KENNEDYVILLE -- Campaigning in a suit that reeks of cat urine would be a disadvantage for most politicians. But for Wayne Gilchrest, it was a money magnet.
Back when Gilchrest was first running for Congress, his wife, Barbara, draped his only suit on a windowsill in their home to air it out. That night, a cat urinated just outside the window. In the morning, Gilchrest was a walking litter box.
After a day driving across the Eastern Shore in his Plymouth Horizon, he pulled up to a big house with white columns in Easton seeking a little more money for his low-budget campaign. A butler answered the door and showed him into the living room. After several minutes, the owners walked in with a pair of huge, longhaired white cats.
The cats went straight for Gilchrest. One leapt on his shoulder and began purring.
"The woman said, 'My God, you must be a nice person. These cats don't like anybody,'" Gilchrest recalls. "And -- Boom! -- they gave me $1,000."
It is a classic Wayne Gilchrest story: an unexpected twist turns a weakness into a strength. It is also the story of his political life.
When Gilchrest, a house painter, first decided to run for Congress, people laughed. Totally unknown, he didn't even have enough money in his pocket to pay the candidate's $100 filing fee.
His opponent, Roy P. Dyson, an entrenched career politician, looked unbeatable. Then Dyson's top aide leaped to his death from the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York amid questions about his near-exclusive hiring of young male staffers. Suddenly, Gilchrest's inexperience looked better and better. After a near miss in 1988, he won the seat in 1990.
Six years later, what began as the political equivalent of a hook-shot from half court has turned into a respectable, if improbable, political career. Initially viewed as an eccentric back-bencher on Capitol Hill, Gilchrest is now regarded as a competent legislator and knowledgeable defender of the environment. On Tuesday, he will be sworn in for his fourth term in the House.
Remarkably, his friends and colleagues say, he seems unaffected by the calculated, blow-dried culture of Washington.
For most of last year, Gilchrest used a paper clip to hold the right earpiece on his tortoise-shell glasses. He even wore them when he announced on national television that Maryland was giving its 32 delegates to Bob Dole at the Republican National Convention in August.
