SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- California's first lady will sit down Tuesday with the wives of five presidential candidates for a frank discussion about their lives in politics.
The intensively personal exchange will take place at the Long Beach Convention Center as part of Maria Shriver's annual Governor's and First Lady's Conference on Women, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.
"All of these women ... have had careers and lives before their husbands and many of them have the qualifications to be CEOs and candidates in their own rights," Shriver said about guests Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, Jeri Thompson, Cindy McCain and Ann Romney.
Paul Trounstine, who heads the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University, says the higher profile of spouses this year may be the result of the unusually compressed early presidential race.
"Campaigns have to be in so many places in one time that they are relying more heavily on surrogates -- and the No. 1 surrogate is the candidate's spouse," he told The Chronicle.