赵小兰
WASHINGTON — At Harvard Business School, Elaine L. Chao kept card files on her classmates, then later kept tabs on their careers. As labor secretary, she had gold-colored coins minted with her name in bas-relief and employed a “Veep”-like staff member who carried around her bag.
华盛顿——在哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的时候，赵小兰(Elaine L. Chao)建立了同学的卡片档案，后来也对他们的职业生涯保持关注。担任劳工部长期间，她让人做了一些刻着自己名字的浅浮雕金色徽章，还雇了一名电视剧《二当家》(Veep)里的那种跟在身后拎包的职员。
And, as the steadfast spouse of Senator Mitch McConnell, she can recite the names of people who have donated to her husband — and how much they gave, friends say.
作为参议员米奇·麦康奈尔(Mitch McConnell)的忠实伴侣，她能一一说出给丈夫捐款的人的姓名——友人表示，她还记得他们的捐献金额。
Those who have encountered Ms. Chao describe her as an unapologetically ambitious operator with an expansive network, a short fuse, and a seemingly inexhaustible drive to get to the top and stay there. Those characteristics helped lift Ms. Chao from her childhood as a Chinese immigrant who could not speak English to the heights of the George W. Bush administration, and they are coming in handy again now that her husband, the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, confronts a re-election fight that could render him the Senate majority leader or a retiree.
与赵小兰打过交道的人称，她是一个毫不掩饰自己雄心的实干家，人脉广、性子急，似乎有毫不懈怠的动力去爬上巅峰，并留在那里。这些品质帮助赵小兰从不会讲英语的年幼华人移民走到乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)内阁的高位。当她的丈夫——共和党在参议院的一把手——将在参议员连任竞选中面临恶斗的时候，这些品质也将又一次派上用场。这场竞选，或许会让麦康奈尔成为参议院多数党领袖，也可能会让他退休。
Ms. Chao, who played an early role in her husband’s effort to neutralize a primary challenger he seems likely to dispatch next week, will be more crucial than ever as he turns to face a well-funded female candidate for the first time in his Senate career.
赵小兰一早就参与了丈夫对付初选对手的竞选活动，看来他很可能下周轻取这名对手。不过，当他接下来要在自己的参议院生涯中首次面对一名财力雄厚的女性候选人时，赵小兰的作用将比以往任何时候都更加举足轻重。
The McConnell campaign said that Ms. Chao, 61, would be a key surrogate in ads and at speaking events, especially if his Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, “runs a campaign that tries to paint a picture of Mitch McConnell as having some kind of a blind spot for women’s issues,” said Josh Holmes, Mr. McConnell’s former chief of staff and a senior adviser. “Obviously we have a pretty strong firsthand testimonial from somebody who can speak to how untrue that is.”
麦康奈尔的竞选团队称，61岁的赵小兰将是竞选广告和演讲活动中的关键代言人，尤其是，如果其民主党对手艾莉森·卢德甘·格里梅斯(Alison Lundergan Grimes)“选择的竞选策略是竭力将米奇·麦康奈尔描绘成在女性议题上存在某种盲点”的话，麦康奈尔的前幕僚长及高级顾问乔什·霍姆斯(Josh Holmes)说。“显然，我们拥有相当有力的一手证明，来显示这种说法错得有多离谱。”
After starring in her husband’s first campaign commercial, Ms. Chao appeared in a campaign web video, shaking an encouraging fist for him.
在丈夫的首个竞选广告中担当主角后，赵小兰又出现在一则网络竞选视频中，挥动拳头，为他加油。
“She is someone who I say is really great for Senator McConnell and needs to be out there really all the time,” said Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky and a possible presidential aspirant who has forged a working, if wary, relationship with Mr. McConnell. “Because I think we need more strong women who have been successful in their careers out there.”
