DuPont: Newt is one of the broadest thinkers I have ever met. He's constantly three moves ahead of me. He would be a very good chess player because he sees things that the rest of us don't see. He's a broad thinker, he's a strategist, and above all, he has a passion for ideas. If you offer him an idea, he wants to twist it and turn it and pull at it and see what it's made of. He's the best thinker we've had in the Republican party in a long while.

Q: To project a little bit into the future. You went through some of the rigors of a presidential campaign not so long ago. Do you think Newt Gingrich would be willing to subject himself to that sort of race?

DuPont: No question about it. Newt Gingrich will be a presidential candidate. The question is, when? Will it be in 1996 or will it be in 2000, 2004? He's a young man. I personally think that he will see, after he has done his job as Speaker, if the opportunity is there to lead the country. I'd be very comfortable supporting a Gingrich candidacy.

Q: Let's go back to the start. How did you first come across Newt Gingrich?

DuPont: I met Newt Gingrich when he was a young backbencher in his second term in the Congress. We were at an official event together and I knew that fellow across the room looked familiar. But I didn't know who he was. We introduced ourselves and had a couple of drinks that evening and have been friends ever since. That was fifteen years ago.

Q: In terms of philosophy, you have advocated many things in your '88 campaign. You were known as a populist conservative. Newt, from his early campaign, was calling himself a populist conservative. Did you make that kind of connection in those early days?

DuPont: Yes. Our policies are very much alike. We're both for smaller government, lower taxes, allowing individuals to make choices -- less central planning, more individual decision-making. So, in that sense, we're very much on the same wavelength.

Q: Tell me about the organization GOPAC. You founded it back in 1978. What was the purpose?

DuPont: I founded it when I was one of a dozen Republican governors. It's hard to remember that back in 1978 there were only twelve of us. We were a tiny little enclave, us Republican Governors. So we thought that if we want to elect a Republican Congress, we've got to help some young men and women run for the state legislature and then they'll percolate up, become congressmen, governors, senators and so forth.

So, a dozen of us put this together. We raised some money. We've now contributed, I guess, in the years since '78, at GOPAC approximately twenty thousand people have run for office. An enormous number of young men and women who we've helped get started.

And some of these people who are now freshmen in the Congress have said that we received GOPAC tapes back when we were state legislators.