The Buffalo News from Buffalo, New York • 65

GOLOft Sunday March 29 1992 II COLOR if 'i'A essica and See Welfare Page E2 i See Hayden Page E2 OP1 WN ra The Buffalo News The history of your house By CARL HERKO News Staff Reporter By KAREN HELLER Knight Ridder 2 ii GLOh heading Sophie Hayden gets rave reviews from drama critics and former Western New York classmates THE Duke of York heard? he know that bachelorhood is worse than dead passe I mean Warren Beattv Warren Beatty! has gone and gotten himself hitched at age 54 be 55 on Monday which just hap pens to be the night of the Oscars What some folks will do to win a statue of a naked bald guy Ted Kennedy at age 60 is getting remarr ied after a decade of being quite single He even up for re election until 1994 At least now he can say his piece during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings Or perhaps not We should point out at this juncture that Kennedy is marrying Vic toria Reggie born into one of the most con troversial of Louisiana political families Of course in Louisiana being a contro versial politician is something of a redundan cy Her father a former judge is under in dictment for bank fraud Her brother settled out of court after being involved in a $6 million loan from an that in a world growing smaller by the day he just happened to head But I digress Hugh Hefner has been married for an waited for me to have the she said was really an unknown but it made me feel like a star That's what they would do for a star opened the day before Day We like to say we got this incredible love letter from the New York Times on Valentine's Day gotten pretty much unani mously great Even from back home gotten a telegram from my Attica high school re union committee saying: star We are See Bachelors Page E2 COLOR tercst or political action committee matter Nor does the notion that Americans might want to hear what he says The powers that be decided Agran deserve to be heard and for the most part he been Keeping Agran out of the picture been easy The Associated Press cropped him out of a group photo with Clinton Paul Tson gas and Tom Harkin In New Hampshire when polls had him leading Brown the national media skipped over his name or avoided it by mentioned only the top three in the poll He was barred from a televised forum there until shouts of us and of from the audience prompted the other candi dates to invite him up Pollster Dick Bennett told the Colum bia Journalism Review that had the me dia played up poll showing in New Hampshire it might have jump started his campaign Instead said Ben nett press completely ignored the story and he began to So who is Agran? 47 an honors graduate of Har vard Law School and a liberal Democrat who was elected mayor in heavily Repub lican Irvine Calif He knows foreign poli cy earned national acclaim in office and has never been part of the power politics most Americans are disgusted with Given the chance halve the de fense budget within two years redirecting the money for the environment public schools inner cities national health care and the retraining of defense workers he guaranteed jobs increase AIDS search tax the super wealthy stress treatment for addicts and build af fordable housing Agran is no crackpot on the bal lot in 36 states has raised nearly $300000 despite media obstacles and has about a dozen staff people Like Brown he relies on a phone number for contributions (800) 727 9425 Various reasons are given for media rejection He has never held state wide office but neither have Jesse Jackson or Pat Buchanan By not cover ing him from the start the media puts it self in the awkward position of a candidate in midrace In the ultimate Catch 22 news executives told Agran he doesn't merit coverage because he been covered enough In fairness there has to be a line some where There are some 30 presidential candidates most with limited credentials What happens early on is that party lead ers political reporters and news execu tives tacitly agree on who rates coverage The downside is that a select elite and not the voters decide worth hear ing Those who get the official blessing are usually career politicians who have toed the party line owe their longevity to spe cial interest groups had an origi nal thought in years and are basically hap py with the status quo It's odd The same media big hitters who grouse about business as usual help to keep it that way Thus Brown was la beled a flake until voters responded to his message Granted Agran wouldn't win even if he were on TV every night But including him lets new ideas be heard The next time around his progressive agenda won't sound extreme to most people The time after that it may sound downright logical If the likes of Buchanan and David Duke can get their message relayed and if the Republicans are going to shove the one and only Dan Quayle down our throats in there ought to be room for a Larry Agran Ultimately what this is about: Who decides whom and what allow ed to hear As Agran told the crowd want democracy to be a two way street where people understand they have the opportunity to control their fu ture and not simply be dependent upon what the networks and a handful of politi cians feed Unfortunately Agran remains the In visible Candidate Barely seen hardly heard Whatever one wants