McFarland Halts Campaign After Daughter's Arrest

A Republican candidate for U.S.Senate, Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland, abruptly suspended her campaign activities yesterday after she learned that her 16-year-old daughter, a student at the elite co-ed Taft boarding school in Connecticut, was arrested for shoplifting in Suffolk County, her advisers said.

Aides to Ms. McFarland said the candidate decided yesterday to put her campaign activities on hold "until further notice" so she could attend to her youngest daughter, Camilla McFarland, who was arrested Saturday and charged with two counts each of petty theft and possession of stolen goods. Aides said the candidate found out about the arrest yesterday.

Advisers to Ms. McFarland insisted the candidate was not dropping out of the race but would return to the campaign trail as early as Saturday. Not all of her campaign activities have been suspended, however. An aide said the candidate was attending a private fund-raiser with her daughter Camilla at an undisclosed location last night.

Coming just three weeks before the September 12 primary, the arrest of Ms. McFarland's daughter is a damaging blow to a campaign that has been struggling to stay financially afloat and has been mired in a series of other embarrassments concerning Ms. McFarland's family.

Ms. McFarland, whose last government job was working as speechwriter for the Pentagon during the Reagan administration, is locked in a fierce primary battle against a former mayor of Yonkers, John Spencer, in a contest to decide who takes on the heavily favored incumbent Senator Clinton in November.

Her schedule has been booked with events around the state, interviews with newspaper editorial boards, and fundraisers. Aides said she was finding her footing on the campaign trail, as she leveled scathing attacks against Mr. Spencer, who has maintained a slight lead over Ms. McFarland in the polls. Much of her criticism of Mr. Spencer has centered on his own personal tribulations involving an affair that he had with a city employee while he was mayor.

A McFarland campaign spokesman, Bill O'Reilly, told The New York Sun that Ms. McFarland would rebound and that the voters would sympathize with her family's troubles. "People have a great capacity to understand that things happen in families," he said.

The campaign has been counting on that understanding to go a long way. Her family's personal problems have taken center stage for much of the race. After news surfaced in the press about a letter she wrote to her parents concerning her brother who was dying of AIDS, Ms. McFarland accused her father of beating her and whipping her with a belt when she was a child. Her father and another brother of Ms. McFarland's vehemently denied the claim and called her a liar.

With support from the Republican Party chairman in Manhattan, James Ortenzio, and a former adviser to the Reagan administration, Ed Rollins, Ms. McFarland emerged onto the political scene out of nowhere in March, portraying herself as a Reagan Republican and protégé of Henry Kissinger whose brand of moderate politics and expertise in foreign policy would match up well against Mrs. Clinton.

Her campaign has also repeatedly noted her experience as a stay-at-home mother, who left government to dedicate her time to raising her children.

She had been previously considering a run for Congress, but decided to run for Senate after the Westchester district attorney, Jeanine Pirro, abandoned her bid to instead run for attorney general. The state Republican Party ended up endorsing Mr. Spencer, a more experienced politician with a more conservative bent, and urged Ms. McFarland to drop out. Ms. McFarland earned a spot on the primary ballot at the Republican state convention in early June.

In a statement released yesterday, Ms. McFarland said, "My husband Alan and I are deeply alarmed by this incident and will be spending every waking hour in the coming days dealing head on with the repercussions of her actions.

She said, "Our children are our first priority, and our youngest child needs our full and immediate attention. I therefore am suspending my campaign activities until further notice. I will resume active campaigning only when I am certain that my daughter is okay and getting the help she needs."

An aide said her daughter was caught shoplifting clothing items from two undisclosed stores in Suffolk County. Ms. McFarland and her husband, Alan McFarland, live on the Upper East Side, but have a rental house in the Hamptons.

Ms. McFarland said her daughter is "fully cooperating with authorities and will not contest the charges."

Ms. McFarland has four other adult children, including a daughter Fiona who is a midshipman in the U.S. Naval Academy. Camilla often accompanied her mother on the campaign trail when she was not attending school at Taft, where she is entering her junior year.

Camilla was a star player of the junior varsity ice hockey team at Taft, according to one of her teammates, who said she is "one of the most energetic and fun people I know." Camilla, she said, would often come to practice wearing a McFarland campaign t-shirt and often spoke of her mother's political race. She said Camilla's arrest "is definitely something shocking."

Camilla also appears to have maintained a profile on the Web site myspace.com, which included a comment dated from April 2005 from a friend named "Soph," who wrote: "Camilla, winter break was fun, we def re-bonded over a lot of pot and CSI and shopping downtown. And then I went to London and you went to the hamptons and our fun ended."