"For three weeks, she didn't know. Then Susan Allen's phone buzzed one day last month as she was driving to the bank. Her subdued husband told her he had confirmed the rumor: His mother and grandparents were Jewish.

Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) had known the truth since late August, but he had kept his wife in the dark until the day after it came up at a Fairfax debate.

"He said, 'I have to let you know that my mom told me Pop-Pop was Jewish,' " Susan Allen recalled this week. Her husband was referring to his grandfather. She added that she doesn't blame her husband for keeping the matter secret from her.

"How could I be mad at him?" she said. "I could hear the pain in his voice, his worry about his mom. I couldn't be mad at George at all."

Susan Allen played a strong role in her husband's previous campaigns for U.S. Senate and Virginia governor, but they may not have prepared her for the current one. The revelation about the senator's Jewish heritage came amid serious questions about his racial sensitivity, spurred by his use of the word "macaca" and allegations that he had used racial epithets.

Advisers, however, say Susan Allen can help the senator rebut the character questions that have dogged him.

In the current climate, "her voice is something that's been tremendously helpful to the campaign," said Dan Allen, an adviser unrelated to the senator.

This week, as the campaigns of Allen and his Democratic opponent, James Webb, began aggressive outreach to female voters, Susan Allen stepped into a more prominent role. She appeared Monday with her husband in a two-minute television advertisement aired statewide. She recently co-hosted a breakfast for her husband in McLean with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), and similar events are planned with high-profile allies.

Aides say Susan Allen, 46, is a key asset because voters view her as an elegant foil to her rough-around-the-edges husband, with his wad of chaw and omnipresent cowboy boots. She has won praise for raising breast cancer awareness and was a popular first lady when Allen was Virginia governor in the 1990s.

"Senator Allen has had pretty hard press here lately. . . . People look at her and say, 'Gosh, if she's with him, maybe he's not quite that bad,' " said Robert E. Denton Jr., a political communication professor at Virginia Tech who has watched the couple for more than a decade.

In an interview Monday in a coffee shop near the couple's Fairfax County home, Susan Allen vigorously defended her husband against charges of racism, calling him a gentleman "who would never want to denigrate anybody, who hasn't in all his years of service to Virginia." She said that "it's not part of his makeup."

The two started dating in 1984, when he was divorced and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and she was a recent graduate of the University of South Carolina living in Charlottesville. Their first date was an eight-hour canoe trip on the New River.

"I thought he was intriguing," Susan Allen recalled. She admired his love of history and geography and his quest to visit all 50 states. "He opens my eyes and my mind."

A friend from those days, Diane Bateman, said Susan Allen embraced the role of a political spouse early on. She always had a patient word for her husband's constituents, even when they would buttonhole her at neighborhood pizza parties, Bateman said.

"I think her feeling is that she's happy to answer any question anybody asks, even the toughest ones," Bateman said. "What she wants to do is at least deliver the message. . . . I've never seen her become unnerved by the personal attacks, and I think that's remarkable."

Allen said her husband's love of history explains the oft-discussed Confederate flag that hung in their home in Earlysville during the first years of their marriage. It was one of many flags from around the world, she said, that formed part of the decor of their log cabin in the 1980s. She also said that was another era.

"I don't believe it was always a symbol of hatred," she said. "The African American community today has made us aware of that."

Asked about the hangman's noose that once hung in her husband's law office, she said it was displayed next to lassos and handmade chaps, reflecting her husband's interest in the Old West. The noose had no racial symbolism, Susan Allen said.

"What do you think they did out west to criminals?" she asked. "Since when is that a racist thing?"

However, the story of the noose and the flag has continued to inflame critics, particularly in light of recent charges from former classmates and associates that George Allen repeatedly used a racial epithet.

Toni-Michelle Travis, a professor of African American studies at George Mason University, said she sees in the senator a "pattern of unbelievable insensitivity to other ethnic and racial groups."

"I don't believe anyone who grew up and who has lived in Virginia doesn't understand that negative, hurtful, painful symbolism of the Confederate flag," Travis said.

The flag was taken down and placed in storage after the couple moved into the governor's mansion in 1994, Susan Allen said.

During their time in Richmond, Susan Allen traveled in the United States and overseas to promote tourism and also worked on health issues. She now serves on the boards of the Massey Cancer Center in Richmond, the regional Red Cross and other organizations. The couple has three children: Tyler, 18, a freshman at James Madison University; Forrest, 15; and Brooke, 8. The younger two attend public schools in Fairfax.

Allen said Forrest, a 10th-grader at West Potomac High School, has been called "macaca" repeatedly by classmates in the weeks since her husband used the term to refer to a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent, unleashing a firestorm.

"He's a tough kid," she said. "We're a very close-knit family. We know what the real deal is. We know who George is."" (Annie Gowen, The Washington Post, October 5, 2006)

Editor's Note: An index to coverage of George Allen on the Loper website may be found at http://loper.org/~george/archives/2006/Aug/925.html