The finance chair of Bush's Oregon campaign in 2000, Cole stuffed envelopes, pounded in lawn signs and hit up the state's biggest donors. He was the ultimate loyal Republican soldier.

This year, however, Bush will not get Cole's vote. "I believed in George Bush, and it appears I made a major mistake," Cole says.

Cole's beef has nothing to do with the war in Iraq, the booming deficit or the controversy over stem-cell research. No, this is personal. The 44-year-old lawyer is angry because the Bush administration let a satirical play featuring a singing penis overshadow his credentials and years of service. For real.

"I don't want to say I was brainwashed, but I was a real loyalist," Cole says. "I found out that this courageous leader I had supported was a shameless panderer to the right wing."

Gary Cole has been a Republican for nearly as long as he can remember.

The Chicago native says the notorious regime of Mayor Richard Daley shaped his politics. "My earliest political memory was the Democratic Convention of 1968," he says. "After that, I always associated the Democrats with corruption and thuggery."

Cole graduated from Williams College and Stanford Law School and then took a job with the CIA general counsel's office in Washington, D.C. Five years later, Cole and his wife moved to Oregon to start a family.

In Portland, Cole prospered at the Ball Janik law firm while serving on the PSU Foundation and the Multnomah County Library Board, in addition to working on local political races and Gordon Smith's runs for the U.S. Senate. "He had far more energy than most lawyers and was very civic-minded," says Robert Ball, a co-founder of Ball Janik and Cole's mentor.

The 2000 presidential campaign coincided with a four-month sabbatical Cole had earned after a decade at Ball Janik. No traipsing through Tuscany for him. "I spent two or three hours every day of my sabbatical dialing for dollars for Bush," says Cole. "I believed him when he said he was a compassionate conservative."

During his time off, Cole also fleshed out an idea that he hoped would allow him to pursue his real dream--the theater.

Along with his family, the Republican Party and the Chicago Cubs, Cole was passionate about theater. After trying out for a play in his senior year in college on a whim, he caught the bug for good in law school, acting in eight plays.

In 1995, Cole co-founded CoHo Productions in Northwest Portland, which offered space and financial support to playwrights and directors.

"Gary didn't always rub the theater community the right way, because he's got a very businesslike approach," says Jeff Meyers, who met Cole while directing a play at Coho. "But he's a guy who before a show would walk into the bathroom and clean a toilet before the audience arrived."

While on sabbatical Cole hatched a plan for a business that would marry his legal training and entrepreneurial instincts with his love of theater. Cole's frustration with theater was that the magic died when the curtain fell--and even on the best of nights, few people attended.

His solution was the company he dreamed up while on sabbatical. StageDirect would film selected plays and sell them via the Internet to people who couldn't attend theater in person.

Cole believed in the idea enough to abandon a law practice that earned him well over $250,000 annually. He raised more than $600,000 from private investors, including $100,000 of his own money, and launched the company in 2001.

Ball says Cole's departure was a big loss for Ball Janik: "We told him our door was always open if he wanted to come back."

Cole knew that StageDirect represented a financial risk. He had no idea it was also a professional risk--one that could erase all the political capital he had accumulated over the years.

By early 2003, Gary Cole felt pressure on two fronts.

Although StageDirect had filmed six plays, received glowing press in the Wall Street Journal and other publications and was in talks with PBS and the Lifetime network for distribution deals, sales were slow. "Our product is inconsistent with people's desire for quick and easy entertainment." says Meyers, who became Cole's business partner.

The other factor was Cole's wife's desire to return to the East Coast. "I'd had enough of Portland," says Amy Cole, who stayed at home with the couple's two children.

In March 2003, Cole decided to explore running for Oregon's 1st District congressional seat, held by three-term incumbent David Wu, a Democrat.

Cole figured he could draw on a decade of contacts, and if successful, retain his ties to Portland while getting his family back to Washington.

At the time, no Republican had announced plans to oppose Wu. (Goli Ameri is the current challenger.) And though Cole had never run for office, he was well-known to party insiders, having worked on Bush's and Gordon Smith's campaigns and other races.

The seat was clearly up for grabs. Oregon's 1st District is a swing district, nearly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Since 1974, when Republicans lost the seat after nearly a century, the GOP has searched in vain for a moderate challenger.

Wu had squeaked narrowly into office in 1998 and faced only token opposition in 2000 and 2002. "Wu had $1 million in the bank, but he seemed vulnerable," says Cole, whose pro-choice stance would negate one of Wu's biggest advantages.

In March 2003, Cole met with Dan Lavey, a close friend and leading Republican political strategist, and Lavey's wife, Lori Hardwick, who is U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith's chief fundraiser. The couple's association with Smith and ties to the president make them the go-to couple for Oregon Republican office-seekers.

Email exchanges among the three show that Lavey and Hardwick took Cole seriously.

"See Dan's message about getting together next Tuesday 3:00-5:00 in his office to brainstorm about initial political meetings in both DC and back here," Hardwick wrote Cole on March 12, 2003. "You'll see a proposal from me in a couple of days."

