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	Editor Mary Matalin Stands by Her Disgraced Potomac Man By Dermot McEvoy Publishers Weekly January 9, 2008 http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6518111.html?desc=topstory As chairman of the Republican National Committee's "Catholic Outreach" effort in 2004, Deal W. Hudson set himself up as the arbiter of Christian morality, questioning whether John Kerry should receive Holy Communion because of his pro-choice stance, asserting that the Pope really was for the war in Iraq and denouncing those who supported stem-cell research. And Hudson wasn't delicate in his tactics—he got Ono Ekeh, a father of three, fired from his job at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for African American Catholics for running a pro-John Kerry Web site. "If you're going to play in the sandbox," Hudson said of Ekeh's firing, "then you have to take the consequences of your public utterances and your public actions." All of which makes him the perfect person to write a book titled Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States, a manifesto coming in March from Threshold Editions, Mary Matalin's conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster. Perfect, that is, if—as Threshold is betting—the target audience of religious conservatives is willing to overlook a sex scandal that has twice derailed Hudson's career and that, coincidentally, is detailed in another new book, Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government by Dana Milbank (Broadway Books). "Deal Hudson has owned up to his actions and it does not undermine his contribution to activating conservative Christian voters, or the quality of Onward, Christian Soldiers," a spokesperson for the imprint told PW in an email. "If books were published based solely on authors' past personal histories, there would be far fewer books indeed." In 1994, while he was a tenured professor at Fordham University, Hudson, who was married, had a sexual encounter with one of his female students, Cara Poppas, an 18-year-old freshman. Soon after, the student left Fordham and filed a sexual abuse suit. The claim against the school was eventually dismissed, but Hudson resigned and paid $30,000 to settle the case. Hudson seemed to have quietly put the incident behind him until 2004, when the then-powerful political operative was the subject of an expose in the National Catholic Reporter. According to the National Catholic Reporter, Hudson took Poppas out for a night of drinking with some other students. Later, in the evening, he brought Poppas, who by then was very drunk, to his office and initiated sexual contact with her. Milbank reports on the rise and fall of Hudson in Homo Politicus. "Well, I had come across him before the National Catholic Reporter," Milbank told PW. "[He was] someone I would call frequently to ask about what's going on in the White House, what's going on in the Hill—the same relationship I had with Jack Abramoff. And then all of this exploded one day and unfortunately ended my use of Hudson as a source inside the White House. Not because of my lack of interest, but because they cut him off." Hudson once again resigned and today is less well-known that other subjects profiled in Homo Politicus, which include Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Judy Miller, Donald Rumsfeld, Bernie Kerik and even President Bush. They are a breed Milbank calls the "Potomac Man"--alpha politicos more interested in serving themselves than the public. Threshold's editor-in-chief Mary Matalin, adviser to many of the GOP powerful, including Vice President Dick Cheney and publisher of Karl Rove's forthcoming book, remains loyal to her former Republican colleague. "Deal Hudson's contributions to advancing conservative ideas and idealism is seminal," she said in an email to PW. "I have always felt privileged to work with him and honored to publish him." Hudson declined to talk to PW. But in a galley for Onward, Christian Soldiers, he owns up to past deeds: "Prior to the 2004 election, in late August, I stepped down from my role as Catholic advisor to the White House and the RNC. A left-wing Catholic newspaper that supported John Kerry published a lengthy expos about me on its Web site. The article contained documents from a supposedly sealed file at Fordham University, where as a philosophy professor, I had had a sexual encounter with a female undergraduate in February 1994. My wife already knew about it, but the public disclosure was devastating to my family, to those whom I worked with at Crisis magazine, and to me. I acknowledge then, as I do now, that I was completely responsible for this incident, which I deeply regret. Needless to say, I did not want this revelation to harm the president, so I departed as quietly as the press would allow." He also goes on to talk about his career changes and concludes: "In the aftermath of this horrific experience, I can see why I was personally attacked." Milbank said he's not surprised by Hudson's refusal to let scandal keep him out of the limelight. "I think he has lived," said Milbank, "by one of the core principles of the Potomac Man—just make sure they spell my name right. Absolutely, can't hurt him. Shame is something for other cultures." When told that the name of Hudson's new book was Onward, Christian Soldiers, all Milbank could utter was "Oh, boy." He recovered enough to say, "There's a long history in that deep vein of forgiveness that certainly runs through the modern religious conservative movement that's apparently more Protestant than Catholic. There are many other cases of people using their sin or moving on from sin to get some sort of a public recovery." And in some cases, a book deal.
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