The opening
battle in the war between 2008 Democratic presidential
front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton, the junior senator
from New York, and Barack Obama, the junior senator
from Illinois, was surely fought the last week in
February, after David Geffen--the out billionaire,
entertainment mogul, and onetime friend of Bill--told
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Republicans
thought Clinton was the "easiest to
beat" and that she and her husband "lie with
such ease it's troubling." The scorching
interview was published February 21, the day after
Geffen hosted a star-filled fund-raiser for Obama in Los
Angeles, as he had in years past for Bill Clinton.
But now the
tables had turned, and Geffen's statements triggered
a rapid response from Team Hillary, which decried the
"politics of personal destruction"
(remember that old chestnut?) and demanded that Obama
distance himself from the comments and return the $1.3
million he had raised the night before. The Illinois
senator fired back that he was not involved and played
up the Clintons' past relationship with Geffen (whom,
it was speculated in press reports, had soured on the former
first couple because Bill refused his request to
pardon imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier). The
dispute was the talk of Washington, Hollywood, and New York
for days, and although both candidates quickly returned to
playing nice, the episode was a perfect example of how
heated the 2008 presidential campaign--expected
to be the costliest in history and possibly the most
contentious--had become.
That Clinton and
Obama, both surging dramatically ahead of the six other
declared Democratic candidates, were essentially fighting
over a gay man uncannily foreshadowed the role that
LGBT people will play in their candidacies--and
the general election two Novembers from now. Although the
two senators, not to mention the Republican slate of
contenders, will be squaring off on many issues,
foremost among them Iraq, gay people and their issues
could be as meaningful as any other factor when electoral
margins of victory are sometimes measured in the thousands
of votes or less. After all, who could forget how
expertly the Republicans exploited homophobia in 2004
to narrowly defeat John Kerry?
"The
Democrats have seen the importance of LGBT issues,"
says Ramon Gardenhire, a political consultant and the
former deputy director for LGBT outreach at the
Democratic National Committee. "There are too many
important issues on the table to take anything for
granted."