“要我说，她对麦康奈尔参议员大有裨益，真的应该在所有时间里都出来活动，”肯塔基州的资浅联邦参议员兰德·保罗(Rand Paul)称。保罗本人可能有志于竞选总统，虽说他与麦康奈尔互相警惕着彼此，二人已经形成了工作关系。“因为我认为，我们需要更多事业成功的能干女性站出来。”
But while Ms. Chao’s inspiring immigrant story and high-flying résumé are clearly assets, she also reinforces Mr. McConnell’s image as the ultimate Washington establishment figure. Ms. Chao hobnobs with conservative moguls (“She’s on my board!” said Rupert Murdoch) and Obama administration movers, and she has spheres of influence stretching up the East Coast.
不过，尽管赵小兰的移民励志故事与漂亮的履历显然是种优势，但她也会固化麦康奈尔终极华盛顿权贵的形象。赵小兰与保守派大腕（“她在我们董事会里！”鲁伯特·默多克[Rupert Murdoch]说）及奥巴马政府的要员过从甚密，影响力遍及整个东海岸。
In New York, her father is a shipping magnate and several of her five younger sisters married Wall Street titans, including Bruce Wasserstein, the late owner of New York Magazine. In Cambridge last month, she broke ground at the Harvard Business School on a building endowed with $40 million of her family’s fortune.
在纽约，她的父亲是船运业巨头，五个妹妹中有好几人嫁给了华尔街巨头，比如生前拥有《纽约》杂志(New York)的布鲁斯·沃瑟斯坦(Bruce Wasserstein)。上个月在坎布里奇，她主持了哈佛商学院一栋新楼的破土动工仪式，她的家族为这栋楼捐献了4000万美元（约合2.5亿元人民币）。
She is known for being devoted to her family, and engendering great loyalty from some staff members. But she is at least equally renowned for her strong sense of self. In 2004, she likened herself and her husband to Bob and Elizabeth Dole, then the reigning Republican power couple, when she talked to The Paducah Sun about the prospect of her serving as a cabinet secretary while her husband ascended to Senate majority leader.
赵小兰出了名地忠于家庭，也能让一些幕僚对她忠心耿耿。不过，她的强烈自我意识的大名也不遑多让。2004年，在接受《帕迪尤卡太阳报》(The Paducah Sun)采访，讨论自己担任内阁部长的同时丈夫升任参议院多数党领袖的可能性时，赵小兰把他们夫妇比作鲍勃与伊丽莎白·多尔(Bob and Elizabeth Dole)，而后者是当时纵横共和党的权力夫妻。
The power couple’s story is told on the walls of the McConnell-Chao Archives, located at the University of Louisville. On one side are McConnell family artifacts illustrating how the future senator overcame polio to play baseball and lead his high school class. There is no mention of his first wife, Sherrill Redmon, who went on to become a feminist scholar and collaborate with Gloria Steinem at Smith College.
在路易斯维尔大学(University of Louisville)麦康奈尔-赵小兰档案馆(McConnell-Chao Archives)的墙上，是这对权力夫妻的故事。一面墙上摆出的是麦康奈尔的家庭展品，显示这名未来的参议员如何战胜了脊髓灰质炎来打棒球，并在高中的班里学习成绩第一。这里并没有提及他的首任妻子谢丽尔·雷德蒙(Sherrill Redmon)。她后来成为了女性主义学者，在史密斯学院(Smith College)与格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆(Gloria Steinem)合作。
“Big surprise there,” Ms. Redmon said sarcastically in a brief interview.
“好令人惊讶啊，”在简短的采访中，雷德蒙语带讽刺地说。
Across the wall is Ms. Chao’s story. In 1961, at age 8, she came to the United States from Taiwan with her mother and two sisters on a 37-day voyage to New York. (When she considered running for office in California, she emphasized that the first port of call was Los Angeles.) Her father had arrived three years earlier and worked three jobs a day on his way to building a shipping fortune that took the family from Queens to Westchester.
