SULLIVAN’S ISLAND — Charlie Condon’s other world is one of skateboards, rollerblades and johnboats, a spectacular view of the mouth of Charleston Harbor, and a wide porch from which he can see Fort Sumter or watch the sun set over the Holy City.

When Condon isn’t running for an office or serving in one, as he did for eight years as S.C. attorney general, he is usually with his family around their large white house a stone’s throw from Fort Moultrie, at the end of Sullivan’s Island.

Condon’s wife, Emily, chose to stay in the Lowcountry with their four children rather than move them all to Columbia nine years ago, after Condon was elected S.C. attorney general. For the most part, the two worlds overlapped only in their conversations about his job when he came home on weekends.

The geographic distance also created a healthy separation for the children from their father’s political world. The youngest child, 10-year-old Elliot — home from school with a broken leg following an accident her father attributed to “indoor rollerblading” — chuckled recently about Condon’s last opponent in his race for attorney general, whom she referred to as “Turnipgreen.” (Condon defeated Democrat Tom Turnipseed in his 1988 bid for re-election.)

Emily Condon, tall and slender like her husband but with a pleasantly gravelly voice and a cheerful smile, said she and Charlie chose not to move to Columbia in part to preserve a normal family life for their children.

A native North Carolinian, she met Charlie Condon when she was in medical school and he was in law school at Duke University in North Carolina. She found him not only intelligent but also gentle and compassionate.

Emily Condon said she and her husband, now in their 24th year of marriage, remain best friends.

Charlie Condon encouraged Emily to seek a residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, after which she found permanent work at a family practice on Sullivan’s Island.

She has scaled back her medical practice as their children have gotten older, but admits that she is “definitely not political.” She said she and her husband talked quite a bit about his job but rarely discussed politics or his public image.

Coming out of Duke, Charlie Condon won a coveted job at a prestigious Columbia law firm, but he didn’t last long there. He said people questioned his judgment when he left to take an assistant solicitor’s job in Charleston in 1979. But he found the contribution he could make handling court cases more fulfilling than his work at the law firm.

Emily Condon said she is proud of the issues her husband has taken up in his career, including his work on domestic violence prevention and victims’ rights as attorney general. She said he is conscientious and hard-working but also pulls his weight at home.

Still, if he turned away from politics tomorrow, she said, that would suit her, too.

“I guess I’m always completely supportive of Charlie,” she said. “But if he told me he didn’t ever want to run for anything else but wanted to be a geologist, I’d say, ‘Well, that’s cool.’”