Kerry's Momentum Could Be Slowed By Mary Cheney
BY JILL GARDINER - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 15, 2004
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/3248
Senator Kerry's mention of the vice president's daughter, in answering a question about homosexuality in America, threatens to break the momentum he has established in recent weeks.
President Bush's most conservative supporters invoked one phrase yesterday to describe Mr. Kerry's mention of Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter during the last presidential debate: Low blow. And the vice president agreed.
"I was, like many people that I have since heard from, offended by it," Mr. Cheney told a Philadelphia radio station. "I thought he was trying to take some kind of political advantage there, and it was totally inappropriate." Later, the vice president told a rally in Fort Myers, Fla., Mr. Kerry is "a man who will do and say anything to get elected, and I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father."
Conservative and Christian groups across the state said Mr. Kerry's singling out of Mary Cheney, who is openly gay, in response to a question about homosexuality during Wednesday night's debate was completely out of line and infringed upon the family's privacy.
"It was really one of the lowest comments I've ever seen, and I've been in this game since the '60s, over 40 years," the chairman of the New York Conservative Party, Michael Long, said.
Though Mr. Cheney has himself broken ranks with Mr. Bush in declining to support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Mr. Long said it was inappropriate for Mr. Kerry to exploit that position.
"Dick Cheney hasn't waltzed around displaying his daughter as a lesbian," Mr. Long said during a phone interview. "She happens to be public about it. That's her personal lifestyle. If Dick Cheney was running around pounding his chest saying that's why I have these various views, maybe it would be fair game, but it is not part of the climate, it should not be part of the presidential debate."
At a banquet for Empire State Pride Agenda in Midtown last night, however, many of those in attendance defended Mr. Kerry's remarks.
"The Cheneys were the ones who threw their daughter's sexual orientation into the public debate by raising it in the context of the president's homophobic constitutional amendment," Christine Quinn, an openly gay Democrat who is a City Council member from Manhattan, said. "The bottom line is, which candidate is out to destroy the gay community in America, and those candidates are Bush and Cheney."
Among the prominent Kerry supporters at the banquet was Catharine Edwards, the senator's older daughter.
Mr. Kerry's comment about Ms. Cheney was not the only political subplot at the gay-pride event.
Governor McGreevey of New Jersey was there, making his first appearance at a public event sponsored by a gay rights group since he announced that he is gay and would resign from office. Mr. McGreevey didn't address the crowd of more than 1,000 people, but, when swarmed by a mob of journalists, he thanked his supporters for their "decency and kindness" and said, "Today is a step forward in a self-journey."
Mayor Bloomberg was also at the event - despite having filed a lawsuit yesterday challenging the City Council's override of his veto of a bill requiring certain companies that have contracts with the city to provide benefits for domestic partners. The mayor's argument is that the city should not be promoting a social agenda.
The stir over Mary Cheney, which drew national attention yesterday, began immediately after the debate, when the vice president's wife, Lynne Cheney, accused the Democratic presidential nominee of pulling a "cheap and tawdry political trick."
"I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom," Mrs. Cheney said at a Republican debate-watching party in Coraopolis, a suburban of Pittsburgh. "This is not a good man."
Mary Cheney, who has avoided the limelight throughout the campaign despite being the chief campaign manager for her father, did not respond.
The Kerry-Edwards camp responded swiftly, moving to quash any ill will the comment generated. Elizabeth Edwards, Senator Edwards's wife, said in a radio interview that Lynne Cheney's sharp reaction seemed to insinuate there was shame associated with being gay. Mrs. Edwards called that reaction "sad."
Mr. Kerry issued a statement, saying, "I love my daughters. [The Cheneys] love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue."
But some said damage was done to the Democratic ticket and the comments appeared to be a calculated strategy to humiliate the president.
"I think it was intended to embarrass the president," the head of the Christian group New Yorkers For Constitutional Freedoms, the Rev. Duane Medley, said. "I think it was intended to draw homosexual votes toward the Democratic candidate."
"It was a way to get people to say, 'Wow, the president is for marriage, but here his own running mate's daughter can't have a marriage because she's a lesbian,'" Mr. Medley, whose organization has been pushing for the Defense of Marriage Act banning same-sex marriage in the state, said. "But it has no application to the election."
Political consultants say there was no doubt Mr. Kerry's remarks were an attempt to expose the fractured positions in the Bush administration and turn conservative attention to the fact that Mr. Cheney does not support a ban on gay marriage.
But the question remains: Will it make a difference on Election Day? Most polls gave the debate win to Mr. Kerry, though by varying margins.
The executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay group, issued a statement yesterday critical of both candidates.
"Senator Kerry could have made his point about gay and lesbian Americans without mentioning the vice president's daughter. However, this shouldn't distract us from the fact that President Bush, Karl Rove, and other Republicans have been using gay and lesbian families as a political wedge issue in this campaign," Patrick Guerrier said.
That is hogwash. Kerry was all over the map, on social issues particularly. Bush mopped the floor with him. But then, democRATs call good, evil and evil good.
"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes And clever in their own sight! Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine And valiant men in mixing strong drink, Who justify the wicked for a bribe, And take away the rights of the ones who are in the right!"- (Isaiah 5-20-23)