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This Single Mother Says Palin 'Is Me'

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 5, 2008

TRINITY - In a year when personal narratives are primed to trump policy positions as persuaders of the electorate, it is helpful to be reminded that biography often is not destiny. Not that you would have gathered that from either major party's (now blessedly concluded) national conventions.

Meet, now, Jackie Boyle Dainty, who is anything but. At 42, Dainty has steel in her spine and flint in her eye, qualities invaluable for this pushmepullyou phase of her life. A solo-flying mom to 12-year-old Justin, a sixth-grader at the private Renaissance Academy (boosted by a school-choice scholarship), Dainty also helps look after her senior-citizen parents in Tarpon Springs, both of whom are in declining health.

She's a shift-working, Village Inn uniform-wearing, hash-slinging, tip-reliant cog in America's service industry machine who also finds time to volunteer at an American Legion chapter and, as Justin's interests turn increasingly to organized baseball, an odds-on candidate to serve as somebody's team mom.

In short, if resume equaled voting record, Jackie Dainty would be a poster mom for this year's Democratic Party - a disgruntled ex-Hillaryite who, eight weeks and change hence, would ruefully but resignedly ink the bubble beside the Obama-Biden ticket.

But appearances deceive.

Similarly, Dainty, antennae tingling with "then what?" questions, fits nobody's pigeonhole.

She may scrimp to get by, but: free medical coverage? Says Dainty, "I prefer having choices." A trend-bucking maverick in a herd of bobbleheads, she's harder to typecast than Tim Tebow. She's the apron-wearing woman with an order pad in her pocket and CEO thoughts in her head.

"It's not easy being a sort of conservative single mom around here," says Dainty, who shares working space with similarly hard-pressed, time-constrained women who would gladly trade a little more government for a little less worry. Not Dainty, who perseveres, gaze locked on her personal political Polaris, which looks a lot like Ronald Reagan.

Swimming Against Floodwaters

At 18, politically inquisitive and already swimming upstream as a recent high school graduate in Rochester, Minn., Dainty cast her first vote eagerly for Reagan, having "looked at the candidates, and thought about my own beliefs." Then as now she sailed in a bubble. Reagan's Democratic opponent was Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale. "I didn't know anybody else who voted for Reagan." If she'd only lived in any of the other 49 United States...

In the interest of being fair and complete, Dainty watched all four nights of the Democratic National Convention. She emerged impressed with the party's excellent production values but otherwise unmoved. Not that she was especially energized by the GOP - at least until Sarah Palin leaned into the lectern Wednesday night.

Here, finally, in a straight skirt and a silver jacket, Dainty thought, was conservative lightning in a bottle. To paraphrase the Alaska governor's punch line: the only difference between Sarah Palin and Ronald Reagan? Lipstick.

Electrifying Epiphany

The jolt arced all the way from St. Paul and set Dainty's pulse racing. Both 40-somethings. Both working moms who cook dinner, brood over budgets and lionize their kids. On Florida's Gulf coast, Dainty thought, "She is me."

But this needle in a haystack didn't stop at sensing a kindred spirit. Dainty lifted the hood and listened to Palin's humming motor. Hearing was believing: Everybody's talking about change, Dainty says. "Sarah" - that's what all the gals call her - "was talking about reform. Reform is what the country needs, and she's done it."

Alert the media. Toss out the stereotypes. If Sarah Palin can connect with the wait staff, all bets are off.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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