Publisher works to get contributors on the Dole.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Bonnie McElveen-Hunter hired as national finance chairman for Elizabeth Dole's presidential campaign - Brief Article

Bonnie McElveen-Hunter gets into her black Mercedes at 7 a.m. for the four-minute drive to the rehabbed Greensboro textile mill that's home to Pace Communications Inc. As she walks into her office, she might glance at the two-and-a-half-foot stack of Wall Street Journals tucked under an end table beside the couch. Or as she steps behind the desk, she'll linger over the photo-covered credenza behind it. There she is with Art Buchwald. Over there, with her husband and 16-year-old son on a bike trip across France. And here - this one's a favorite - in a bridal gown, tool belt and hard hat at a fund-raiser the Hunters held that raised $1 million for Habitat for Humanity.

Then she settles beside the 210-year-old grandfather clock that would run if she'd find the time to wind it and starts dialing for dollars. For years, she did it for Pace, getting airline CEOs and others to hire her company to publish their magazines. She has done it for Habitat and the United Way. Now she's doing it for Republican presidential candidate (and Salisbury native) Elizabeth Dole.

Hunter, 49, signed on as Dole's national finance chairman June 8, five days after she staged an event sin Greensboro that netted $115,000. She had never worked on a campaign, but an article in the Journal had caught her eye: Dole was last in GOP fund-raising. Dead last, behind even conservative activist Gary Bauer. "I thought, 'How in the world could somebody with all her qualifications - Duke Phi Beta Kappa, a master's and a law degree from Harvard, twice a cabinet secretary - be faring so poorly?' It made me determined to find out what I could do to help." She and Dole had met "two or three times, but we'd never sat down and talked."

At the end of the first quarter, Dole had raised $685,000. Texas Gov. George W. Bush had $7.6 million and Bauer had $1.4 million. In her first month, Hunter lined up commitments for more than $1 million, helping push Dole to more than $3.5 million at the end of the second quarter. By then, Bush had amassed more than $36 million.

That the Dole campaign would reach down to tap a Greensboro business owner with no political experience underscores its predicament. Mainstream Republicans have lined up behind Bush (even though Dole was a compassionate conservative and committed Christian back when Bush was a party boy getting by on daddy's name). In the August Iowa straw poll, Bush got 31%. Dole placed third, behind Steve Forbes, with 14%. Pundits termed it a...