As US Vice President Joe Biden nears a decision on whether to make a bid for the White House next year, gay rights advocates were yesterday set to get a side-by-side measure of the would-be candidate and the front-runner in the race for the Democratic nomination, former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Biden was scheduled to deliver the keynote speech at a gala dinner in Washington for the Human Rights Campaign, following several hours later by remarks from Clinton, who bowed out of the headline role to appear on Saturday Night Live.
Clinton and Biden each enjoy broad support from gay voters and donors, as does US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, who so far has offered the most robust challenge to Clinton.
Photo: AP
She retains an edge with the community over Biden both because of her strong record on gay rights and by virtue of having been on the campaign trail since spring, gay Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf said.
“If he decides to run for president, gay people are like everybody else: It’s late,” Elmendorf said of Biden in a telephone interview. “It’s the same problem he has in early states, and all sorts of constituencies and communities. It’s late in the game and people make commitments, and there’s no reason to abandon your commitment.”
Biden’s best chance at winning support within the gay community is the prospect of a Clinton collapse.
Photo: AFP
Biden’s appeal to voters, including gays, is “his authenticity, honesty, compassion, relatability” and a feeling that “he will be the most electable Democratic candidate,” said Jon Cooper, the national finance chair for Draft Biden, an outside group encouraging the vice president to run.
Cooper, who is gay and is set to attend the Human Rights Campaign dinner, said he “absolutely” tells prospective gay donors that Biden has the strongest pro-gay record of any Democrat in next year’s field. Earlier this week, Cooper attended a Democratic Party gala with gay donors in Manhattan, where US President Barack Obama spoke and said he was approached by about a dozen attendees who handed him their business cards and told him they were prepared to back a Biden campaign.
Gay voters are increasingly the domain of Democratic candidates. In last year’s mid-term US elections, only 24 percent of people who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual said in a CNN exit poll that they voted for Republicans, down from a third in 2012.
“The issue of marriage equality has moved from what used to be the ceiling of support for our community to now being the baseline of support that is expected of any candidate,” National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director Rea Carey said in a telephone interview. “We as a community are now looking to say what else? How else do you care about our community?”
Biden, 72, in March last year said in a speech at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in Los Angeles that his father taught him respect for gay people. He recalled looking out the car window as a high- school student and for the first time seeing two men kissing.
“And my father looked at me and said: ‘They love each other. That’s the end. That’s the end,’” Biden said.
Gay voters have forgiven Biden for his 1996 vote as a US senator for the Defense of Marriage Act, gay rights activist and Democratic operative Phil Attey said.
Former US president Bill Clinton, signed the legislation into law. It defined marriage as a union of only a man and woman.
“Absolutely water under the bridge,” Attey said in a telephone interview. “We need to understand that politicians weren’t ready to fall on their swords for this issue.”
Biden endeared himself to gay voters in 2012 when he declared his support for gay marriage on the NBC program Meet the Press, inadvertently pressuring his boss Obama to do the same. The US Supreme Court in June ruled gay marriage is legal in all of the US.
Clinton, who adopted a rainbow-striped version of her logo as the Supreme Court heard arguments on the gay marriage case this year, was criticized this week by some gay rights advocates over newly released e-mails from her time as secretary of state.
Clinton, 67, in 2011 questioned a change in passport applications for children. The new form would have asked for the names of “parent one” and “parent two” rather than “mother and father.” Clinton indicated a desire to head off a Conservative “media storm,” according to an e-mail to an aide.
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