对面墙上则讲述着赵小兰的故事。1961年，8岁的赵小兰与母亲及两个妹妹一起，从台湾出发，历时37天抵达纽约。（当年考虑竞选加州公职的时候，她强调自己来到美国后最先到的是洛杉矶。）她的父亲比他们早来三年，每天打三份工，最终从船运生意中积累了财富，将一家人从皇后区带到了韦斯特切斯特。
Ms. Chao graduated from Mount Holyoke and eventually became a White House fellow in 1983, went on to lead Asian-Americans for Bush/Quayle in 1988, and was appointed deputy transportation secretary under Secretary Elizabeth Dole. In 1991, President George Bush appointed her director of the Peace Corps and, the next year, she was called on to clean up the United Way of America, which was suffering under allegations of misappropriation of funds. As she traveled the country, Chinese-American families would wait to meet her in airports.
赵小兰毕业于曼荷莲学院(Mount Holyoke College)，1983年成为“白宫学者”，1988年成为布什/奎尔政府中职位最高的亚裔美国人，后被任命为运输部副部长，当时的运输部长是伊丽莎白·多尔。1991年，乔治·布什总统(George Bush)任命她为和平队(Peace Corps)队长，第二年，她开始负责整顿美国联合劝募会(United Way of America)，该机构当时正遭受挪用资金的指控。在她到访美国各地时，都会有华裔美国家庭在机场等候与她见面。
It is during that period that, as Ms. Chao puts it in a short exhibit film, “in pops Mitch McConnell in my life.”
就是在那段时期，正如赵小兰在一则短片中所说的，“米奇·麦康奈尔突然出现在我的生命里。”
Mr. McConnell had come to Washington in the 1960s as an intern, and later was an aide in the Senate. He befriended Stuart Bloch, a public interest lobbyist against the Vietnam War who wore a cape and Borsalino hat. (“You have to distinguish yourself,” he explained in a phone interview.) The conservative and liberal young men hit it off, sharing dinners and celebrating each other’s birthday.
麦康奈尔上世纪60年代在华盛顿担任实习生，后来成为参议院助理。他那时结交了图尔特·布洛什(Stuart Bloch)——一位反越战的公益游说者，常常披着斗篷，头戴博尔萨利诺帽。（“你必须让自己与众不同，”他在电话采访中解释说。）两个分别为保守派与自由派效力的年轻人一拍即合，经常聚餐，并给对方庆祝生日。
In the early 1990s, Mr. Bloch, who was married to Julia Chang Bloch, herself a Chinese immigrant and a future ambassador to Nepal, decided to fix up Mr. McConnell, a bachelor at the time.
上世纪90年代初，布洛什决定给当时离异的麦康奈尔安排约会。布洛什那时已经娶了华裔移民张之香(Julia Chang Bloch)，后来的美国驻尼泊尔大使。
Mr. Bloch, now a peace-sign flashing Washington lawyer partial to American flag cummerbunds, oversized sunglasses and the nickname “the Blochbuster,” invited the senator to a candlelight dinner with Ms. Chao, a protégée of his wife’s. “I don’t want to say that sparks flew,” Mr. Bloch said, “because that’s not the way either of them is.”
布洛什现在是一位华盛顿律师，爱打V字手势，偏爱美国国旗样式的宽腰带，超大墨镜，喜欢别人叫他“重磅布洛什”(Blochbuster)。布洛什邀请麦康奈尔与赵小兰共进烛光晚餐。他的妻子当时给予了赵小兰很多帮助与支持。布洛什说，“我不想说他们之间迸射出了火花，因为他们都不是那样的人。”
But the Bush administration appointee and the increasingly powerful Kentucky senator saw something in each other, and she ultimately chose Mr. McConnell over another suitor, C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel to the elder President Bush.
不过，这名布什政府的官员和权势日益强大的肯塔基州参议员都从对方那里看到了什么。她最终选择了麦康奈尔，拒绝了另一名追求者——老布什在任期间的白宫法律顾问C·博伊登·格雷(C. Boyden Gray)。
“It was a long time ago,” said Mr. Gray, who declined to comment further on the relationship. He added that Ms. Chao “is extremely well connected and she keeps a broad range of friends and contacts and she works tirelessly, I think, for him.”
