Brother-in-law more like a brother: He's Gore's adviser, closest friend

ABOARD AIR FORCE TWO - Something strange is happening in the vice president's cabin as his jet flies from Chicago to Washington. Al Gore is animated. One might even say, if such words can be used, that he is "goofing around."

"Want to see what happens when you have a military contractor get you a VCR?" Gore asks a visitor, then leaps to his feet to demonstrate the custom-built Air Force Two machine. It is a baffling assortment of flashing colored buttons and mysterious commands. "Whichever one you press, it's the wrong one," Gore says, chortling.

What's the source of this mirth? Well, it appears to have something to do with the visitor, who has an impish grin, an aw-shucks manner and a Sam Adams beer in hand. The man is Frank Hunger, the husband of Gore's late sister.

Those watching Gore closely may notice a difference in the candidate's mood lately. This may have something to do with a rise in the polls. But you can't dismiss another recent change: his brother-in-law's decision to take a leave from his Washington law office to travel with Gore.

Hunger spends most every waking minute with Gore. He gets off the plane with Gore at each stop and joins him in his armored limo. Frank Hunger is, by all accounts, the No. 1 fan of the man from Tennessee.

Like a brother

"Frank's my closest friend, the closest thing I have to a brother," Gore says. "He's a voice of reason and calm."

This relationship is one area of Gore's life absolutely immune from polls and calculations. He always wanted Hunger at his side down the stretch in the presidential race. "It was on page 362A of the plan," Gore jokes, "paragraph three."

It is often said that Gore has few close friends, and many of those are Washington lobbyists or lawyers who, whether they seek it or not, stand to gain from their relationship with Gore.

Hunger, like Tipper Gore, has only one loyalty. "There's no Frank Hunger agenda," says Jim Neal, Watergate prosecutor, Gore lawyer and friend of both men. "When he gives advice, it's his heartfelt belief, right or wrong."

`Uncle Frank'

Hunger, who at 64 is 12 years Gore's senior, met him 40 years ago when Gore was a teenager.

In the 16 years since Nancy Gore's death from lung cancer, Hunger, still a bachelor, has served Gore constantly. He has lived in the Gores' own private Virginia home for the seven years the Gores have lived at the Naval Observatory. He is a weekly fixture at the Gores' official residence, where he grows hot peppers and supplies beer for family cookouts.

"Uncle Frank," as he is known, goes to his nephew Albert's football games and had a role in Karenna Gore Schiff's wedding ceremony. He took Albert and Karenna on a trip to Europe in 1996, spends holidays and watches movies with the Gores, and jogs with the vice president. "I love his children as though they were my own," says Hunger, who is childless.

He's the guy who "always tracks down a bottle of red wine" on the campaign trail, Gore Schiff says. And he's leak-proof. "He will never betray my father's confidence," she says, "so it allows my father to bat ideas or brainstorm or hypothesize without it showing up in the papers."

A connection to Nancy

Hunger, whose parents are dead and who isn't close to his only brother, sees the Gores as his family.

"When Frank lost Nancy, I think the best way to still be connected to her was through her family," says Jay Stein, an old friend. "That's what motivates him. More than anything else, he's saying to himself, `Wouldn't my wife be proud?' Every time Al would win an election, it was bittersweet because Nancy wasn't there to see it."

He keeps photos of Karenna and Kristin at their high-school graduations, wearing a white dress of Nancy's, in his Washington law office amid dozens of photos of the Gores.

"I see some of her in every one of them," Hunger says with a tear on his cheek.

Key adviser

Hunger is in on virtually every key Gore decision. He has advised Gore on top appointments to his campaign, combed through the line items in the campaign budget, recommended that Gore move his campaign to Tennessee, and recently urged Gore to soften his attacks on Bush.

He normally avoids offering strategic advice - Gore's advisers were nonplused when he showed up for a recent political strategy session - saying he'd be "out of bounds" to do so.

But he doesn't hesitate to make occasional recommendations, with mixed results. He encouraged Gore to make a campaign issue of high gas prices, which worked out fairly well.

But he also encouraged Gore to make his 1996 convention speech about Nancy's lung-cancer death, which later came back to bite Gore.

Unquestioning loyalty

If Hunger has a fault, it's that he's so devoted he can't even approach objectivity. In his eyes, Gore can do no wrong.

"I'll do anything for him," Hunger says. "I've got no closer or better friend."

Did Gore have it easy in Vietnam? "That galls me. Give me a break."

Has Gore switched positions on abortion? "That's nonsense!"

Was Gore raised to run for office? "That's B.S."

Is Gore stiff? "(Expletive)!"

Was Gore insincere in his '96 speech about his opposition to tobacco? (The Gore farm continued to grow tobacco after Nancy's death.) "Jesus Christ - tobacco growing? Everybody in the world down there did. . . . He never thought about that more than flying to the moon. It's just nuts."

A Mississippi eccentric

Gore is often accused of not knowing who he is, not being sure whether he grew up at St. Albans School for Boys or on a farm in Carthage, Tenn. For Hunger, there can be no doubt about his roots. He keeps a thick Mississippi drawl and brings tomatoes from Greenville, Miss., for people in his office.

When, in the Clinton administration, he became an assistant attorney general, he drove a Toyota pickup to his job at the Justice Department.

When in town, he dines nightly at the Calvert Grill, a fried-chicken joint in Alexandria, Va., where he socializes with mechanics, insurance agents and telephone linemen. He keeps a toy pig in his office, a remnant of a lawsuit on hog cholera. He hunts doves and ducks on his friend Billy Percy's farm.

Still, Hunger shows an eccentric streak. He keeps an old Jaguar and a Beechcraft 36 airplane in Greenville. He sends his neckties to a dry cleaner in New York that unstitches them. On his 60th birthday, he jumped from a plane.

"He has former roommates who are federal judges and U.S. senators on the one hand, and on the other hand good old boys whose Cadillacs have long horns on the hood," says Roy Campbell, a Greenville friend.

`Frank is our son'

When Nancy Hunger was diagnosed in 1982, the beginning of a two-year illness, Hunger took time off from his law firm and flew her to Nashville for treatments. Hunger spent many hours with Nancy's only sibling as she died.

"He loved Nancy as much as I did," says an emotional Hunger. "He treated me like a brother, and his parents treated me like their child."

When Ralph Thompson, a Hunger Air Force buddy and now a U.S. appellate judge, once dined with the senior Gores, Thompson remarked that they were lucky to have Hunger for a son-in-law. "Ralph," Pauline Gore replied, "Frank is our son."

Throughout the years since Nancy's death, Hunger has carried a palpable sorrow. When his law colleague Philip Bartz talked to him about the death of Bartz's dog, "Frank couldn't talk about it - it got him choked up," Bartz says.

Hunger keeps the 1972 Pontiac he and his wife used, even though it costs a fortune in upkeep. He keeps his Greenville home much as it was before she died, with pictures of the happy couple throughout.

Hunger also takes Nancy Gore's memory with him on her baby brother's campaign. "I just know she would really want this. What success I've attained if any in life is in large measure from what she gave me as a person. She was always my champion and my best friend, the best thing that ever happened to me."

With Nancy gone, the best Hunger can do is repay the debt - to her brother. "I damn well am gonna be there for him," he says.