Cole was ready. "The message I took away from my conversations with you and Dan is that Wu can be beaten and that I would have a reasonable shot in taking him on," he wrote to Hardwick in a message the same day.

Cole was to fly to Washington in late March to meet with consultants there. A positive review could lead to backing from the national Republican Party.

Lavey passed along Cole's résumé, including a link to StageDirect's website, so the Washington consultants could familiarize themselves with him, Cole says.

But on March 18, when Cole went to Lavey's office, he got bad news: Lavey told Cole he could not expect support from the Republican establishment.

The problem, Cole says, was not Cole's inexperience, his advocacy of abortion rights or his lack of name recognition but, according to Lavey, two plays that StageDirect had filmed in Portland: One was called Straight. The other: Poona the Fuckdog.

Straight is a one-man play that pokes fun at the notion that homosexuals can be converted to heterosexuality. In a 2000 review of the play, the Los Angeles Times said the play "exacts sweet revenge" with "wit, style and a touch of naughtiness."

Poona, said the Chicago Tribune in a 1999 review, "is a wicked and funny adult parody of children's stories...that attacks materialism and political passivity, makes a plea for artistic freedom, satirizes contemporary conservative mores and worries about the encroachment of technology." One of the lead characters in Poona is a singing "fairy god penis."

Cole had neither written, acted in, nor directed the plays. His company had filmed them, however, which was enough for the Republican Party.

Today, Lavey downplays Cole's aborted congressional bid, saying it was simply idle speculation between friends. But it wasn't the last time Poona would end up taking a bit out of Cole's professional aspirations.

With Congress crossed off his list, Cole was still looking for a ticket out of Portland. "I talked to Lavey and [Gordon Smith's chief of staff] John Easton and said, 'What about a presidential appointment?'"

A government publication called The Plum Book lists about 7,000 positions the president fills at his discretion ("plum" refers to the color of the book's cover, not the choiceness of the jobs available).

The jobs range from the plummest--such as serving as ambassador to New Zealand, a prize Portlander Butch Swindells won for his fundraising success on Bush's behalf--to serving as a board member of mortgage giant Fannie Mae (as Bush Oregon 2000 campaign chair Molly Bordonaro did until this May) to low-level civil-service posts.

Presidential appointments are increasingly political and tightly controlled by the White House, according to James Pfiffner, a professor of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia. "Appointments were intended to help manage the executive branch, but they often degenerate into a way of rewarding friends," says Pfiffner, who has written about the appointment process.

Cole learned that the No. 3 job at the National Endowment for the Arts--deputy chairman for grants and awards, which entailed doling out about $60 million annually--was available. Such a position, Cole thought, would allow him to combine his theater, legal and business backgrounds.

"This sounded like a fabulous job," Cole says. "But the first question out of my mouth to Lavey, Molly Bordonaro and John Easton was, 'Is StageDirect going to be a problem?'"

Cole knew the NEA's support of controversial art had riled conservative politicians over the past two decades--particularly for its sponsorship of such controversial exhibits as Robert Mapplethorpe's 1989 photos of gay sadomasochists and Andres Serrano's 1987 photograph of a crucifix submerged in his urine.

The first President Bush named Oregonian John Frohnmayer head of the agency in 1989, for instance, only to fire him three years later under pressure from Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan.

Cole says his pals reassured him. "They said, 'No, this is arts; it's one thing if you're running for elected office,' but as Molly said, 'It's not as if you put a crucifix in piss.'" (Bordonaro did not return WW's calls.)

Cole moved forward. Gordon Smith, who had been briefed on Poona by Easton, wrote a powerful letter of recommendation on April 4 to the White House personnel office. "I sincerely hope that you give Gary Cole your highest consideration for the position of Deputy Chairman of Grants and Awards," Smith wrote. "Gary's name may also be familiar, as he served as George W. Bush's 2000 campaign Oregon Victory Finance Chair."

In his letter, Smith referred to StageDirect as "a unique company which specializes in capturing contemporary theater on digital video." Two other local Republican heavyweights, Ambassador Swindells and restaurateur Bill McCormick, also wrote letters on Cole's behalf.

On May 20, Cole went to Washington to interview with Chairman Dana Gioia and other top NEA staff. He also met with the White House personnel office, which is responsible for the political vetting of potential appointees.

Asked whether he had ever done anything that might embarrass the president, Cole recalls he said he had "produced theater for grown-ups and that some of the StageDirect and CoHo productions had included nudity and profanity, including profanity in the titles."

Cole says the interviewer replied, "So you're saying that you've produced R-rated material but not X?" and he agreed with that assessment.

After his interviews, Cole rode the Metro to Smith's Capitol Hill office for a debriefing. Smith kidded Cole about StageDirect. "Gordon said, 'Poona the Fuckdog--we've got to take this national,'" Cole recalls. "He teased me about it repeatedly in the 45 minutes I was with him."

(Easton confirms the meeting took place; Smith declined to comment.)

On May 27, Cole received an email from Ann Hingston, the NEA's White House liaison, all but confirming his appointment. "You are the candidate of the Chairman and NEA," Hingston wrote. Although her email discussed various possible start dates and told Cole the salary he would receive ($131,342), she cautioned that he still needed final approval from the White House political office.

