It's a worldly stage for Montecito activist

One morning in 2003, with the Iraq War looming, Nancy Koppelman lay in bed reading a New York Times article on the sorry state of the environment.

“In times of despair I always figure you can do (three) things. There’s ignorance, there’s apathy or there’s activism,” she said.

Koppelman chose activism, and adroit fundraising in particular.

Very soon after her New York Times epiphany, she was watching the CNN show “Road to the White House” and “They had this little guy (on) who said, ‘I want my country back!’ ‘’

The man’s name was Howard Dean and what he said resonated with Koppelman. “So I got on the phone,” she said.

A few months later, Dean showed up. When Koppelman and her husband asked people round to meet the presidential candidate, “everyone had the same response,” she said. “ ‘President of what?’ Nobody had heard of him.”

At first glance, Koppelman might seem more Museum of Art Board than political junkie. She is stylish and pretty, perhaps around 50 years old, and on the day that I spoke with her she had her blonde hair pulled back and wore tortoiseshell glasses, jeans and black turtleneck sweater.

Before moving to Montecito in the late 1990s, she and her husband “lived behind the Orange Curtain,” where she had owned a sailing club in Newport Beach for a while and studied interior design.

These days, she meets up frequently to talk politics with a group of women who call themselves the Dean Babes. “I’m the baby of the group.” she said, “Everyone (else) is in their 70s and 80s.” Koppelman also roams the Internet looking for close political races throughout the country where she might help.

“I’m a big Dem,” she told me in the livingroom of her home near Hammonds Beach, which may seem awfully far from Washington, D.C. But Koppelman has sorted that out. She appears to be on countless Democratic fundraisers’ speed-dial lists, thereby bringing anyone she’s interested in here to Santa Barbara or to Aspen, where she and her husband spend part of the year.

She recently had a fundraiser for Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat she thought might have a good chance against Lincoln Chafee, the Republican senator from Rhode Island. Barack Obama’s office called a little while ago to arrange a visit, Tom Harkin stopped by last summer, and Michael and Kitty Dukakis popped in, as well.

I lived in Washington for eight years, but talking to Koppelman strained my political name database.

“(Tom) Vilsack is coming in June,” she said.

Vilsack, Vilsack, that name rings a bell, I thought. Doesn’t he represent New Jersey’s fourth Congressional district? (Turns out he’s the governor of Iowa.)

With the likes of Koppelman around, Montecito seems less like the provincial velvet coffin I know and love.

She’s also interested in Africa, and I asked her about a recent trip to Kenya and Rwanda. Koppelman lugged 90 pounds of antibiotics to Nairobi for Direct Relief International. And in Rwanda, when she wasn’t trekking in the forest to see gorillas, she met with two women she supports financially (through an organization called Women for Women International), whose lives had been turned upside down by the genocide in the 1990s.

Sometimes, Koppelman said, people wonder if she shouldn’t focus more on her local community.

“But my community is Africa,” she said. “I live in a bigger world. We travel a lot.”

Koppelman showed me a picture from a Rwandan orphanage. “These kids,” she said. “Look at these little faces. Why shouldn’t they be in my community? . . . Nobody here in Montecito is dying of malaria.” (And, not to mislead, the Koppelmans also support UCSB’s Arts & Lectures program.)

We leafed through her Africa pictures for a few moments more until we came upon a photo of her group in Rwanda, whereupon she made a pronouncement that she, amongst all Montecito women, might be uniquely qualified to make with anything approximating seriousness.

“I’m in love with Paul Kagami,” she said, looking at the picture.

I peered at it, scanning the men. Kagami, Kagami let me think. How silly of me, Kagami is the president of Rwanda, of course.