DONNA - DEPUTY, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF

[Lemon Lyman]

Personal Background [/b]


[/li][li]Donna was born in Warroad, Minnesota. Some time after the Moss family moved to Wisconsin, the U.S.-Canadian border was redefined, and Warroad became part of Manitoba. This temporarily complicated the issue of Donna's citizenship (Dead Irish Writers)
[/li][li]Donna grew up in a condo (Ways and Means), and her parents still own a home in Madison, Wisconsin (Bad Moon Rising).
[/li][li]Her family is Protestant (In Excelsis Deo) her mother is Italian, and her father is Irish.
[/li][li]Donna attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. However, she dropped out approximately two years before graduating in order to put her boyfriend through medical school. She majored in political science, government, sociology, psychology and biology with minors in French and drama (In the Shadow of Two Gunmen)
[/li][li]After her boyfriend dumped her, Donna drove from Madison to New Hampshire in order to join the Bartlet campaign (In the Shadow of Two Gunmen). She briefly returned to Wisconsin in order to reconcile with her boyfriend. During this time, she was in a car accident. Instead of rushing to her side, Donna's boyfriend stopped off at a bar on his way to the hospital and had drinks with some friends. Donna ended the relationship and returned to the campaign. Josh took her back, saying, "Thank God. There's a pile of stuff on the desk" (17 People).
[/li][li]She saves letters from her father (War Crimes)

Donna's friends include

[/li][li]Her roommate, who has cats (The Short List)
[/li][li]Curtis, who fixed the wobbly wheel on Josh's chair (What Kind of Day Has It Been).
[/li][li]Stephanie Gault, who Donna met at the University of Wisconsin. (They bonded as a result of their mutual loathing for the same ex-boyfriend.) (Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail).
[/li][li]Casey Reed, who she went to college with and who offered her a job with CapitolScoop.com (Night Five).

Donna's relationships with men

[/li][li]She dropped out of college to put her boyfriend through medical school (In the Shadow of Two Gunmen). Dr. Free Ride, like Cliff , was Republican, a trend Josh finds disturbing.
[/li][li]She was interested in someone named Donald, but he didn't call her (The Crackpots and These Women)
[/li][li]She had a date with an obnoxious insurance lobbyist named Todd (The Portland Trip).
[/li][li]Ainsley Hayes set Donna up on a blind date with Cliff Calley, a Republican lawyer who worked first for the House Oversight Committee and then on Ways and Means. She saw Cliff twice: The first time they met for drinks, and Cliff left her standing in the middle of the street when he realized that dating her was a conflict of interest (Ways and Means). She saw him again the following night, however (On The Day Before). They slept together, which was when Cliff saw her diary (War Crimes).
[/li][li]If Mike Casper -- Josh's friend at the FBI -- wasn't tied up with burning churches, he'd be hitting on Donna (Bartlet for America).
[/li][li]She tells Josh that she's "kind of seeing" a lawyer (The Two Barlets).

Donna's relationship with Josh

[/li][li]When Josh leaves the building, she looks out his office window so she'll see him when he comes back (Let Bartlet Be Bartlet) Josh finds it adorable that Donna seeks to control him (The Crackpots and These Women).
[/li][li]When Josh gets drunk, he ends up at her apartment and yells at her roommate's cats (The Short List)
[/li][li]For Christmas, Josh bought her an antique book (Heimlich Beckengruber's The Art and Artistry of Alpine Skiing) and wrote a note in the book, which moved her to tears (In Excelsis Deo).
[/li][li]When they travel, she carries his luggage (20 Hours in LA and Manchester). Of course, she also eats his food (And its Surely to Their Credit and Manchester)
[/li][li]She was the one who told Josh that his father had died (In the Shadow of Two Gunmen)
[/li][li]She imposed rules about who could visit Josh when he was recovering after the shooting and takes him his lunch (The MidTerms)
[/li][li]She was the first person to realize that Josh was having psychological problems after the shooting (Noel).
[/li][li]According to Donna, Josh randomly tumbles into women sideways and hopes they'll break up with him soon (Take out the Trash Day). According to Josh, Donna's need to be coupled effects her sense of self-worth (The Portland Trip).
[/li][li]Josh admits that he doesn't like it when Donna dates and that he does "everything within [his] considerable capabilities to sabotage it" (The War at Home). Interestingly, Amy Gardner heard that Josh "might be" dating Donna (The Women of Qumar).
[/li][li]According to Donna, Josh "likes to explain things, and, well, I let him" (The Stackhouse Filibuster).
[/li][li]Donna is the girl Josh made fun of in elementary school (Indians in the Lobby)
[/li][li]Josh once gave Donna moose meat from Helsinki. She regifted it to an intern, who sold it on ebay, and Donna saved his job by buying back the meat she didn't want in the first place (The Black Vera Wang)

