Congressman's Silence Over Intern Tests District's Loyalty
  by Evelyn Nieves

MODESTO, Calif., June 25 — The flier taped prominently in the window of Representative Gary A.
Condit's district office here features a now-familiar photograph of a young woman with dark curly hair
and a fetching smile. "MISSING," it blares.

But the flier seems to say something more, something beyond the young woman's name, Chandra Ann Levy,
the circumstances of her disappearance and her vital statistics. These days, its very presence in the window
appears to send an emphatic message that Mr. Condit has nothing to hide.

 
"I did not have sex ...with that woman, ...Ms Levy.

In this working-class Central Valley city, the heart of the fertile farmland the popular seven-term conservative
Democratic congressman once called Condit Country, people really want to believe him.

They want to believe that the 53-year-old representative of the 18th Congressional District who has been
married to his high school sweetheart since he was 19 and involved in politics here since he was 22 was just
"good friends" with Ms. Levy. Ms. Levy, a 24-year-old intern, was on the verge of returning home to Modesto
when she disappeared in Washington on April 30.

They hear about Ms. Levy's phone calls to the congressman, about her coy remarks to friends about a secret,
older lover, about his calls to her, and they call it "media spin" and "opinion" and "conjecture." They hear the
stories about her spending nights at Mr. Condit's Washington apartment and believe him when he says that that
is a lie. They want to believe Mr. Condit has nothing to hide and nothing to say despite the looping video on the
cable news channels that show him scurrying away from a horde of Washington reporters and photographers.
They want to believe the mystery of Ms. Levy's disappearance will end happily for all concerned.

"They want to believe that he's innocent and that in the end he will be vindicated," said Jeff Benziger, editor of
The Ceres Courier, the newspaper in Mr. Condit's hometown, about five miles south of Modesto. "They resent
the story as a media attack. He's very popular around here, a lot of people know him."

For instance, Vickie McKenzie, who was having lunch yesterday in a downtown plaza with three co-workers
from the county assessor's office, said, "I think the press is hyping it." Her co-workers quickly chimed in their
agreement. And yet, the relentless flow of news stories, the tearful news conferences by Ms. Levy's parents, the
newspaper editorials and columns demanding that the congressman speak up are finally taking their toll on
Condit Country.

"Some people are starting to believe that maybe he's not handling this as well has he could be," Mr. Benziger
said. "He doesn't look good running away from the press, and people feel that he should come out and defend
himself."

Ed Endicott, 24, is one of those. "I think it's just a little suspicious," he said as he smoked a cigarette and sipped
coffee outside a downtown Modesto Starbucks this afternoon. "I mean, she was a quote unquote friend?"

Mr. Endicott said his father went to high school with Mr. Condit and his grandmother proudly stakes Mr.
Condit's name on her lawn come election season. But Mr. Endicott said his loyalties lie with the truth. "I mean,"
he said, "how many 53-year- old men are just good friends with a woman my age?"

But Mr. Endicott's friend, Jocelyn French, was less skeptical. After all, she said, she is closer to Mr. Condit's
age. "Just imagine if she really was just a friend and all these rumors still ruin his career?" she said.

No one here really wants to believe anything untoward about a Condit. The Condit name is a reliable brand in
these parts. After three decades, people have come to automatically seek the name out in the voting booth, the
way they might reach for the same orange box of laundry detergent in the supermarket.

That Mr. Condit, who is boyish and dimpled, has been known to ride around the district in a Harley-Davidson
has not exactly hurt his appeal. Nor has his stature as a longtime family man with two grown children, Chad and
Cadee, both aides to Gov. Gray Davis.

"He's a good, honest, religious man," said Ted Smernes, owner of the Ceres Drug Store, and a family friend for
17 years. "He's done a lot for the community. What's going on now with the rumors, to me, it's all opinion."

Until becoming the reluctant star of the latest politician-intern scandal, Mr. Condit's career was mostly smooth
sailing. He moved here from Oklahoma after high school with his wife, Carolyn, following his father, Adrian, a
Baptist minister. He then worked his way through Stanislaus State College and joined the Ceres City Council
after he graduated. At 26, he was mayor of Ceres, at 34, a state assemblyman. The one choppy exception to
victories came in 1988, when he was one of the conservative- leaning assemblymen, known as the Gang of
Five, who tried unsuccessfully to oust the liberal Assembly speaker, Willie Brown. But a year later, Mr.
Condit's political career was redeemed when he easily won the 18th Congressional District seat in a 1989
special election.

In 1995, he became a founding member of the Blue Dog Democrats, a conservative House group willing to side
with Republicans on key issues. He was one of only a few Democrats who joined President George W. Bush's
tax-cut signing ceremony. In this booming but still rural swath of California, where conservative Democrats are
nearly interchangeable with the preferred Republican Party, this was all good.

Mr. Condit rarely made the news until early May, when he issued a statement calling Ms. Levy a "good friend"
and putting up $10,000 in campaign funds for a reward (now up to $25,000) for information that would help
find her. Soon after, The Washington Post reported that Ms. Levy has spent the night at Mr. Condit's
Washington apartment. The New York Post reported that Ms. Levy had called Mr. Condit's private answering
service on the two days before her disappearance.

Mr. Condit has denied the reports, through lawyers, but the denials have become part of the story anyway,
repeated day after day.

The Washington police maintain that Mr. Condit is not a suspect, and they say there is no evidence of a crime
against Ms. Levy. She is officially a missing person.

Still, the nagging questions continue. On Saturday, two days after Ms. Levy's parents held a news conference in
Washington and called on Mr. Condit to reveal all he knew about their daughter, he met with the police for the
second time.

That fueled more speculation when Terrance Gainer, the executive assistant police chief for the Washington
police department, while being interviewed on the NBC program "Today,", refused to characterize Mr. Condit's
relationship with Ms. Levy.

Sarah Jacobs, 27, was still bothered hours after seeing the television interview with the police official. "Why in
the world couldn't he just say that they were just friends, if that's what they were?" she said. Ms. Jacobs said all
the "blind loyalty" she sees here for the congressman has started to bother her.

"Why don't people open their eyes," Ms. Jacobs said, "and see the guy looks guilty of something?"

But the Modesto mayor, Carmen Sabatini, said people here were just not obsessed with the story. "I don't think
people here are taking this as seriously as the rest of the country," he said. "I have a restaurant here and it's not
a topic of discussion with customers, or in the streets. It's not talked about."

To Mike Lynch, Mr. Condit's chief of staff, the discussion has gone on for too long already.

"We've gotten three to four hundred e-mails from the district in the last month," Mr. Lynch said, "and all but a
dozen have said the media has gone too far."

Mr. Lynch, who works in Mr. Condit's district office, said the congressman would not be holding any news
conferences or making any statements.

"We've been very clear," Mr. Lynch said. "He liked her. He misses her. He wishes she were back. Nothing
happened romantically. There is no connection between him and her disappearance. The press has told the
country there is a connection. We really think that's what should be examined — the press."