign declined to comment for either story. In an interview with Byron York of the National Review, Thompson complained about recent articles that have been profiling his wife, saying some of the reporting has been “clearly erroneous,” and “things that you would think could have been checked fairly readily” were incorrect.

Jonathan Martin blogged for the Politico that inaccuracies such as Newsweek’s false suggestion that Jeri seemed to have been previously married could have been prevented had the Thompson startup campaign cooperated with reporters.

The Associated Press issued a correction for saying Jeri was a lawyer when she was a media consultant. Mary Ann Akers of the Washington Post wrote about the Post reporters’ experiences seeking answers about Mrs. Thompson from the Thompson startup campaign.

Thompson said about the campaign’s secrecy, “I think the problem is that Jeri refuses to go out in public and behave like a candidate’s wife before I’m a candidate. The fact that she’s not out there promoting herself seems to greatly concern some people in the media, so they have gone back to old boyfriends, the families of old boyfriends, high-school classmates, basically anything that can be dredged up to fill this void that they perceive has been created.”

Robert Novak of the Washington Post wrote about Fred Thompson’s reaction to the press about his wife, and Reuters reported on more of her portrayals in the media.