WP: The Love Song of Dennis J. Kucinich
No Wonder the Candidate Saw a UFO. He's Been Up There on Cloud Nine.
By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2007; C01
Dennis Kucinich is the happiest candidate in the Presidential race. True, he is polling in the low single digits. But he has his wife, Elizabeth. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP/WP)
HART'S LOCATION, N.H. One day last spring, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat and long-shot presidential candidate, and his young British wife, Elizabeth, were sitting in an Italian restaurant in Dupont Circle. They were by the window. They were holding hands. Elizabeth Kucinich was looking lovely, as usual -- the red hair, the luminous skin, the green eyes, the fine cheekbones. Dennis was looking, as usual, like Dennis Kucinich.
This guy passed by the window. He stopped. He stared at Elizabeth through the glass. Then he came into the restaurant and walked right up to their table. "Doesn't even look at me!" Dennis is saying, grinning, as he retells this story between campaign stops. "He looks at her and he says, 'You are the most incredibly beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life!' I'm sitting right there, you know?"
"We're holding hands!" Elizabeth exclaims, in her elegant accent. She's lounging in front of the inn's fireplace, all six feet of her, looking like Botticelli's Venus, only with clothes on. "He says, 'I've never done this before, but what are you doing for dinner?'" Dennis says. "I just said, 'I'm sorry, I'm with my husband.' " Elizabeth says. And the guy got all embarrassed and apologized and walked away. "He was such a sweet soul," Elizabeth says tenderly. "I hate breaking hearts!"
Dennis Kucinich wears the look of a man who's just won the sweepstakes. He says a colleague from the House told him it didn't matter how he did in the presidential race because he'd already won. He'd won Elizabeth. "I responded, 'Now you know why I think I can be president?' " Dennis says. "If I can marry this incredibly brilliant, beautiful woman, I mean, why wouldn't I think I can be president of the United States?"
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Dennis Kucinich is the happiest candidate in this race. True, he is polling in the low single digits, doing about as well as he did during his 2004 presidential run. True, he was recently the butt of jokes for admitting in a presidential debate that he once saw a UFO. But he has Elizabeth, whom he met 2 1/2 years ago. It was love at first sight, during a meeting on monetary reform. "Soul recognition," they both call it. Less than four months later, they were married. He is 61. She is 30. He is short, at 5-7, and she is -- wow, she just keeps on going. And they are happy, so happy, that to see them together holding hands, grinning wildly, is to understand why they talk as if the universe has a plan for them....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120402333_pf.html