ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512040091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A12 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: CONNIE CASS ASSOCIATED PRESS
EIGHT YEARS AGO, accusations about Donna Rice and then-Sen. Gary Hart derailed a presidential candidacy. Now senators praise her for lobbying against computer on-line pornography.
Once it seemed the whole world was snickering at Donna Rice, the model caught on the lap of presidential candidate Gary Hart beside a yacht with the too-good-to-be-true name Monkey Business.
Wags tagged her a ``bimbo'' or ``home wrecker'' or worse. Distasteful offers poured in: Would she pose without clothes? Grant a steamy interview? Write a kiss-and-tell book?
No. No. No.
Instead, she clung to hope that her notoriety would one day serve a good cause, says the former part-time model and actress, now 37, married and known as Donna Rice Hughes.
Eight years after a sex scandal, Hughes believes she has found her cause, although it may seem an odd choice: The former Donna Rice is a crusader against smut.
As a spokeswoman for the anti-porn group ``Enough is Enough!'' she lobbies Congress to restrict on-line obscenity - foul photos transmitted by computer network and accessible to children.
Thanks to pressure from Hughes and others, Congress is moving toward approving restrictions as part of a telecommunication bill.
``I made a decision very early after the scandal first hit - a painful, devastating time - that I wanted this experience to count for something bigger than me, something good,'' Hughes said. ``I believed that could happen if I made the right choices after the mistakes that ended me up in the scandal to begin with.''
Fame came crashing down on her in May 1987, when The Miami Herald reported that she had spent the night in the Washington town house of Hart, a married man who was then a Colorado senator. Photographs surfaced of the pair on a weekend Caribbean cruise. His shot at the Democratic presidential nomination unraveled.
Her life unraveled, too.
Hotly pursued by the media, Hughes refused to disclose details of her relationship with Hart. She did a Barbara Walters interview, briefly modeled for No Excuses jeans, then dropped out of sight.
Confusion and pain, she said, led her back to the Christian values of her South Carolina childhood. A religious retreat brought her to suburban Washington, where she made her home. She married businessman Jack Hughes in spring 1994 and has two stepchildren.
About the same time, she was hired by ``Enough is Enough!'' president Dee Jepsen.
``I suppose it was a little chancy,'' said Jepsen, whose husband, Roger, is a former Republican senator from Iowa. ``We didn't know how it would work. But I don't think there's any question about it now. It worked to our advantage.''
When Hughes joined the anti-porn fray, ``some people sort of did a double-take and said, `What's that name? That face looks familiar,''' recalls Cathleen Cleaver, an attorney with the conservative Family Research Council. ``But she has never given anyone reason to doubt she's absolutely sincere.''
Sen. James Exon, D-Neb., co-author of the Senate's cyberporn measure, said, ``She was in some of the meetings, but I didn't know who she was until I was advised by a New York Times reporter that she was Donna Rice.
``It wouldn't have made any difference to me. I'm grateful for the help.''
Exon credits Jepsen and Hughes with laying the groundwork for compromise between Christian conservatives and pro-business Republicans, who support controls but want to protect on-line services from disruptive regulation. House and Senate members hope to find middle ground on that issue this week.
``It's amazing,'' Hughes said, ``to see how life begins to weave itself together if you let it.''
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: File/1987 After the humiliation of being linkedby CNBromantically with ex-Sen. Gary Hart, Donna Rice says, she turned
back to Christian values.