Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

(COMTEX) B: Clinton Decries Anti-Hillary Fund-Raiser ( AP Online )

NEW YORK, Apr 12, 2005 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Former President Clinton says
it's "sad" that a Republican political consultant who married his male partner
is raising funds to defeat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. But an associate says
there's nothing wrong with being gay and Republican.

Clinton said Monday there might be "some sort of self-loathing" for Arthur
Finkelstein, the longtime GOP operative who helped Gov. George Pataki unseat
Democrat Mario Cuomo in 1994.

Finkelstein told The New York Times last week that he had married his partner of
40 years in Massachusetts, saying he believes "visitation rights, health care
benefits and other human relationship contracts that are taken for granted by
all married people should be available to partners." The marriage took place in
December.

Finkelstein is lining up donors to help raise $10 million for a "Stop Her Now"
committee to defeat the senator's 2006 re-election effort. New York magazine
first reported Finkelstein's "Stop Her Now" plan in February, and a GOP
operative speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the account to The
Associated Press at the time.

At a news conference Monday about his foundation's AIDS initiatives, the former
president was asked whether the anti-Hillary efforts made him angry.

"Actually, I was sort of sad when I read it," he said.

"I thought, one of two things. Either this guy believes his party is not serious
and is totally Machiavellian in its position, or you know, as David Brock said
in his great book 'Blinded by the Right,' there's some sort of self-loathing or
something. I was more sad for him."

In the book Clinton was referring to, the formerly conservative Brock says that
when he attacked the left he was expressing his own gay self-hatred.

Finkelstein did not return a call seeking comment.

Kieran Mahoney, a GOP consultant who has worked with Finkelstein, said Clinton
was "engaging in pretty basic stereotyping by suggesting that because somebody's
gay they have to be a Democrat."

The national Republican Party has taken an aggressive stance against gay
marriage, with President Bush endorsing a constitutional ban on same-sex
marriage.

Asked about his wife's possible presidential ambitions, Clinton said, "Whatever
she wants to do I'm for her, but we should deal with the matters at hand,"
referring to issues before Congress and her re-election plans.

---

Associated Press writer Marc Humbert in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this
report.

By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press Writer

Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved

-0-

*** end of story ***