The Wendy Card

In early 1994, Gramm was invited to join the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, a self-appointed group of financial insiders who issue their own proclamations on how government regulation will affect the banking and securities industries. Gramm has emerged as a minor spokesman for efforts to keep the government from strengthening regulation of derivatives, even though trading in the complex financial instruments plunged Orange County into bankruptcy.

How Wendy Lee Gramm will play before American voters remains up to the skill of her husband's image makers. Political junkies are already engaged in real -- if low-key -- debates over whether the country is ready for an Asian-American first lady. Both Gramms downplay her race as an issue in the campaign, convinced that voters will see the successful, conservative Wendy Lee Gramm for what she is.

"My wife," Phil Gramm told the Chicago Tribune, "is as American as apple pie."

David Pasztor is a staff writer for the Dallas Observer, a sister paper of the Houston Press.