Ex-Utahn was architect of victory

WASHINGTON -- On a blustery night in the New Mexico desert, President Bush was giving the next-to-last stump speech of a grueling campaign. The following morning, voters would decide his fate.

As he spoke, a man with nearly as much at stake was standing off to the side: Karl Rove. This was his show, too. He had spent nearly four years writing a re-election script, deciding where Bush would appear and how the campaign would woo voters.

Bundled up in a "W '04 Road Crew" jacket, Rove, a former Utahn, was regaling a flock of reporters. As his boss cracked a joke on stage, the balding, bespectacled adviser was performing his walking political calculator routine. He spewed numbers -- how many volunteers are in Florida, how much money was spent on advertising.

It all added up, Rove predicted, to a narrow Bush victory over Sen. John F. Kerry, with a margin of about 3 percent in the popular vote. He was dead on. In his victory speech two days later, Bush thanked Rove, calling him "the architect" of his campaign.

Now Rove, 53, who has spent more than a decade helping to refashion George W. Bush from a baseball executive and former "first son" into a two-term president, is preparing for his next project -- building the Republican Party into a durable national majority.

Rove grew up in Utah, began college at the University of Utah but dropped out after his parents split up and later briefly attended the University of Maryland in 1972, according to his entry in Who's Who of Emerging Leaders in America.

He became active in the College Republicans in the 1970s and eventually made his way to Texas, where he founded his political consulting company and became active in state politics behind the scenes.

Admirers today describe Rove as shrewd and ingenious, familiar with the political climate down to the county level, skilled at knowing where to find untapped Republican voters. Critics call him devious and willing to use smear tactics or distortion.

Rove, who was born on Christmas Day and whose middle name is in fact "Christian," had talked for nearly two years about turning out millions more conservative Christians for the Republican cause by playing up Bush's faith and opposition to gay marriage. Conservative Christians responded by turning out in substantial numbers and giving Bush nearly 80 percent of their votes, according to exit polling.

Rove focused far more on increasing votes among hard-core Republicans than on attracting more centrist swing voters who are usually the target of politicians. However, picking off Jewish, Hispanic and black voters from the Democrats also was an important element of his plan.

The president's victory appeared to validate Rove's approach.

Rove comes across as the dorky prankster from junior high who now has the last laugh, along with an office in the West Wing. He has called himself a "nerd." On Halloween night he donned camouflage gear and a fur hat with flaps, mocking Kerry's pre-election goose-hunting expedition.

On Wednesday morning, as Bush was about to hold his first post- election news conference, CNN correspondent John King was reporting live from the White House. "Even some Republicans in the final weeks of the campaign were questioning Karl Rove's strategy," said King, unaware that Rove had just sat down behind him.

As King continued his analysis, Rove rose ceremoniously from his chair and flashed a big grin.

Suddenly noticing, King said, "See, Karl Rove, is he proud as a peacock?"

A political marriage between Bush and Rove began in Texas in the late 1980s and landed them in the White House in 2001. Rove took over Hillary Rodham Clinton's West Wing office.

He had helped persuade Bush to run for Texas governor and laid the groundwork for his successful 1994 campaign, crafting a conservative message, one that appealed to, among others, the religious wing of the party.

The two men first met in the early 1970s when Rove was a staffer in the Republican National Committee and Bush's father was chairman and would ask Rove to deliver car keys to his son.

The president has two nicknames for Rove, depending on the day -- "Boy Genius" and an unprintable moniker derived from Texas lingo for a flower that sprouts from cow manure. Detractors call him "Bush's Brain," taken from a book and documentary critical both of the president and of Rove.

Rove is a lightning rod, a man Democrats have long tried to tie to nasty campaign tactics. They pointed to him when rumors swirled that Texas Gov. Ann Richards, Bush's opponent in 1994, sought out gays and lesbians for some state appointments, and when stories circulated that Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Bush's primary opponent in 2000, was the father of illegitimate children. Rove has denied both charges.

Most recently, Democrats tried to tie Rove to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that sought to debunk stories of Kerry's valor in Vietnam. Even before the Swift Boat ads hit the nation's TV screens, Kerry went after Rove by name.

"I'm tired of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a bunch of people who went out of their way to avoid their chance to serve when they had the chance," Kerry said. "I went (to Vietnam). I'm not going listen to them talk to me about patriotism."

In a New York Times interview in August, Rove denied any involvement in the Swift Boat group and said charges of dirty politics lodged against him over the years were false.

"It's just weird, the stuff I get credit for or blamed for that I just have nothing to do with," Rove said. "The things that people suggest I am saying or advocating, it's just absurd."

Charlie Black, a longtime Republican strategist and informal Bush adviser who has worked alongside Rove, said Rove is "willing to play tough and hard on issues."

Black, who worked with Rove in the 2000 South Carolina primary, where the allegations about McCain surfaced, said Rove "never did anything out of bounds."

Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who ran Al Gore's campaign in 2000, said Rove has proven himself the most formidable strategist on the scene today. But she vowed her party would figure out how to beat him.

"Democrats are wise to look at his battle plan, not necessarily adopting it but understanding it," she said. She added that Rove and other Republicans have contributed to a cultural divide in the country by using religion and faith to win votes.

"Karl understands the cultural divide, and how to use it," Brazile said. And today, she said, "you have an electorate that is openly hostile to one another."

As early as 1998, Rove was tapping the brains of strategists who ran the campaigns of Ronald Reagan and of Bush's father, telling them he wanted help drawing up plans to make the younger Bush president.

Rove bursts with energy and political knowledge, poking fun at himself for knowing every last detail -- such as who Wisconsin residents of Nordic descent tend to vote for. And he doesn't hide his shrewdness.

"We've succeeded in sucking them in," he recently said of the Kerry campaign, saying it was a waste for them to spend money in Arkansas but that he was glad they were shelling out cash in a state Bush had sewed up. (Bush won Arkansas handily).

Author James Moore, the co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential," a book that examines Rove's career, said in a documentary based on the book that "the politics and the policies, and the power of Karl Rove is a threat to our republic."

Rove responded in kind in an August interview with Fox News. "I'd find out what swamp that guy was drinking water out of," he said. "He's a far left-winger. I mean, it's laughable."

Dan Schnur, a Republican political consultant who worked on McCain's 2000 campaign, said he "doesn't agree with everything (Rove) has done," but no matter what critics say, Rove has "completely redefined" how campaigns in both parties will operate in the future.

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