PALM SPRINGS — One gets the sense that Michael Huffington is still, all these years later, trying to set the record straight:
He is not homosexual, as journalist David Brock so famously reported in the January 1999 issue of Esquire. He is bisexual. "I love women," he says. "And I love men."
The former Republican congressman, who represented Santa Barbara from 1992 to 1994, says he did not squander $30 million of his family's fortune in his failed Senate bid against Democrat Dianne Feinstein in 1994. "That was my money. I'd earned my first million dollars by the time I was 29." And contrary to what Brock wrote, he says, he was not happy that he lost the tightly fought race. "I was devastated."
But most important, he claims, he never, ever told Brock he might be a Democrat.
"That's just ridiculous," he says. "I have always been a Republican. And I always will be."
For the first time, Huffington is stepping into the national spotlight on behalf of a gay cause. Incensed that President Bush has thrown his weight behind a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Huffington is helping to fund and promote a campaign against it. After a speech at last weekend's annual convention of Log Cabin Republicans -- the nation's most prominent organization of gay Republicans -- he chatted Saturday for 40 minutes about his decision to come forward, his disappointment in Bush and the peace he has now that he is out of the closet.
The matter is particularly painful for the lanky 56-year-old Huffington, a former Texas banker and oilman who has a long history with the Bush family, having worked for the president's father when George H.W. Bush was a congressman. He also goes way back with presidential advisor Karl Rove, whom many Log Cabin members vilified during the three-day convention here as the person responsible for pushing the president to embrace the proposed constitutional amendment.
"I had not planned to get involved with this political issue because I am the old generation," says Huffington, who has donated $200,000 to the Log Cabin campaign, whose centerpiece is a 30-second TV spot featuring footage of Vice President Dick Cheney calmly stating that the federal government should not regulate relationships.
