However, Ryan P. McAuliffe ’06, a member of the Harvard College Democrats and the BGLTSA who did not attend the event, said he was unsatisfied with her explanation.
“I do find some level of hypocrisy in the stance that Dick Gephardt has taken. However, I do leave him room to grow as a policy maker in the United States. He does have a long history of not actually being a strong supporter of gay rights,” he said. “But, I do applaud his support of civil union—it shows he has progressed in his political career.”
McAuliffe said he thought that Gephardt’s sexuality would help her father’s campaign, pointing out that over the summer the two were featured in the June issue of the Advocate, a gay news magazine.
But Gephardt said her father has been a strong supporter of gay rights for the last 10 years and has fought for civil rights of all minorities. She recalled his fight to pass hate-crimes legislation and his support of funding for the treatment and prevention of AIDS.
In addition to gay rights, Gephardt tried to touch on all relevant voter issues in her talk, asserting that she offers more to her dad’s campaign than expertise on a single issue.
“It is insulting to talk to groups about just gay and lesbian issues because they want health care too. They are voters too,” she said.
Gephardt on Gephardt
With a herd of nine Democrats vying to square off against President Bush next November, Gephardt described her father as an electable candidate, attributing his appeal in part to his Missouri roots.
“If we are going to have a candidate that beats the president, we need a candidate that can win the more conservative states,” she said. “My dad is the only top candidate from the Midwest. He is a person they can identify with.”
She said her father would make repealing the Bush tax cut a priority.
“We have had the worst economy in terms of the unemployment rate since Hoover, thanks to the president,” she said.
She also explained her father’s desire to provide health care to every person in this country, calling it “the biggest plan and the boldest plan of all the candidates.”
In terms of his plan for education, Gephardt spoke of her father’s commitment to training good teachers and rewarding students for entering the field of education.
Gephardt explained, “My sister is a teacher and made $17,000 in her first year. Yet, she had the same loans as someone who was graduating with an MBA.”
The atmosphere at the event was intimate, with a low turn-out of only five students.
IOP member James L. Granger ’05 attributed the poor attendance to the event’s afternoon scheduling, a period when most students are in class.
He also said he would have liked to have heard Gephardt discuss more of a diversity of issues.
“I liked her talk of the social policies which has been crowded out by the foreign policy and Iraq issues. But I would have liked to hear her talk about that too because it is a difficult issue without a clear answer, and I don’t think many of the candidates have proposed a concrete plan of what they are going to do,” he said.
—Staff writer Faryl W. Ury can be reached at ury@fas.harvard.edu.