Donna Rice Hughes

Donna Rice Hughes (born January 7, 1958) is American activist, author, speaker and film producer who is president and chairperson of Enough Is Enough.

In her work with Enough is Enough, Hughes has appeared on a variety of outlets as an Internet safety advocate.

Having enjoyed a surprisingly strong campaign in 1984 against the eventual nominee, former vice president Walter Mondale, he was widely perceived as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 1988.

Shortly thereafter, rumors began circulating that he was a "womanizer", leading Hart to invite the media to observe his public behavior and to claim that anybody who did so would "be very bored."

In a controversial move, Miami Herald reporters stalked Rice on a flight from Miami to Washington, D.C., then staked out Hart's townhouse following a phone call from someone trying to sell pictures from the trip.

There, the Herald's Jim McGee saw Hart and Rice return to Hart's townhouse.

The Herald reported that Rice had spent the night at Hart's residence, but later conceded that it had not watched the back door, through which she could have left.

Their story was published on the same day that his quotation appeared in The New York Times Magazine.

The ensuing report sent the media into frenzy.

Hart said that the reporters could not know exactly when Rice arrived or why she was there, and Rice denied that she had slept at Hart's house or that the relationship was sexual.

Hart also denied the story's accuracy.

Hart's popular appeal suffered, and polls taken almost immediately afterward found him 10 points behind Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in New Hampshire.

She also worked as an actress, appearing in TV commercials, a 1986 episode of the TV series Miami Vice, an episode of the soap opera One Life to Live, and the movie The Last Plane Out.

Rice met former Senator Gary Hart at a 1986-87 New Year's Eve Party at the Aspen, Colorado, home of her then boyfriend, rocker Don Henley.

She later met Hart in Miami, and said she was "very interested in getting into fund-raising".

Soon after meeting Rice, Hart announced that he would run for the Democratic nomination for president.

She first became known as a key figure in a widely publicized 1987 political scandal that contributed to the end of the second campaign of former Senator Gary Hart for the Democratic Party nomination for president.

Rice grew up in the Irmo area near Columbia, South Carolina.

She attended Irmo High School and the University of South Carolina, where she was a cheerleader and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

She graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in biology.

After graduating from college, Rice won the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant.

She went to New York to compete nationally.

Rice later moved to Miami, where she worked as a marketing representative for pharmaceutical giant Wyeth Laboratories in South Florida.

On May 8, 1987, a week after the story broke, Hart suspended his campaign after the Washington Post threatened to run a story about a woman Hart had dated while separated from his wife, and his wife and daughter became similar subjects of interest for tabloid newspapers.

On the cover of its June 2, 1987 edition, the celebrity tabloid National Enquirer published a photograph of Rice sitting on Hart's lap.

The pair were pictured on a dock during a yacht trip to Bimini that Hart, Rice, and others took before he announced his presidential campaign.

Hart is wearing a T-shirt bearing the words Monkey Business, the yacht's name.

The photo was published alongside the headline "Gary Hart Asked Me to Marry Him".

It was published weeks after Hart suspended his campaign, but has been subsequently collectively mistaken for the reason for Hart's exit.

There are allegations that Republican operative Lee Atwater set the photo up to discredit Hart.

Rice and Hart have consistently denied that their relationship was sexual and said they were just friends.

The enormous publicity generated by the Hart scandal resulted in numerous lucrative offers, and while Rice refused most – including one for an interview with Playboy magazine, an ABC movie of the week, book and magazine offers – she did appear in 1987 as the No Excuses jeans girl in commercials and advertisements for No Excuses jeans.

She said, "A month after the scandal broke, I tried to go back to work at the pharmaceutical company after a leave of absence. But because of all the publicity and resulting pressure and stress, I finally resigned."

A month after the scandal broke, she began reconnecting with her Christian faith and then disappeared from the public eye for seven years.

Rice lived in Los Angeles briefly, then moved to the Washington, D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia in the early 1990s.

There she married Jack Hughes, a businessman, in May 1994.

Since 1994, when she became communications director and spokesperson for Enough Is Enough, an American secular nonpartisan nonprofit organization whose mission is to make the Internet safer for families and children, Hughes has been an advocate and speaker on the issue of protecting children online.

She became president and CEO of the organization in 2002.

The organization has produced an Internet Safety 101SM program with the Department of Justice and other partners.

The scandal is depicted in the 2018 film The Front Runner, with Rice played by Sara Paxton.