Rachel Campos Duffy

Early life

Rachel Campos was born in Tempe, Arizona, to Miguel Campos and Maria del Pilar. She has two brothers, one of whom is named Patrick. Her sister, Leah Campos Schandlbauer, ran for Congress in Arizona in 2012. Campos and her sister were raised in a strict Catholic home.

Campos graduated from Arizona State University in December 1993 with a degree in economics. She was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellowship, which she had planned to use to attend graduate school, with the goal of being a college professor.

The Real World: San Francisco

Campos was cast on The Real World: San Francisco in January 1994, and lived in the house on Russian Hill in San Francisco with her six housemates from February 12 to June 19. The season premiered on July 6, 1994.

Although the castmates were informed ahead of time that they would be living with someone who was HIV-positive, they were not informed which housemate it would be. On the cast's first night in the house, Campos’ housemate, AIDS educator Pedro Zamora, informed the housemates that he had AIDS by showing them his scrapbook of his career as an HIV educator. Campos felt uncomfortable and initially distanced herself from Zamora, stating that she wanted to know how his health status would affect her. However, she said nothing to the other housemates for fear of appearing homophobic. Although Zamora took this as an act of rejection on her part, the two eventually became friends, with Zamora traveling to Arizona with Campos to visit her family. During her time on the series, she had both a romantic relationship and tumultuous friendship with housemate David "Puck" Rainey. Judd Winick attributed this attraction on her part to her taste for rebellious men, or "bad boys". Campos conceded this, and admitted that she was sometimes an initial bad judge of character, and too trusting. Campos' friendship with Rainey eventually dissolved, as did Rainey's friendship with the rest of the cast, resulting in his eviction. Campos subsequently became best friends with Rainey's replacement, Joanna Rhodes, and the two of them were referred to by Winick as "high maintenance twins".

On the show and in MTV's promotional materials for the show, Campos was depicted as a passionate Republican, whose heroes included Jack Kemp, and as a Catholic, though she conceded her strict religious upbringing fostered within her a rebellious streak that sometimes brought her into conflict with her parents. Her political viewpoints led to conflict with her housemates on more than one occasion, as when Mohammed Bilal ridiculed the Republican housing ideas that she expressed in Episode 3. In Episode 18, after Campos invited her housemates to a College Republicans function, self-described liberal Winick opined that the speakers at the function were sexist, homophobic, and racist, a view to which Campos objected as unfair.

Later media career

Campos later appeared on Road Rules: All Stars, along with alumni of other past Real World seasons, such as Sean Duffy of the Real World: Boston cast.

She earned her master's degree in international affairs from the University of California at San Diego.

She thrice vied for a role on the daytime television talk show The View. After Debbie Matenopoulos left the show in 1999, Campos competed in an on-air try-out with Lisa Ling and Lauren Sánchez. Ling was eventually hired. After Ling's departure in 2002, Campos—who by then held her own "coffee talk" show with other Wisconsin housewives—again competed in a week-long on-air try-out, this time against Erin Hershey Presley and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. In November 2003 Hasselbeck was hired to replace Lisa Ling . In July 2013 when Hasselbeck left The View to replace Gretchen Carlson as the female co-host of Fox & Friends, Campos once again tried out; Jenny McCarthy was hired to fill the spot.

Campos-Duffy was also one of ten Real World alumni who starred in the 2003 film The Wedding Video, a Real World parody centered on the wedding of first season alumnus Norman Korpi.

LIBRE Initiative

Since 2013, Campos Duffy has been the national spokesperson for the LIBRE initiative, an organization funded by the Koch Brothers and which seeks to aid workers and entrepreneurs, provide economic education, and promote free market policies within the Latino community.TheLlibreinitiative.com Rachel Campos-Duffy Bio

Personal life

After her stint on The Real World ended, while the fifth season of the show (set in Miami) was being filmed, Campos was involved in a head-on car collision after the driver of an oncoming vehicle fell asleep at the wheel. Campos' boyfriend and his friend, who was driving their rented car, died in the accident. Campos was thrown out of the passenger-side window and sustained serious injuries to her right leg that caused permanent long-term problems such as arthritis, a limp and difficulty running.

Campos married her Road Rules: All Stars costar Sean Duffy on April 4, 1999. They lived in Ashland, Wisconsin, where Duffy was the District Attorney of Ashland County. In 2011, Duffy became a Republican member of Congress for the 7th district of Wisconsin. The Duffys moved from Ashland to Weston, Wisconsin in late 2011, and in 2013, they moved to Wausau, Wisconsin so that Sean would be closer to an airport for his weekly commute to Washington, D.C. where he spends three or four days a week.

In 2008, Campos-Duffy revealed that she suffered two miscarriages. As of May 2016, they have eight children.

In popular culture

In Pedro, Nick Oceano's 2008 film dramatizing Pedro Zamora's life, Campos-Duffy is portrayed by Karolina Luna.

Filmography