| Publication:The New York Sun; | Date:Sep 17, 2003; | Section:Front page; | Page:1 |
CLARK CANDIDACY SPARKS CONCERN OF GAY ACTIVISTS ‘ANXIOUSNESS’ EXPRESSED By IRA STOLL Staff Reporter of the Sun
The presidential candidacy of General Wesley Clark, a Rhodes scholar from Arkansas, is already raising concern among a key Democratic constituency — gays and lesbians.
Gay Democratic activists interviewed byThe New York Sun yesterday said that General Clark will have to move quickly to address “anxiousness” among gays about his record, or lack of it. The issue of gays in the military is a particular concern.
General Clark is expected to officially announce his candidacy today in Little Rock, Ark., then head to Iowa for a speech on Friday.
The 58-year-old graduated first in his West Point class and went on to win four stars and serve as NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe during the military action in Kosovo.
Though their political influence within the Democratic Party is newer than that of other constituencies like blacks or Jews, the affluent and highly organized gay community has emerged as an important force within the party in recent years.
The director of the policy institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,Sean Cahill,says gays and lesbians are “the third most loyal Democratic voting bloc” after blacks and Jews. He estimates that nearly 10% of Democratic primary voters are gay, lesbian or bisexual.
The executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, a New York gay advocacy group, Alan Van Capelle, said General Clark will come in for close scrutiny.
“You can be sure the gay and lesbian community is going to press him on the issue of gays in the military,” Mr. Capelle said. “He’s going to have to answer a lot of questions very quickly.”
A member of the Democratic National Committee who met General Clark last week in Los Angeles, Jeremy Bernard, said General Clark is “a great unknown on many issues.”Mr.Bernard, a member of the DNC’s gay and lesbian caucus, said “There is a great deal of anxiousness about how he is.”
General Clark’s signals so far on the question of gays in the military have been mixed.
In a June 15 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he was asked, “Many people would point to the military’s policy on gays as being discriminatory. Are you in favor of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in the military?”
He replied, “I’m not sure that I’d be in favor of that policy. I supported that policy. That was a policy that was given. I don’t think it works. It works better in some circumstances than it does in others. But essentially we’ve got a lot of gay people in the armed forces, always have had, always will have. And I think that, you know, we should welcome people that want to serve. But we also have to maintain consistent standards of discipline; we have to have effective units. So I think that’s an issue that the leaders in the armed forces are going to have to work with and resolve.”
A follow-up question asked, “Should the United States not allow openly gay people to serve in the military?”General Clark responded, “Well, I think we need to charge the men and women responsible for the armed forces to come forward with that answer. I think that has to come from them based on what we need for the armed forces, as well as, you know, their concerns about society as a whole.”
In a June 25 appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire,” the general was asked, “Should gays be able to serve openly in the military?” He replied, “I think the military and the chain of command have to decide that.”
At the private appearance last week in Los Angeles, General Clark spoke “eloquently” about how the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy does not work, Mr. Bernard said.
The chairman of the board of the National Stonewall Democrats, Julian Potter, said General Clark will have to get more specific about his views on gays in the military once he officially enters the race. “He’ll have to answer that question,” said Ms. Potter, who was White House liaison to the gay and lesbian community during the Clinton Administration. “He’ll be pushed on that and that’ll be a real bellwether for the gay community,” she said.
She said gay voters — and Americans in general — were less likely to hold opposition to gay marriage against a presidential candidate than they were opposition to gays in the military, which she described as a matter of “discrimination in employment.”
Rep. Barney Frank, a gay Massachusetts Democrat who is supporting Senator Kerry’s presidential campaign, said he nonetheless welcomed General Clark’s entry into the race as “a good sign for the Democrats.” He said it was a signal that General Clark thinks President Bush is beatable. As for General Clark and the gays in the military issue, “That’s going to be one of the questions for him,” Mr. Frank said.
“I think we do need to have some clarity,” said the co-chairman of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee that supports gay and lesbian candidates, Scott Widmeyer.
“He could have been more clear,” said the political director of the Human Rights Campaign, a large gay rights group, Winnie Stachelberg. “We will send off to General Clark a candidate questionnaire and look forward to hearing back from him on that.”
“If he’s not right…in terms of our gay and lesbian civil rights, he’s not going to get support from the community,” said Mirian Saez, another Democratic National Committee member. She said she was not familiar with General Clark’s record. But she said that the other nine Democratic presidential candidates had all been supportive, and in order to win support from gays and lesbians, General Clark “will have to be at least that or better.”
Indeed, many of the other Democrats in the race — including Senators Lieberman, Edwards and Kerry, Rep. Richard Gephardt, and the former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean — are on record in support of allowing gays to serve openly in the military.
The Democratic National Committee’s treasurer, Andrew Tobias, one of the party’s top fund-raisers, is openly gay, as were 212 of the 4,339 delegates to the party’s 2000 convention, said the director of the party’s office of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender outreach, Eric Stern. “It’s certainly an issue that our party is still working through,” Mr. Stern said.
General Clark’s presidential campaign starts off with at least on highprofile New York backer, Rep. Charles Rangel, the Democrat from Harlem who is the dean of the city’s congressional delegation. Mr. Rangel hasn’t yet formally endorsed General Clark, but he’s been talking him up on television. “He’s clearly behind Clark,” said a source close to Mr. Rangel.
