Lee: "It Was Hell"

By Margot Hornblower

In the New Hampshire snow, amid scorn and scrutiny, Lee Hart put on a brave front. She wore a red coat and a bright smile as her husband launched himself back in the spotlight. She said what was expected: "I've always believed in Gary. I never stopped believing in him." But a day later, when a raunchy taunt or two soured the comeback, the portrait of the political wife was, in a candid moment, etched in pain. As she rode through a storm of gray sleet in the backseat of a borrowed van, Lee Hart's eyes welled with tears. "I don't want Gary to be President -- that's his wish," she confessed. "But I don't want to be in the way. I couldn't live with that."

Whether accomplice or victim, Lee Hart was crucial to her husband's decision. She campaigned by his side and held his hand. But beneath her public graciousness, the wronged wife emerged as a reluctant team player, whose % composure, like her husband's, seemed on the verge of cracking. "No one will ever know how much we went through last May," she said. "It was hell."

Back then, in the furor that followed revelations of Hart's indiscretions, some of Lee's friends had urged her to divorce him. She wouldn't hear of it. After 28 years of marriage, the minister's daughter insisted, "I know Gary better than anyone else, and when Gary says nothing happened, nothing happened."

In the wake of the Monkey Business photographs and rumors of Hart's other liaisons, the denial seemed stunning. Was Lee Hart so driven to be First Lady? Whatever the motive, she has stuck to that loyal line ever since, and if she has any doubts, she does not let on, even to some of her close friends.

Nonetheless, she was hesitant to launch a new campaign that would inevitably bare their private lives. "As much as she supported Dad, she was a bit apprehensive," says Daughter Andrea, who along with her brother John strongly lobbied their father to get back in. Yet Lee found herself touched by the thousands of letters that poured into Troublesome Gulch, Colo., urging her husband to run again. She watched with growing concern as he became more restless and depressed.

In the end, Hart's decision to re-enter the race depended only on Lee. "Lee had to be for it," he told TIME the day he announced. In a chilling assessment of the sacrifice he expected his wife to make, Hart explained, "It got down to how much abuse she was willing to take."

Friends describe Lee, a former real estate agent, as fiercely strong, striving through the rocky years to hold her family together. "I have always put my own personal feelings aside, because I believe in a person, not because he is my husband but because I have felt he has something to offer to this country," she said last week. Andrea adds, "We don't elect superhumans. We elect human beings who will make mistakes."

Lee Hart's loyalty will help her husband. But her obvious agony can only raise more questions about his compassion -- if not his judgment. As tense as she appeared last week, she was also determined. "I don't care anymore," she told TIME. "I can handle whatever gets printed. Our family can't be hurt anymore. I don't think there's anything we can't endure, all of us."

With reporting by Robert Ajemian with Hart