References
"Bartlet4 America.Org"
"Inside Bartlet's White House" by Keith Topping
"Inside the West Wing" by Paul Challen

[Lemon Lyman]

Professional Backgound


[/li][li]Donna began working for Josh during the Bartlet for America campaign in February 1998. She quit for a while, but resumed working for Josh in April 1998 (17 People). She maneuvered her way into a position as Josh's assistant (initially as a volunteer) in order to find her confidence and start over (In the Shadow of Two Gunmen).
[/li][li]When the series begins, she has been working for Josh for eighteen months (The Pilot) Josh thinks Donna knows everything that goes on in the West Wing (A Proportional Response).
[/li][li]Donna knows people in the White House who use drugs, but refused to name names when Josh ended up with the tricky task of investigating fallacious claims about White House staffers and drug use (The Short List).
[/li][li]She has never gotten a message wrong (Six Meetings before Lunch)
[/li][li]She organized the assistants in an effort to get the administration to implement OSHA's workplace guidelines regarding repetitive stress injuries (The Lame Duck Congress).
[/li][li]Unlike Ed and Larry, Donna gets to ride in the motorcade (Manchester).
[/li][li]Donna was the first assistant to be told that the President has MS (18th and Potomac).
[/li][li]Donna and Margaret seem to have taken on Mrs. Landingham's role as de facto leaders of the assistants (The Black Vera Wang).
[/li][li]On orders from Josh and the White House Counsel's Office, Donna took over a storage room at the OEOB and began sorting through any interoffice or interdepartmental documents both from the Bartlet for America campaign and from the West Wing (War Crimes).
[/li][li]She was subpoenaed during the Congressional investigation into the President's MS (War Crimes). By lying about her diary, she broke the following laws:
18 U.S.C. § 1001, lying to Congress - $10,000 and not more than five years in prison;
18 U.S.C. § 1505, obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies and committees - not more than five years in prison;
2 U.S.C. § 192, contempt of Congress - $1000 and imprisonment in a common jail for not more than twelve months (War Crimes).
[/li][li]Donna thought Cliff's jokes during her deposition were "smarmy" (War Crimes).
[/li][li]She was offered a job as issues director for CapitolScoop.Com. According to Casey Reed, who offered her the job, "You're Josh Lyman's traffic cop; that's like an M.A. in power brokering. You know the Hill; you know every corner of the White House. You know every pressure point ten miles from the Potomac" (Night Five).

References
"Bartlet4 America.Org"
"Inside Bartlet's White House" by Keith Topping
"Inside the West Wing" by Paul Challen

[Lemon Lyman]

Other Facts[/b]


[/li][li]Donna played the flute in high school (The Portland Trip)
[/li][li]She keeps a diary. She also keeps photos, but not in an album, and she doesn't keep a scrapbook (War Crimes)
[/li][li]When Josh told her the FDA was approving RU-486, Donna sang "Hallelujah" (Manchester)
[/li][li]She has sensitive alabaster skin and uses Clinique City Block Oil-Free Face Protector (20 Hours In LA).
[/li][li]Donna has a Peters Projection map in her workspace (War Crimes) and a bumper sticker that reads "If You Think Education Is Expensive, Try Ignorance" on her filing cabinet (He Shall, From Time to Time).
[/li][li]She is a fan of David Hasselhoff (20 Hours in LA) and of Yo-Yo Ma (Noel).
[/li][li]According to Josh, Donna's handwriting is illegible. According to Donna, she has distinctive penmanship (Panda Bear) (Six Meetings before Lunch)
[/li][li]CJ describes Donna as "someone whose criminal mind was equal to my own" (The Stackhouse Filibuster).

References
"Bartlet4 America.Org"
"Inside Bartlet's White House" by Keith Topping
"Inside the West Wing" by Paul Challen

[Joey Lucas]

From BravoTV.com:

Donna is Josh Lyman's trustworthy and capable assistant. She dropped out of the University of Wisconsin after two years to put her boyfriend through school, only to be dumped later. Donna keeps a diary to record her White House experiences, as well as her dating disasters. She was recently shocked to discover that she is a Canadian, not American, citizen due to a U.S. state boundary change.