Their marriage fascinates me in its total and utter normalness. Sometimes James doesn’t put his dishes in the dishwasher, and Katie giggles, relaying how she once made him and his campaign manager, Spencer, a tutorial on putting their dishes in the washer. I laugh when I hear this, because in our house, I’m the worst about putting my dishes in the dishwasher. I can’t actually remember the last time I PUT something in the dishwasher, let alone run it, and I absolutely have no idea where we keep the dish soap.
Katie and I laugh about this for several minutes. Our interview is momentarily derailed as I tell a story about how I quit doing housework years ago, and she looks dreamily at the waves coming in, probably wondering if she could do that, too.
I ask her how she felt about James deciding to run for congress, and we’re back on track.
Her answer to that is surprisingly- well- normal. “How many expletives can I use?” she asks jokingly, and it occurs to me that this is an answer I think most women might have if their husbands came home announcing their intentions to run for office.
Katie’s response after this, though, is probably my favorite thing she says during our two hours together.
“It was a lot of fear because this is a very public position. It’s not something that I was ever interested in- if you look at it from the outside world, I’ve never in my life said ‘I want to be a politician’s wife or a politician’. It’s a difficult job, but it’s also, unfortunately, tied to so much corruption. It’s not like a glamorous thing to be a politician or a politician’s wife.”
I laugh, and compare it to being a mob boss’s wife without all the perks. Katie somewhat agrees with that thought.
“I was not at all excited about it, to be honest with you. But- I know James so well, and I know that there’s no vanity in this what-so-ever. He’s not the kind of person that would aim or angle for a position like this because he wants to feel good about himself. He truly felt like it was the best way to continue his service, and you can’t NOT get behind that. You’d have to be a little bit selfish to not support that. It was tough for me to say ‘yes go ahead and do it,’ and it’s still tough for me to be a cheerleader sometimes, but he’s doing it for the right reasons, so that makes it kind of a no-brainer.”
We talk a bit about public perception, and about how Katie isn’t worried about how the public will view her, but about how it might reflect on her husband. It’s a concern I’ve heard often in my decade and a half around the military, and one I suspect I’ll be hearing for another decade and a half, at least.
What I find the most intriguing, though, is how much Katie believes in her husband.
That sounds silly as I read it out loud to myself, but let me phrase it a different way. Katie’s belief in her husband isn’t purely based in supporting James and being a good wife. She is incredibly intelligent, well educated, well-traveled, a quick thinker, and perceptive.
Put simply, she is a woman who knows what she’s looking at. She knows that her husband is the best fit for the job of representing the 1st district in Florida as a US Congressman, and because she understands that, she puts every available second she has into rolling her sleeves up and working on getting him there.
She is, quite frankly, every military spouse I’ve EVER met who has seen her service member’s dream and made a commitment to making it happen. But- like almost every military spouse I personally know- she understands her place. She doesn’t interject herself into James’s conversation. Rather, she stands to the side and watches him do his job, and she admires him.
When everyone else is watching her husband, too, I watch Katie. She has a level of respect for him that isn’t often found outside of the military, and it’s kind of cool to observe. It isn’t a look I’m accustomed to seeing in politics- one of respect; awe, star-struck, those are looks I’m used to seeing when people watch a candidate or a politician. Sometimes there’s contempt, disdain, and disbelief.
But rarely do I get the opportunity to witness outright respect for a candidate.
Generally speaking, when I see a candidate and his or her spouse, the spouse doesn’t do much “watching” his or her partner. Rather, they focus on working crowds, weeding out who should approach the candidate and who should be shuffled away.
Katie does none of this. She lets her husband work, and she admires from a distance.
She reminds me of a Gunny’s wife, in this regard. She has enough faith in his ability to let him do his job, and enough admiration to support it.
Katie and I wrap up our lunch in Navarre with a request for someone to come out and plant a sign in my yard (I requested it, because I thoroughly support James Zumwalt). We make plans to do dinner after the primaries and I think I recall mentioning getting the four of us together for a friendly shooting competition (they’ll smoke me, but Mike might give James a run for his money).
As I drive home, I contemplate our afternoon, and I call my mother to relay the day’s events to her, though I get sidetracked with news of a new job (that’s me) and a new foster baby (that’s my mom).
After I hang up, I kick myself (subconsciously, because I’m still driving). I meant to tell my mother about this lunch and this candidate’s wife.
Because- as the wife of a Marine, my mother would be just as fascinated with this veteran’s wife as I am.