“那是很久以前的事了，”格雷说，他拒绝更多地谈论这段关系。他接着说，赵小兰“人脉极其丰富，交友广泛，我想，她现在正为他不知疲倦地工作。”
Mr. Bloch, now 71, put it another way: “Tiger wife!” he erupted, describing Ms. Chao as “made of titanium.”
现年71岁的布洛什则用另一种方式描述她：“虎妻！”他突然蹦出了这个词，并形容赵小兰是“铁娘子”。
Neither Ms. Chao nor Mr. McConnell agreed to be interviewed for this article, but a former top adviser to both of them, Steven Law, now the president of the Republican “super PAC” American Crossroads, called Ms. Chao “a loyal, fierce, focused competitor.”
赵小兰和麦康奈尔都未同意接受本文采访，但曾在二人手下担任高级顾问的史蒂文 ·劳(Steven Law)称，赵小兰是“一位忠诚、勇猛、专注的竞争者”。劳现在是共和党的超级政治行动委员会“美国十字路口”(American Crossroads)的会长。
She can also bestow a softer touch. Trey Grayson, who lost to Mr. Paul and now is the director of Harvard’s Institute for Politics, for which Ms. Chao sits on the advisory board, recalled that she asked by name about his wife and daughter back when he was a political nobody. And Jan Karzen, a friend of Mr. McConnell’s since they started working on campaigns together in the 1970s, said that when speaking to female groups in Kentucky, Ms. Chao softened her husband’s image by speaking of the senator “in a feminine, wifely way.”
她也有柔和的一面。特雷·格雷森(Trey Grayson)在参议院竞选中败给了保罗，目前是哈佛政治学研究所(Harvard’s Institute of Politics)的所长，而赵小兰是该学院的顾问之一。格雷森回忆说，当他在政界尚默默无闻时，赵小兰就能叫出他妻子和女儿的名字，并问候她们。简·卡赞(Jan Karzen)从上世纪70年代开始与麦康奈尔一起组织竞选活动，两人从那时起成为朋友。他说，在肯塔基面对女性群体发表演讲时，赵小兰用一种“女性化的、妻子的方式”谈论这名参议员，软化了丈夫的形象。
But Ms. Chao can seem bored by Kentucky’s less political traditions. At the Kentucky Derby, hatless and in a sober white skirt suit, she holed up with her husband in the exclusive confines of the Clubhouse Director’s Room. At Louisville football games, she wears dark sunglasses so that she can furtively doze off.
但在与政治无关的肯塔基传统活动中，赵小兰有时会显得心不在焉。在肯塔基德比赛(Kentucky Derby)上，赵小兰没有戴帽子，穿了一套素净的白色裙装，和丈夫在躲在俱乐部会所的经理室里拒绝露面。在观看路易斯维尔的橄榄球赛时，她戴了一副深色太阳镜，这样就可以偷偷打瞌睡。
“We always tell him, ‘You have been working your wife too hard,’ ” said Dee Kern, who tailgates with the McConnells.
与麦康奈尔一家关系密切的迪伊·克恩(Dee Kern)说，“我们总是对他说，‘你让老婆干得太累了。’”
Ms. Chao wakes for politics — and combat. When the liberal group Progress Kentucky posted on Twitter that Mr. McConnell’s marriage to her “may explain why your job moved to #China!” she appealed directly to the camera in a political ad in which she said, “Far-left special interests are also attacking my ethnicity, even attacking Mitch’s patriotism, because he’s married to me.”
赵小兰为政治和斗争而生。自由派组织“进步肯塔基”(Progress Kentucky)曾在Twitter上发贴称，麦康奈尔和她的婚姻“也许解释了为什么你的工作岗位跑到了#中国！”当时，她在一则政治广告中面对镜头直接予以反击，她说，“极左翼的特殊利益集团还在攻击我的种族背景，甚至攻击米奇的爱国之心，就因为他和我结了婚。”
“That’s how low some people will stoop,” she said.
