I believe it's Bitstream Vera Sans, not Verdana. :). Apparently, the following in .gtkrc-2.0 works:
\r\n\r\nstyle "user-font"\r\n{\r\n font_name="times 24"\r\n}\r\nwidget_class "*" style "user-font"\r\n\r\n
Or a shorter form is
\r\n\r\ngtk-font-name = "Times 24"\r\n\r\n\r\n
which sets the default font for all widgets. Got this info from [link|http://knowledge-emporium.com/forum/showpost.php?s=93f5baebdc5bf3c67a754515d0ce86fc&p=61188&postcount=3|here].\r\n