Sam Seaborn is Washington's most eligible bachelor, but he's not the man you want your daughter to marry. He'll never be home in time for dinner. He'll never be home. He'll be at the office, watching the 11 o'clock news on three channels, recalculating appropriations figures in his head and jotting notes longhand on a college-ruled yellow legal pad.

After a few hours' rest at his sparsely furnished Georgetown apartment, he'll be up and out again. He'll beat the paperboy to his doorstep, cell phone pressed to his ear, already multi-tasking on his way to his morning workout in the Old Executive Office Building basement gym.

He's smart, savvy and successful, and he isn't even remotely in the market for a wife. His heart belongs to Lady Liberty, wherever she may be.

Seaborn, 34, is as devoted to democracy as any of the framers. But he's not your forefather's politician. He comes ready to rescue American politics dressed in dashing Armani suits and a blinding white smile -- and, for the first time, writing his own stump speeches. The debonair counselor to President Bartlet has temporarily traded in his all-access White House pass for a long shot at Congress. It's the kind of race that only appeals to oddsmakers and optimists.

And so it shouldn't be surprising that Seaborn, no stranger to long shots, will attempt to raid the Grand Old Party's henhouse -- California's 47th district, home to a House of Representatives seat up for grabs this month in a special election. Whether Seaborn goes down in history as a footnote to the late Horton Wilde's sentimental win or as a lawmaker in his own right isn't yet clear.

He's got some heavy hitters at bat for him, which should help his chances. "Sam Seaborn is going to do great things for this country," President Bartlet said at a December fundraiser in Orange County. "There is no better man to have on your payroll, and the taxpayers here would be lucky to have him."

Seaborn is already famous in Washington for leaving the lap of luxury on a hero's romantic quest for realpolitik. In 1998, one good golf game from making partner at the New York law firm Gage Whitney, he walked out in the middle of a key meeting with Kensington Oil to run away with the campaign circus. He became the new urban legend, every overworked corporate lawyer's Peter Pan fantasy. In reality, he was plucked from the tyranny of billable hours by Josh Lyman, the faithful best friend who considered a summer vacation writing press releases for a congressional race sufficient experience to help run Bartlet for America.

Lyman, now the White House deputy chief of staff, hasn't run out of confidence that his old pal is a modern-day Mr. Smith. "Sam doesn't make compromises, he makes applause," Lyman says. "He has the vision and passion to bring Congress to its feet." Lyman and his staff feel Seaborn's absence acutely, he says, even as they cheer his campaign from the other side of the country. "Washington is at a bit of a loss as to how to run itself without proper moral guidance. Sam has integrity in spades."

If a policy wonk with movie-star looks can also make politics sexy enough, a new generation of blue bloods might sway election day results. Seaborn has the easy elegance of a Kennedy, though he actually hails from the very conservative district where he's now running. He's also got a touch of JFK's scandal under his belt, having just barely survived compromising photos -- of an innocent friendship, he maintains -- taken with a law student who put herself through school by working as a call girl.

He says he's been single for most of his time in DC, and that rumors of affairs with everyone from Republican strategist-turned-turncoat Ainsley Hayes to schoolteacher Mallory O'Brien, his boss Leo McGarry's daughter, are "flattering but exaggerated." Even before the campaign, he says, he was far too busy for the serious commitment of a long-term romantic relationship. "My off time?" he laughs. "Sometimes Josh and I would catch a Wizards game." But Lyman's been linked off and on to lobbyist Amy Gardner -- office gossip Seaborn cryptically confirms as "a fair characterization of events" -- leaving the erstwhile playboy to his own devices. Like running for office.

"Believe me when I say there are more important things to be doing than attending to my social life," he says, before listing a half dozen initiatives -- off the record, but also with staggering detail for an impromptu briefing -- that will form the backbone of his platform.

Seaborn's clearly got brains in no short supply. And he may pull off the carpet-bagging simply by looking and sounding quite a lot like the Republicans voters he doesn't like but desperately needs. After all, this is a guy who knows his way around the upper crust as well as any other well-heeled scion of suburban WASPs. He was raised solidly upper-middle-class, attending Princeton only because he got more financial aid there than from USC. He didn't finish paying off his Duke law school loans until just before he left his first job -- associate at the prestigious Dewey Ballantine -- for a corner office at Gage. He's the best-case bi-coastal scenario, a hometown boy who's acquired Beltway know-how and East Coast affectations like sailing, racquetball and Sag Harbor.

Still, if you asked, he'd claim to be a man of the people. Which people? "All of them," says a grinning Candidate Seaborn, who's turned the focus of that workaholic stamina on endless campaign rallies, local interest groups and old-time precinct walking.

But even supporters say it's going to take more than pressing the flesh to get Seaborn from California to the halls of Congress. There are less-than-newsworthy polling results Seaborn won't share, calling them "internal," though independent surveys have shown low but steadily rising numbers. Many of the Sunday talk show guests say Seaborn's got a better-than-even chance to upset the Orange County Republican monopoly. He dismisses that as "Monday morning quarterbacking by guns for hire," though if anyone in Middle America knows his name, it's probably because of his own popularity on that circuit.

Fence-sitting constituents back in SoCal, however, still seem concerned that Seaborn's not one of their own, a point that's valid but ultimately shortsighted. The real danger isn't that he might manage to get himself elected. It's that what looks like dedication to civil service may be nothing more than a marriage of convenience.

Seaborn just isn't the settling-down type. He likes to take flight when the going's good, and he's come much too far to be satisfied as one-435th of a historical institution. Voters would be wise to ask this bachelor for a pre-nup on their way to the polling booth. Without an iron-clad commitment to Orange County, he's sure to keep reaching for the brass ring -- that round office just down the hall from his old digs in the West Wing.

-- S.N. Kastle

Additional research by Punk.

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