“可见有些人堕落到了何种地步，”她说。
华盛顿——在哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的时候，赵小兰(Elaine L. Chao)建立了同学的卡片档案，后来也对他们的职业生涯保持关注。担任劳工部长期间，她让人做了一些刻着自己名字的浅浮雕金色徽章，还雇了一名电视剧《二当家》(Veep)里的那种跟在身后拎包的职员。
And, as the steadfast spouse of Senator Mitch McConnell, she can recite the names of people who have donated to her husband — and how much they gave, friends say.
作为参议员米奇·麦康奈尔(Mitch McConnell)的忠实伴侣，她能一一说出给丈夫捐款的人的姓名——友人表示，她还记得他们的捐献金额。
Those who have encountered Ms. Chao describe her as an unapologetically ambitious operator with an expansive network, a short fuse, and a seemingly inexhaustible drive to get to the top and stay there. Those characteristics helped lift Ms. Chao from her childhood as a Chinese immigrant who could not speak English to the heights of the George W. Bush administration, and they are coming in handy again now that her husband, the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, confronts a re-election fight that could render him the Senate majority leader or a retiree.
与赵小兰打过交道的人称，她是一个毫不掩饰自己雄心的实干家，人脉广、性子急，似乎有毫不懈怠的动力去爬上巅峰，并留在那里。这些品质帮助赵小兰从不会讲英语的年幼华人移民走到乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)内阁的高位。当她的丈夫——共和党在参议院的一把手——将在参议员连任竞选中面临恶斗的时候，这些品质也将又一次派上用场。这场竞选，或许会让麦康奈尔成为参议院多数党领袖，也可能会让他退休。
Ms. Chao, who played an early role in her husband’s effort to neutralize a primary challenger he seems likely to dispatch next week, will be more crucial than ever as he turns to face a well-funded female candidate for the first time in his Senate career.
赵小兰一早就参与了丈夫对付初选对手的竞选活动，看来他很可能下周轻取这名对手。不过，当他接下来要在自己的参议院生涯中首次面对一名财力雄厚的女性候选人时，赵小兰的作用将比以往任何时候都更加举足轻重。
The McConnell campaign said that Ms. Chao, 61, would be a key surrogate in ads and at speaking events, especially if his Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, “runs a campaign that tries to paint a picture of Mitch McConnell as having some kind of a blind spot for women’s issues,” said Josh Holmes, Mr. McConnell’s former chief of staff and a senior adviser. “Obviously we have a pretty strong firsthand testimonial from somebody who can speak to how untrue that is.”
麦康奈尔的竞选团队称，61岁的赵小兰将是竞选广告和演讲活动中的关键代言人，尤其是，如果其民主党对手艾莉森·卢德甘·格里梅斯(Alison Lundergan Grimes)“选择的竞选策略是竭力将米奇·麦康奈尔描绘成在女性议题上存在某种盲点”的话，麦康奈尔的前幕僚长及高级顾问乔什·霍姆斯(Josh Holmes)说。“显然，我们拥有相当有力的一手证明，来显示这种说法错得有多离谱。”
After starring in her husband’s first campaign commercial, Ms. Chao appeared in a campaign web video, shaking an encouraging fist for him.
在丈夫的首个竞选广告中担当主角后，赵小兰又出现在一则网络竞选视频中，挥动拳头，为他加油。
“She is someone who I say is really great for Senator McConnell and needs to be out there really all the time,” said Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky and a possible presidential aspirant who has forged a working, if wary, relationship with Mr. McConnell. “Because I think we need more strong women who have been successful in their careers out there.”
