From New York magazine: Fred Thompson is laying on the southern-fried charm. It’s a tire-melting afternoon in June, and the son of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, turned two-term United States senator, Law & Order star, and now almost Republican presidential candidate has just arrived at the Clarion Townhouse hotel in Columbia, South Carolina, for a state-party fund-raiser. A crush of reporters has swarmed him, one of whom has just asked if today will be the day Thompson makes things official. Thompson delivers his honey-smooth reply as if on cue. “I’m just testing the waters, but the water is pretty warm,” he says as he plows toward the ballroom.
Inside, his wife, Jeri, and 3-year-old daughter, Hayden, hug Thompson. The family settles on the dais and is consumed in a lightning storm of flash photography. The six-foot-five, cigar-smoking Thompson’s calling card is his cozy, avuncular folksiness, and he seems nothing if not at home here among his people. Jeri is a formidable woman — a former Senate staffer and spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee who is said to be the true force behind her husband’s decision to run and a key operative in his campaign. She also happens to be blonde, gorgeous, and two dozen years younger than her husband. …
Read the rest of the New York profile of Tennessee’s next presidential candidate, Fred Thompson.
