Rachel Campos-Duffy


Rachel Campos-Duffy is an American television personality. She first appeared on television in 1994 as a cast member on the MTV reality television series , before moving onto to work as a television host. She was a guest host on the ABC talk show The View, before moving onto Fox News, where she has guest-hosted the show Outnumbered.

Early life

Rachel Campos grew up in Tempe, Arizona, to Miguel Campos and Maria del Pilar, junior-high school teachers in Chandler, Arizona. She has two brothers, Patrick Campos and Joseph Campos. Her sister, Leah Campos Schandlbauer, ran for Congress in Arizona in 2012. Campos and her siblings were raised in a strict Catholic home. Campos-Duffy graduated from Seton Catholic Preparatory High School. Campos' grandparents emigrated to the United States from Mexico. 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. Campos earned a master's degree in international affairs from the University of California, San Diego.

Career

''The Real World: San Francisco''

Campos was cast on ' 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 which Campos objected to as unfair.
In 1999 Campos taped ', along with alumni of other past Real World seasons, such as Sean Duffy of the Real World: Boston cast, whom she would later marry.
Campos-Duffy was 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.

''The View''

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, but Jenny McCarthy was hired to fill the spot.

Fox News

On June 21, 2018, during an appearance on the Fox News program The Ingraham Angle, Campos-Duffy defended the Trump administration's controversial practice of separating immigrant families arrested crossing the US border. Speaking of the facilities where the children were housed, she said, "The detention centers are far safer than the journey that these children just came on. And I will say this...People aren't stupid. I spoke to some African-Americans who say, 'Gosh, the conditions of the detention centers are better than some of the projects that I grew up in.'" The comments drew immediate criticism, including from African American Vox reporter Jane Coaston, New York Times Magazine writer Nicole Hannah Jones, Britni Danielle of Essence magazine, and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
In 2017, Campos-Duffy praised Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte of Montana for physically assaulting Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian. The incident occurred when Gianforte grabbed Jacobs, threw him to the ground and punched him after Jacobs tried to interview him about the Republican health care plan, which Campos-Duffy called "Montana justice".

Other work

Campos-Duffy is the national spokesperson for the LIBRE initiative, a non-profit organization, funded by the Koch Brothers, that promotes ideas about constitutionally limited government, property rights, rule of law, economic stability, and free market capitalism to the Hispanic community.
Campos-Duffy supported Scott Walker in the Republican primary for the 2016 presidential election.

Personal life

After her stint on The Real World ended, while the fifth season of the show 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 costar Sean Duffy. 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 had eight children. The Duffys welcomed their ninth child, a daughter, Valentina StellaMaris on October 1, 2019. Valentina was born one month early and has Down Syndrome. Due to the baby's anticipated health complications, including a heart condition, Sean Duffy announced that he was resigning from Congress, effective September 23, 2019, in order to focus his time and attention on his family.

In popular culture

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

Filmography