Miss America Goes to New York ... for the Republican National Convention

This is a partial transcript from "Hannity & Colmes," August 25, 2004, that has been edited for clarity.

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SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: Our next guest was Miss America in 2003 and now she is preparing to come to New York and speak at the Republican convention.

Erika Harold now joins us. How are you?

ERIKA HAROLD, MISS AMERICA 2003: I’m good, how are you?

HANNITY: You’re not married, right?

HAROLD: I’m not married now.

HANNITY: Now, could you ever date a liberal?

HAROLD: I thought we were supposed to start off with an easy question here.

HANNITY: I’m teasing; I’m teasing. I was just wondering, because here you are, one of the most interesting women in America. You’re a Republican. I’m just curious.

HAROLD: That’s very kind of you.

HANNITY: I’m curious because I don’t understand Mary Matalin dating James Carville and marrying him. I never got that. Thank God my wife and I agree on most stuff.

All right, so you’re coming to New York. Tell us what your plans are.

HAROLD: Well, I have the opportunity to address the delegates at the convention on Tuesday night. And more than likely I’ll be speaking about faith-based initiatives and how they relate to prisoner rehabilitation.

HANNITY: Yes. And could you help fix some of these liberals that we have?

HAROLD: I’m going to try to do my best.

HANNITY: Have you been a Republican your whole life?

HAROLD: I wouldn’t say that I’ve been an overtly political person my whole life. When I was in college I started to study the issues and find out which party I was most closely aligned with. And that’s when I became a Republican.

HANNITY: One of the things I’ve always wondered about Miss America. A lot of this is based on physical attributes and beauty and so forth.

Do you think we put too much emphasis in society on those things? Maybe we don’t look deep enough into the heart?

Now, I know Miss America considers the other factors as well.

HAROLD: Right.

HANNITY: But certainly, I have no chance, with my looks, being Miss America, you know what I’m saying?

HAROLD: That’s not true — well, you could be Mr. America and my vote would be between you and Alan.

HANNITY: Of course.

HAROLD: It might be close between the two of you.

I think one of the unfortunate consequences of having such a media-saturated campaign is that images are so important. So even if you have a very important message to articulate, you have to be able to do so in an attractive way to get the message out.

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: It’s Alan Colmes. Welcome to the show.

HAROLD: ... message out. How are you doing, Alan?

COLMES: I never knew...

HANNITY: It’s the male equivalent thereof. You know what I meant.

COLMES: I never knew you wanted to be Miss America. I didn’t realize...

HAROLD: That’s why this is a very informative segment for everyone.

COLMES: Exactly. We reveal a lot here.

HANNITY: Oh, boy.

COLMES: Welcome to the show once again. Why are you a conservative? Why are you a Republican?

HAROLD: I think if I had to narrow it down to just a few phrases, I would say that I believe in a smaller government; I believe in personal responsibility; and I believe in trusting people with their own tax dollars so they can best articulate how they want to live their lives and make the best decisions to support that.

COLMES: I think it sounds liberal to me. But look, they tried to stop you from talking about sexual abstinence on your platform speech. Would they have done the same thing if you were talking about condemn use, for example?

HAROLD: You know, there was a Miss America who did promote condom use. I think in the case of sexual abstinence they thought that it might have been too controversial a topic.

But during the course of my year they saw how responsive young people were to the message, and I think they did change their opinion by the end of the year. So it was a positive situation for all involved.

HANNITY: Erika, you are a great role model for a lot of kids. And it was great to see you.

HAROLD: Thank you, Sean.

HANNITY: We look forward to seeing you in New York. I hope you don’t mind my kidding, by the way.

HAROLD: Quite all right. And good luck on becoming Mr. America.

HANNITY: Mister. Thank you. That’s what I meant. She got it, Alan.

COLMES: All right.

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