All in the family: Rosie's gay brother, Daniel, is making a name for himself in New York State politics. (Rosie O'Donnell).

If you read Daniel O'Donnell's campaign literature, he seems like a gay politician with something to hide.

No, he doesn't shy away from his sexual orientation: His 22-year relationship with partner John Banta is mentioned repeatedly in his pamphlets. But what the fliers don't tell you about O'Donnell--a liberal 41-year-old public interest attorney who in November won a Democratic seat representing New York City's upper west side in the state assembly--is his relationship with lesbian celebrity and former talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell.

The closest his printed material gets is a veiled reference telling voters that "despite what you may know about my family, I am not a show-off."

Is that a dig? Not at all, O'Donnell says. "I love my sister, but the fact that we are siblings was irrelevant in my campaign."

You might think having a celebrity sister would give you a big boost in a campaign, but O'Donnell says "it made my job harder. I had to get people to focus on my record, not my celebrity connection."

Indeed, he made it a point not to be closely affiliated with his sister while running for office. "If she would have shown up to campaign for me, it would have turned into being about her and not about the issues or my candidacy. So I worked hard not to let that interfere. On Election Day there was no lever with her name on it. When voters went into the booth I wanted to make sure they knew me and what I stood for."

His bedrock issues included the environment, education, and passing the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, a statewide gay rights bill that was near passage at press time, after a campaign of more than 30 years. Furthermore, he says he's in favor of amending SONDA to include transgender rights, an omission that has caused much strife between transgender and gay activists in the past.

Ever since he began his political career, he's had to fight to establish an identity separate from his famous sister. He says the first thing people say when they find out Rosie is his sibling is, "Oh, my God, you look just like her in the face!" To which O'Donnell replies, "You mean she looks like me. I'm older, so I had this face first!"

He did say, however, that Rosie's coming-out made this year's campaign a lot easier than his failed 1998 campaign for the statehouse. Back then, he recalls, though Rosie was not out publicly, many people in the gay and lesbian community knew she was gay.

"I'd go to some political function or a fund-raiser, and gay and lesbian people would accost me--`Your sister's a lesbian! Why isn't she out?' they'd yell at me. The gay community felt I had some sort of obligation to do something about it, when the reality was that I had no authority or control over that. So it was definitely much easier for me to run for office with her out of the closet."