“要我说，她对麦康奈尔参议员大有裨益，真的应该在所有时间里都出来活动，”肯塔基州的资浅联邦参议员兰德·保罗(Rand Paul)称。保罗本人可能有志于竞选总统，虽说他与麦康奈尔互相警惕着彼此，二人已经形成了工作关系。“因为我认为，我们需要更多事业成功的能干女性站出来。”
But while Ms. Chao’s inspiring immigrant story and high-flying résumé are clearly assets, she also reinforces Mr. McConnell’s image as the ultimate Washington establishment figure. Ms. Chao hobnobs with conservative moguls (“She’s on my board!” said Rupert Murdoch) and Obama administration movers, and she has spheres of influence stretching up the East Coast.
不过，尽管赵小兰的移民励志故事与漂亮的履历显然是种优势，但她也会固化麦康奈尔终极华盛顿权贵的形象。赵小兰与保守派大腕（“她在我们董事会里！”鲁伯特·默多克[Rupert Murdoch]说）及奥巴马政府的要员过从甚密，影响力遍及整个东海岸。
In New York, her father is a shipping magnate and several of her five younger sisters married Wall Street titans, including Bruce Wasserstein, the late owner of New York Magazine. In Cambridge last month, she broke ground at the Harvard Business School on a building endowed with $40 million of her family’s fortune.
在纽约，她的父亲是船运业巨头，五个妹妹中有好几人嫁给了华尔街巨头，比如生前拥有《纽约》杂志(New York)的布鲁斯·沃瑟斯坦(Bruce Wasserstein)。上个月在坎布里奇，她主持了哈佛商学院一栋新楼的破土动工仪式，她的家族为这栋楼捐献了4000万美元（约合2.5亿元人民币）。
She is known for being devoted to her family, and engendering great loyalty from some staff members. But she is at least equally renowned for her strong sense of self. In 2004, she likened herself and her husband to Bob and Elizabeth Dole, then the reigning Republican power couple, when she talked to The Paducah Sun about the prospect of her serving as a cabinet secretary while her husband ascended to Senate majority leader.
赵小兰出了名地忠于家庭，也能让一些幕僚对她忠心耿耿。不过，她的强烈自我意识的大名也不遑多让。2004年，在接受《帕迪尤卡太阳报》(The Paducah Sun)采访，讨论自己担任内阁部长的同时丈夫升任参议院多数党领袖的可能性时，赵小兰把他们夫妇比作鲍勃与伊丽莎白·多尔(Bob and Elizabeth Dole)，而后者是当时纵横共和党的权力夫妻。
The power couple’s story is told on the walls of the McConnell-Chao Archives, located at the University of Louisville. On one side are McConnell family artifacts illustrating how the future senator overcame polio to play baseball and lead his high school class. There is no mention of his first wife, Sherrill Redmon, who went on to become a feminist scholar and collaborate with Gloria Steinem at Smith College.
在路易斯维尔大学(University of Louisville)麦康奈尔-赵小兰档案馆(McConnell-Chao Archives)的墙上，是这对权力夫妻的故事。一面墙上摆出的是麦康奈尔的家庭展品，显示这名未来的参议员如何战胜了脊髓灰质炎来打棒球，并在高中的班里学习成绩第一。这里并没有提及他的首任妻子谢丽尔·雷德蒙(Sherrill Redmon)。她后来成为了女性主义学者，在史密斯学院(Smith College)与格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆(Gloria Steinem)合作。
“Big surprise there,” Ms. Redmon said sarcastically in a brief interview.
“好令人惊讶啊，”在简短的采访中，雷德蒙语带讽刺地说。
Across the wall is Ms. Chao’s story. In 1961, at age 8, she came to the United States from Taiwan with her mother and two sisters on a 37-day voyage to New York. (When she considered running for office in California, she emphasized that the first port of call was Los Angeles.) Her father had arrived three years earlier and worked three jobs a day on his way to building a shipping fortune that took the family from Queens to Westchester.
