I was abused by the Republican Party

In August of 1996 the Dole-Kemp team put on a rally in Pittsburgh that included a petting zoo for GOP kids. Levi the Donkey said he was not happy he was forced to be a part of it.

August 19, 1996

My name is Levi the Donkey. I'm a 2 1/2 -month-old miniature Sicilian donkey and lifelong Democrat. An Italian Democrat, to be exact.

Yesterday I was tortured like no symbol of any American political party should ever be tortured.

I was a political prisoner, penned like a lousy animal in a petting zoo for hours at Point State Park, where the Republican Party put on a rally for its presidential team of Dole-Kemp.

I was surrounded for almost four hours by a well-dressed mob of red-white-and-blue Dole-Kemp supporters.

I was patted and chased around by hundreds of their too-cute and already politicized little children.

And as part of a failed publicity stunt, for an hour I was even forced by my owner-mother to wear a Dole-Kemp sign around my neck.

The lone Major Party Symbol among dozens of non-emblematic goats, lambs, pigs, ducks, chickens and llamas in the Barnyard Petting Zoo, I was a captive prop in a Republican morality play, a prisoner in a Family Values sideshow.

What I want to know is, where were all those annoying animal rights activists when I needed them?

Sure, I got all kinds of free food and milk. And I even got to chew a little bark off the maple tree inside our corral.

But I went for hours without feeling the warm, loving hands of a Western Pennsylvania Democrat child. What's worse, I had to listen to Jack Kemp and Bob Dole speechify about how they're going to cut taxes and how their party wasn't the party of the rich but the party for those who want to become rich.

I couldn't hear everything they said up there, but they probably made some more of those nasty cracks I heard them making on C-SPAN the other day about my political heroes, Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Heck, the Clintons know more about saving money on their tax returns and getting rich in the futures market than most ever Republicans will.

Anyway, my suffering and pain weren't really the fault of my owner, Washington County dairywoman Jan Marchzak. She's been like a mother to me and all the other animals.

Like me, she's a solid Democrat (though she does have Republican friends). She couldn't help it that the Republican National Committee hired her — registration unseen — after she was recommended by the Pittsburgh Zoo.

She's so entrepreneurial she even tried to get the people who own the elephant that was appearing at the Washington County Fair to bring it to Point Park. That would have made greater symbolic sense, but she just couldn't pull it off.

But you'd think that the woman who loves me like I'm human — the woman who's bottle-fed me since my birth, the woman who takes me for rides in her car — would have spared me the indignity of being patted and photographed by all those handsome young Republican families.

At least the Carraghers of Upper St. Clair weren't wearing matching Dole-Kemp T-shirts or the latest Rush Limbaugh-ware, which is what Jim Eazor of Penn Hills had on his 69-year-old back. And talk about rich — Hart Hillman, 42-year-old nephew of GOP godmother Elsie (Hillman) , brought his daughter Sara, 5.

I had to wait till after 4 o'clock yesterday before encountering a human Democrat, Teresa Cyrus of Monaca.

She appeared inside my pen with her two kids and her little nephew just as Dole took the stage. She's 31 and just moved up from West Virginia. Like me, she hadn't come to the Point for political purposes or to support family values, whatever they are. She came on a family outing.

The Petting Zoo was an unexpected treat.

Before I go back home to Twin Brook Farms in Eighty Four, Pa., I want to make one thing clear. My owner/mom is a good Democrat and she acts like one. She wants to share me with everybody.

Shoot, she's more inclusive than the Republican Party says it is.

"That's one thing about these animals," I heard her telling some reporter yesterday, "they do not care what you look like, what you smell like, what color you are."

But excuse me, Mom. What about what their political party? You never asked me about that.