Mrs. Giuliani, Mrs. Kucinich Vie on the Trail

LEBANON, N.H. — In the battle of prospective first ladies, Judith Giuliani is now playing the role of a surrogate for Mayor Giuliani on health care issues, but Rep. Dennis Kucinich's spouse, Elizabeth, may be showing she possesses the potential to become a more popular public figure than her own husband.

Yesterday, Mrs. Giuliani delivered her first solo campaign speech and exceeded expectations. The setting was the Susan G. Komen for the Cure's Leadership Summit on Breast Cancer at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. (Komen officials are attempting to build a "union" of those whose lives have been afflicted by breast cancer to influence policy.) Unlike her early Barbara Walters interview on ABC, Mrs. Giuliani spoke comfortably and with authority on an issue with which she, as a former oncological nurse, was familiar. She scored on one important rule of politics: Preparation counts. The night prior to her speech, she toured the hospital's Norris Cotton Cancer Center and referenced it during her remarks, a fact that connected with the audience of health care providers, advocates, and patients.

As for Mrs. Kucinich, the 30-year-old British-born wife of the Ohio lawmaker, she provided the same left-of-center solutions as her husband, albeit through a melodic London accent and a stylistically impeccable, noteless presentation. The former Mother Teresa volunteer has already entered the public consciousness, having been depicted on last Saturday's episode of NBC's "Saturday Night Live."

"Politics is still new to me, as many of you know, but I can tell you that the challenges of health care and cancer are not," Mrs. Giuliani said, retelling the story of Mr. Giuliani's diagnosis with prostate cancer in 2000 in great detail and remembering his initial confusion at the information he was given. "When he was first told that his diagnosis after the biopsy … was positive, I watched his face. He said, 'Oh, wow, positive is good,'" she said. "Even someone as intelligent as my husband is, it took him a few moments for him to filter through that process and realize in this unfortunate case, positive, of course, was not good." On her way out of the event, Mrs. Giuliani was embraced by Susan DeBevoise Wright, the first speaker at the summit and a breast cancer survivor, who thanked her for coming to the campus. Mrs. Wright, the wife of Dartmouth's president and the head of the school's Montgomery Endowment — which brings high-profile speakers to campus — raved about Mrs. Giuliani's speech in a brief interview with The New York Sun. "She was a very effective speaker because she spoke from the heart," Mrs. Wright said. She called Mrs. Giuliani a "refreshing" orator who held her own with October's crop of campus speakers, such as the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, the president of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Thomas Cech, and the founder of an eponymous dance company, Merce Cunningham.

Mrs. Kucinich's comments came at the end of the event. Her call for universal health care drew prolonged applause from a die-hard crowd that had shrunk since Mrs. Giuliani's speech. "I don't see why America is afflicted with a system where we have insurance companies in business who make money not to provide health care," said Mrs. Kucinich, who said three members of her immediate family had survived breast cancer and that one was currently undergoing treatment for the disease.

Mr. Kucinich, meanwhile, whose campaign motto is "Strength Through Peace," introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney. Mr. Kucinich contends Mr. Cheney "purposely manipulated the intelligence" leading to the Iraq war. A conference call on the matter had been cancelled the previous day due to technical difficulties.