对面墙上则讲述着赵小兰的故事。1961年，8岁的赵小兰与母亲及两个妹妹一起，从台湾出发，历时37天抵达纽约。（当年考虑竞选加州公职的时候，她强调自己来到美国后最先到的是洛杉矶。）她的父亲比他们早来三年，每天打三份工，最终从船运生意中积累了财富，将一家人从皇后区带到了韦斯特切斯特。
Ms. Chao graduated from Mount Holyoke and eventually became a White House fellow in 1983, went on to lead Asian-Americans for Bush/Quayle in 1988, and was appointed deputy transportation secretary under Secretary Elizabeth Dole. In 1991, President George Bush appointed her director of the Peace Corps and, the next year, she was called on to clean up the United Way of America, which was suffering under allegations of misappropriation of funds. As she traveled the country, Chinese-American families would wait to meet her in airports.
赵小兰毕业于曼荷莲学院(Mount Holyoke College)，1983年成为“白宫学者”，1988年成为布什/奎尔政府中职位最高的亚裔美国人，后被任命为运输部副部长，当时的运输部长是伊丽莎白·多尔。1991年，乔治·布什总统(George Bush)任命她为和平队(Peace Corps)队长，第二年，她开始负责整顿美国联合劝募会(United Way of America)，该机构当时正遭受挪用资金的指控。在她到访美国各地时，都会有华裔美国家庭在机场等候与她见面。
It is during that period that, as Ms. Chao puts it in a short exhibit film, “in pops Mitch McConnell in my life.”
就是在那段时期，正如赵小兰在一则短片中所说的，“米奇·麦康奈尔突然出现在我的生命里。”
Mr. McConnell had come to Washington in the 1960s as an intern, and later was an aide in the Senate. He befriended Stuart Bloch, a public interest lobbyist against the Vietnam War who wore a cape and Borsalino hat. (“You have to distinguish yourself,” he explained in a phone interview.) The conservative and liberal young men hit it off, sharing dinners and celebrating each other’s birthday.
麦康奈尔上世纪60年代在华盛顿担任实习生，后来成为参议院助理。他那时结交了图尔特·布洛什(Stuart Bloch)——一位反越战的公益游说者，常常披着斗篷，头戴博尔萨利诺帽。（“你必须让自己与众不同，”他在电话采访中解释说。）两个分别为保守派与自由派效力的年轻人一拍即合，经常聚餐，并给对方庆祝生日。
In the early 1990s, Mr. Bloch, who was married to Julia Chang Bloch, herself a Chinese immigrant and a future ambassador to Nepal, decided to fix up Mr. McConnell, a bachelor at the time.
上世纪90年代初，布洛什决定给当时离异的麦康奈尔安排约会。布洛什那时已经娶了华裔移民张之香(Julia Chang Bloch)，后来的美国驻尼泊尔大使。
Mr. Bloch, now a peace-sign flashing Washington lawyer partial to American flag cummerbunds, oversized sunglasses and the nickname “the Blochbuster,” invited the senator to a candlelight dinner with Ms. Chao, a protégée of his wife’s. “I don’t want to say that sparks flew,” Mr. Bloch said, “because that’s not the way either of them is.”
布洛什现在是一位华盛顿律师，爱打V字手势，偏爱美国国旗样式的宽腰带，超大墨镜，喜欢别人叫他“重磅布洛什”(Blochbuster)。布洛什邀请麦康奈尔与赵小兰共进烛光晚餐。他的妻子当时给予了赵小兰很多帮助与支持。布洛什说，“我不想说他们之间迸射出了火花，因为他们都不是那样的人。”
But the Bush administration appointee and the increasingly powerful Kentucky senator saw something in each other, and she ultimately chose Mr. McConnell over another suitor, C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel to the elder President Bush.
不过，这名布什政府的官员和权势日益强大的肯塔基州参议员都从对方那里看到了什么。她最终选择了麦康奈尔，拒绝了另一名追求者——老布什在任期间的白宫法律顾问C·博伊登·格雷(C. Boyden Gray)。
“It was a long time ago,” said Mr. Gray, who declined to comment further on the relationship. He added that Ms. Chao “is extremely well connected and she keeps a broad range of friends and contacts and she works tirelessly, I think, for him.”
