Maverick rides again

On the day he screened the Super 8 footage, McKinnon had just returned from British Columbia, where he had competed in an Ironman triathlon, an ultimate test of physical endurance that combines swimming, bicycling, and running. His thick brown hair was streaked blond by the sun. A tuft of graying chest hair peered out from the collar of his lightweight wool V-neck sweater, the pulled-up sleeves exposing a silver-and-black Nike sport watch on his left wrist.

He has a good look, and he likes to look good. McKinnon is an investor in one of the hippest lounges in Austin, Club DeVille, which he describes as a tawny mix of concrete, broken-glass art, and patio furniture.

"It's a place where I can go and act like a big shot and have a drink named after me," he says.

The McKinnon is a vodka martini with lemon juice. Its namesake loves to drink them while puffing on a cigar.

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In an education-policy speech a few weeks ago, Bush laid out his plan for using federal money to send children in low-performing public schools to private schools. He couched his school-voucher proposal in language such as "pigment and poverty need not determine performance" and "federal money will no longer flow to failure."

Samantha Smoot looked at a copy of the speech and saw McKinnon's alliterative footprints all over it. Smoot is executive director of the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit set up to negate the political influence of the religious right. She believes school vouchers are a ploy to funnel taxpayer dollars into church-based private schools.

"This is a problematic and controversial idea, but the verbiage in Bush's speech was beautiful and almost musical," Smoot says. "This is Mark's gift. It's too bad he is using his talents to dress up these stinkers."

McKinnon is a key member of a small group of Bush communications advisors. On a recent campaign swing, he filled in for Karen Hughes as the candidate's press secretary. McKinnon says a colleague wrote most of the education address. It is not as if McKinnon is trying to distance himself -- he says he believes Bush's positions on education are "ahead of where most Democrats are."

"I think most of the positions he takes are reasonable," says McKinnon, who declines to detail those he finds unreasonable. When they disagree on issues, he says, Bush is open to hearing McKinnon's views. "I think he likes having me press from the other side. I rarely prevail, but the governor understands that I will never be shy about expressing my point of view. Once I've done so, though, I'll huddle up and go with whatever play is called."

Chuck McDonald can relate to what McKinnon is saying. McDonald is a former press secretary for Ann Richards who worked alongside McKinnon to try to elect Democrats across the state in the early 1990s. After Richards lost her re-election race in 1994, McKinnon urged McDonald to form his own political communications consulting business. McDonald quickly found that to make a living, he had to make friends with those he used to mock. McDonald's first major corporate client was the tobacco industry.

"In the state of Texas right now, if you are looking for paying customers, they're Republicans," says McDonald. Like McKinnon, he gets accused of selling out. "The people who say to me that they would never sell out, I ask, 'What do you have to sell?' They don't have an ability that people want."

McDonald says that if he disagrees with a client's position, he asks himself only if that position is inherently evil.

"Mark has to ask himself only one question: Will he be doing lasting harm to this nation by helping elect George W. Bush?" McDonald says. "And I guarantee you he doesn't think he will."

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It seems as though every time Mark McKinnon sets out to try to hit the big time, someone gets angry in the process. His first lunge for stardom happened when he was 16 years old, during the summer before his junior year in a Denver high school. It was his mother who fumed.

McKinnon lived the enviable life of a teenager with a band, an eclectic folk-rock combo called Daybreak that caught the ear of country-music star Kris Kristofferson. McKinnon wrote the songs, sang, and played guitar. When Kristofferson offered to cut the band a demo tape and try to get the members a record deal, the star-struck teen was overwhelmed at the prospects of fame (chicks) and fortune (cars).

"I was bored with school," McKinnon remembers. "I wanted to go see the world and live life to its fullest. I felt confined, so I left home."

Before running away -- six months of freedom that he calls a "great chapter" in his life -- he left his mother a cleverly crafted message. On a so-called graffiti wall in his little brother's room, where the kids could write anything that struck their fancy, Mark McKinnon broadcast his parting shot: "The anvil outlasts the hammer."