to call it it doesn't smell like democracy 'I had almost paranoid 7 feelings I used to figure when the mailman came he knows what that check Theresa Smith 'TllhWEEk AHEAP Lifestyles COLORS COLOP Something amiss about bachelorhood TWO DECADES ago when Sophie Ann Schwab was starring in musicals at Attica Central High School people around her hometown of North Java used to say kid is going Now she's better known as Sophie Hayden and lately the people doing the talking have been New York critics raving about her performance in a hit revival of "The Most Happy at Broadway's Booth Theater is wrote rank Rich in the New York Times "Hayden makes a most touching added Clive Barnes in the New York Post Hayden is she said It's easy to see why she feels that way After 1 5 years of trying to succeed as an actor in New York the past year has been a non stop roller coaster ride It began last spring when she auditioned for a revival of "The Most Happy rank 1956 musical in East Haddam Conn was thinking it was just going to be another summer stock job It was hours from my home in New she said The show had never been a huge hit the original Broadway production was overshadowed by the success of air which opened at the same time But Connecticut audiences loved it The Times loved it Hayden got the best reviews of her life she said The pro ducer started talking about Broadway A week after she was hired Hayden found out she was pregnant When the Connecticut run ended she was in her sixth month of pregnancy and the decision had been made to take the show to Broadway after Hayden gave birth on Broadway Early stage work in Attica pays off for Sophie Hayden Once a "welfare Theresa Smith works as a paralegal and cares for Andrew while studying to be a lawyer Star struck Attractive with Acgcan blue eyes and long gilded jhair the willowy 5 foot 9 inch young woman mod iSeled a bit At 19 she dropped out of her psychologystudies at Buffalo State College to become a servjce spouse with what she describes as rose colored glasses They had a boy and a girl She thought she had it all But six years into the mar Jpriage tiie relationship tell apart irrcconcnaoie an lerenccs" Awarded what she calls fair for child support Ms Smith discovered that her "little as an office clerk at a Thruway Mall store was not enough to support the family and pay for day care Nothing in her suburban upbringing had prepared Jtthis single mom for the tumble through the cracks "I was making 25 cents above minimum wage It just enough My rent in Kenmore at the time was $375 a month "I had no real Realizing she needed to go back to school Ms nnth resisted public assistance "I tried to nut it off as lone as I could It was an option presented to me by friends when I first be came separated: you should look into My response was She signed up at Bryant Stratton Business Insti tute scrambling for baby sitters trying to ends meet for about a was getting to the point where I just 3o it anymore 1 was robbing Peter to pay Paul There Has mi monev It was getting hard to provide for the dibasic necessities like 1 OW AR away arc you from relying on the kindness of strangers? You may be closer than you think says Theresa Smith who learned firsthand that poverty is the great humbler As "kinder and politicians around the country put the brass knuckles for what Ms Smith calls "welfare bashing 1 I rt rtfliAiii vnnnri tj'tfrv frAm inc DUliaiU puidivgdl alidlvo iili 2HV1J Ul IIUW a JUUiifc miu IIVIII omfortable Kenmore suddenly found herself in need of public as A rx4 kriiw ckn 1 1 1 nlv imond In ont nf wplfnrp 1 Today Ms Smith 29 helps parents who have problems with hei special education programs Planning to become a awyer she studies at night majoring in human services It wasn't lone neo that this mother of two was receiving human services uierself when she carried the cmotion illy loaded label "welfare With the November elections less than eight months away it seems that every legislator has his own approach to welfare reform What included in their friendly letters to constituents is the voice of someone who has actual ly been there "I never thought be there in a million Ms Smith recalls fore I was a paralegal I was basically 4 kMirMinfA nnrl fvA zx rVA I ko4 Ilf jj L1NI IIUUHWIIL uliu a ilium i hum urtle part time jobs for my extra money miter my nusoano ano i separaicu 'things changed drastically A graduate of Kenmore West HighSchool Ms Smith wound up marrying the boy she went to her senior prom with COLOR the stigma of welfare wne story about freaking the chains of poverty By LOUISE CONTINELLI News Staff Reporter Donn Esmonde Powers that be don't do voters any favor by squashing a candidacy AST WEEKEND we got a surprise of sorts The Democratic presidential candi dates got together tor a torum at Buffalo Theater There was Bill Clinton Jerry Brown and the old war horse Gene McCarthy And seated next to McCarthy to the puzzlement of many was another man Last weekend Buffalo met Larry Agran The Invisible Candidate or much of the national media network television newsweeklies and the handful of the most powerful newspapers Agran doesn't exist The fact beholden to no special in (8 tornct nrrinlitiAnl nofinn itfnn Inside Car Chat E3 Parenting E3 Social News E5 Sunda? guum tejy111 K' jflHpv 7' 7 1 11 'C 4 1' a COLOB Ah.