"This [the job] could happen within two weeks," Hingston wrote. "When it does they will call me with the official approval and I will call to let you know. That is when it is official and not until then."

On June 9, he received a call from Hingston saying that White House approval had come. "The job was mine," Cole says.

Cole immediately put in a bid on a Maryland townhouse. Although he received no written confirmation of Hingston's call, she sent an email two days later with his first assignment: He would be getting a briefing from the NEA's legal staff "regarding ethics and relations with arts organizations."

The same day, Cole says he spoke with a woman named Ann Puderbaugh in the NEA communications office about a press release announcing his appointment. "She specifically mentioned she had been on the StageDirect website and looked at various shows we'd filmed," Cole recalls.

Then, disaster struck. Later that afternoon, Cole received a voicemail from Hingston. "She said something had come up that could affect my position," he says. "It was too late to reach her at office. I was frantic."

He finally reached Hingston at 1 pm the next day. "She said the offer had been withdrawn," Cole says. "She would provide no information. I think she knew why but wasn't going to tell me." (The NEA considers Cole's candidacy a personnel matter, and none of the involved NEA officials or agency spokespeople would comment for this story.)

Having been assured by his friends in the Oregon Republican Party that his StageDirect productions would not be a problem and having landed his dream job only to see it jerked away, Cole was shattered. "I was in a state of shock, about 50 times more upset than when my congressional hopes died," he says.

He yelled for help. "Over the weekend, my reaction went from shock to serious anger. I went back and challenged Easton and said, 'What are you [and Sen. Smith] going to do about this?'"

The answer, apparently, was nothing. "I have the highest regard for Gordon Smith," Cole says. "But when the chips were down, he did not fight for me."

Cole pressed for more information. "Easton said that [NEA senior deputy chairwoman] Eileen Mason was tight-lipped but clearly these productions were to blame," Cole says. "Lavey told me the decision was 90 percent political."

Today, Easton disputes Cole's recollection. He says that Cole's failure to mention Poona and Straight explicitly at the outset of the interview process ultimately led to the offer being withdrawn. "It appears that Gary didn't handle his interview well, and it appears that he didn't handle disclosure of his productions well, otherwise he might have landed the job," Easton says.

Lavey also denies that politics sunk Cole or that he ever told Cole it did. "Gary bears the responsibility for failing to demonstrate his qualifications for getting this job." Lavey says. "He didn't get the job, and he's disappointed. We've all been there."

Cole says he never tried to hide StageDirect--which was mentioned in Smith's letter and on Cole's own résumé, and whose website highlights Poona and Straight.

"This was a cowardly political decision made to appease the socially conservative wing of the party," he says.

He cites an email exchange that he had with the NEA's Mason after his rejection as evidence the agency didn't think he'd been disingenuous. "The only thing that really concerns me about this experience is that there be no lingering questions about my integrity," he wrote to Mason on June 12, 2003. "I'm sorry about the turn of events," she replied. "To my knowledge, no one here ever mentioned the word integrity."

In the end, the only good news for Cole was that the seller of the Maryland townhouse he bid on countered, which allowed him to withdraw. Neither he nor his wife wanted anything to do with Washington, D.C., anymore.

Cole and his wife sold their house in Portland in August 2003 and moved to Raleigh, N.C., where Cole keeps CoHo and StageDirect running from his home office and does some legal work on the side. His wife has taken a customer-service position with United Airlines.

Cole says his NEA experience cost George W. Bush two votes (his and his wife's) and that he's finished with politics, probably forever. "Politics was a huge part of my life for a very long time," he says. "For months after this, I couldn't even bring myself to watch the Sunday morning shows."

Cole says he knows going public just days before the election will cost him friends and may hurt him the next time he seeks financing for StageDirect or legal work.

He's willing to take those risks. "People may look at what happened to me and draw the conclusion [Bush] isn't the kind of guy they should be supporting. If they do, I wouldn't try to talk them out of it."

Cole co-founded CoHo Productions with Bob Holden, a schoolteacher. Lori Hardwick, Sen. Gordon Smith's chief fundraiser, sat on the board of CoHo.

Cole wrote Body Hold, the story of an expatriate Brit caught in a Third World revolution and the first play CoHo produced. He later led the fundraising effort to build a permanent home for CoHo, which has produced 17 plays.

Besides Poona the Fuckdog, plays StageDirect (www.stagedirect.com ) has filmed include The Magnificent Welles, a critically acclaimed take on Orson Welles, and Haint, the story of a Tennessee town haunted by a ghost. The company has sold about 500 copies of Poona, which retails for $19.95.

StageDirect's films of Poona, Straight and Welles played on consecutive evenings at Cinema 21 in the summer of 2002.

Tony Chauveaux, a lawyer and director of the Texas Arts Commission, ultimately got the NEA grants job on Sept. 30, 2004. The NEA has an annual budget of $121 million.

The Chicago Reader published a briefer version of Cole's story on Sept. 28, 2004.