“那是很久以前的事了，”格雷说，他拒绝更多地谈论这段关系。他接着说，赵小兰“人脉极其丰富，交友广泛，我想，她现在正为他不知疲倦地工作。”
Mr. Bloch, now 71, put it another way: “Tiger wife!” he erupted, describing Ms. Chao as “made of titanium.”
现年71岁的布洛什则用另一种方式描述她：“虎妻！”他突然蹦出了这个词，并形容赵小兰是“铁娘子”。
Neither Ms. Chao nor Mr. McConnell agreed to be interviewed for this article, but a former top adviser to both of them, Steven Law, now the president of the Republican “super PAC” American Crossroads, called Ms. Chao “a loyal, fierce, focused competitor.”
赵小兰和麦康奈尔都未同意接受本文采访，但曾在二人手下担任高级顾问的史蒂文 ·劳(Steven Law)称，赵小兰是“一位忠诚、勇猛、专注的竞争者”。劳现在是共和党的超级政治行动委员会“美国十字路口”(American Crossroads)的会长。
She can also bestow a softer touch. Trey Grayson, who lost to Mr. Paul and now is the director of Harvard’s Institute for Politics, for which Ms. Chao sits on the advisory board, recalled that she asked by name about his wife and daughter back when he was a political nobody. And Jan Karzen, a friend of Mr. McConnell’s since they started working on campaigns together in the 1970s, said that when speaking to female groups in Kentucky, Ms. Chao softened her husband’s image by speaking of the senator “in a feminine, wifely way.”
她也有柔和的一面。特雷·格雷森(Trey Grayson)在参议院竞选中败给了保罗，目前是哈佛政治学研究所(Harvard’s Institute of Politics)的所长，而赵小兰是该学院的顾问之一。格雷森回忆说，当他在政界尚默默无闻时，赵小兰就能叫出他妻子和女儿的名字，并问候她们。简·卡赞(Jan Karzen)从上世纪70年代开始与麦康奈尔一起组织竞选活动，两人从那时起成为朋友。他说，在肯塔基面对女性群体发表演讲时，赵小兰用一种“女性化的、妻子的方式”谈论这名参议员，软化了丈夫的形象。
But Ms. Chao can seem bored by Kentucky’s less political traditions. At the Kentucky Derby, hatless and in a sober white skirt suit, she holed up with her husband in the exclusive confines of the Clubhouse Director’s Room. At Louisville football games, she wears dark sunglasses so that she can furtively doze off.
但在与政治无关的肯塔基传统活动中，赵小兰有时会显得心不在焉。在肯塔基德比赛(Kentucky Derby)上，赵小兰没有戴帽子，穿了一套素净的白色裙装，和丈夫在躲在俱乐部会所的经理室里拒绝露面。在观看路易斯维尔的橄榄球赛时，她戴了一副深色太阳镜，这样就可以偷偷打瞌睡。
“We always tell him, ‘You have been working your wife too hard,’ ” said Dee Kern, who tailgates with the McConnells.
与麦康奈尔一家关系密切的迪伊·克恩(Dee Kern)说，“我们总是对他说，‘你让老婆干得太累了。’”
Ms. Chao wakes for politics — and combat. When the liberal group Progress Kentucky posted on Twitter that Mr. McConnell’s marriage to her “may explain why your job moved to #China!” she appealed directly to the camera in a political ad in which she said, “Far-left special interests are also attacking my ethnicity, even attacking Mitch’s patriotism, because he’s married to me.”
赵小兰为政治和斗争而生。自由派组织“进步肯塔基”(Progress Kentucky)曾在Twitter上发贴称，麦康奈尔和她的婚姻“也许解释了为什么你的工作岗位跑到了#中国！”当时，她在一则政治广告中面对镜头直接予以反击，她说，“极左翼的特殊利益集团还在攻击我的种族背景，甚至攻击米奇的爱国之心，就因为他和我结了婚。”
“That’s how low some people will stoop,” she said.
“可见有些人堕落到了何种地步，”她说。
