ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

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WHEN YOUR HUSBAND THROWS nearly $30 million at a Senate seat and has nothing to show for it but a hilltop stone mansion in Washington, what's a woman to do? For Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, the answer has been to use will, charm and provocation to become one of the capital's leading conservative lights. "In the last few months, I started literally waking up with these columns," she purrs in a cadenced Greek accent. Prominent newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, have been happy to publish her. And while Senate majority leader Bob Dole, whom she's pronounced unelectable as President, might wish she had rolled over and gone back to sleep or back home to Santa Barbara, California, Republican Washington is agog.

Huffington has evolved from political wife to policy entrepreneur, a one-woman think tank with more clout than her husband Michael--an oil-company heir and former California Congressman--ever dreamed of. In one year, she has won her own weekly cable-TV talk show, co-hosted CNN's Crossfire, testified twice before Congress and become a "senior fellow" at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank associated with Newt Gingrich, where she heads up her own Center for Effective Compassion, which promotes private giving to replace the welfare state. With all that, she has become the goddess of the G.O.P. "revolution," channeling Gingrich's nine-point plan to Renew American Civilization in her own beguiling voice. Gingrich has included her "Twelve Steps to American Renewal" in the selected readings for his televised classes. Each gushingly refers to the other in speeches and interviews.

To many Republicans, Huffington was just a purveyor of gooey New Age political spirituality until she began to take on the leading G.O.P. candidate for President in a highly personal manner. On CNN early this month, she castigated Dole's rhetoric as old and tired, adding that "he had to read his opening and closing statements." Then she wrote an op-ed piece in the Journal that declared, "Leading a revolution means more than borrowing a bottle of Grecian Formula." Huffington wants Gingrich to be the nominee, though she seems willing to consider Colin Powell. "I believe only Newt Gingrich can be the ideal standard-bearer for the Republican Party at this moment," she says.

Dole responded with heavy artillery. Both sides admit she got a phone call from campaign manager Scott Reed. She says he threatened her with blackmail. Dole's camp denies that, calling her "hysterical." But the incident played into Huffington's hand, showing the Dole campaign overreacting to a mere newspaper column. "She's married to a rich man," sputtered Dole campaign spokesman Nelson Warfield, "and if that's the criterion, Zsa Zsa Gabor should be on the Sunday talk shows." Her seriousness has also been questioned on account of her past association with California cult leader John-Roger.