Coloradan steps right into the media spotlight

Dana Perino, 34, fills in as Bush's press secretary

Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 31, 2007 at midnight

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When she was 6 years old, Dana Perino stood on a milk crate in her Denver house, held up an American flag, and told her parents, "I'm gonna work in the White House."

This week, the Colorado woman, 34, made her family proud and made her mother lose sleep by stepping in as acting press secretary for President Bush.

Choking back tears on Tuesday, her first assignment was to tell the world that her mentor, press secretary Tony Snow, 51, could face months of chemotherapy after a recurrence of cancer that spread to his liver.

That meant that Perino, the deputy press secretary, would be thrust into the media spotlight handling Snow's duties, including the White House press briefings.

"In many ways I feel like a student who did not go to class all semester but has to take a final, every day, for the foreseeable future," Perino said in a telephone interview Friday. "And I also have done it with a really heavy heart."

Her mother, Jan Perino, of Denver, has watched reporters pepper her daughter with questions this week on everything from Iraq to the controversial firing of eight U.S. Attorneys.

"I've lost sleep over this, I want you to know," her mother said. "I called her and told her that."

Born in Evanston, Wyo., Perino was raised in Denver since age 2. By third grade, she and her father, Leo Perino, were debating the news of the day at the dinner table.

"He wanted me to have read the newspapers and to have picked out one or two articles to discuss by the time he got home," Perino said.

"And then we always watched the evening news together and my Dad and I would always watch the Sunday shows as well."

Perino honed her speech skills on debate teams at Ponderosa High School in Parker, and later at the University of Southern Colorado - now called CSU-Pueblo. She got a side job as a disc jockey at a country music radio station and graduated in 1994.

"She's one of those girls that had it all," said her college roommate, Andrea Aragon.

Perino earned a master's degree at the University of Illinois at Springfield and was a television news reporter there for a year before then-Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo, hired her in 1995 as a staff assistant in his Washington, D.C., office. The congressman admired her pleasant but firm demeanor so much that he asked her to sit near his front door and take constituent complaints.

"I used to say, 'The kid's a star,' Just watch where she's going to go," McInnis said.

Perino soon became press secretary for the late Rep. Dan Schaefer, R-Colo..

When Schaefer retired, Perino moved to England to marry businessman Peter McMahon, whom she had met on a flight. While there, she spent time training their short-haired Vizsla, named Henry.

Now, when she says, "Tell us what you really think about John Kerry," Henry fetches a flip-flop.

Asked if "anybody thinks that Bill Clinton should be in jail," Henry barks.

She moved to San Diego for two years to work in public relations. After 9/11, she moved back to Washington to serve as spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice.

She later moved to the White House's Council on Environmental Quality and joined the White House press office staff in 2005.

Perino became a step-grandmother eight months ago when her 52-year-old husband's daughter had twins.

Perino awakes at 4:30 each morning to exercise. She gets to work at 6:30, where she often stays past 8 p.m.

While she lacks the polished delivery of Snow, a former Fox News commentator, Perino was sounding very much like him by Friday's press briefing, where she pushed back against demands that Bush allow his staff to testify on the record, under oath, about the U.S. Attorney firings.

"I just can't see how having show trials up on Capitol Hill would be any more out of touch with what the president is doing, which is getting on with the business of the day for the American people," she said.

Perino would provide a seamless transition if Snow did not return to work, said McInnis, who added that her biggest challenge will be dealing with the emotions of her boss' struggle with cancer.

"I just hope that doesn't come to be," Perino said.

"I'm happily serving as a deputy press secretary at the pleasure of the president. I think Tony Snow will come back. I think he needs to come back because it will help him recover."

bargec@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5059

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