Baby Bills: a crop of candidates from the Clinton administration could add new life to gay political causes. (2002 Election Watch).

In his capacity as a senior adviser to President Clinton, Rahm Emanuel tangled repeatedly with David Mixner, a Clinton friend and gay activist, at one point deeming him "persona non grata" for publicly crossing swords with the president.

Nearly 10 years later the feisty Emanuel, running for Congress in Illinois's Chicago-area fifth district, which has a large gay population, views the dustup as a learning experience. "You have disagreements with people, and then you move on," he says. "No one has ever said I backed away from a fight I cared about. But at the same time, Clinton was very good about bringing people together for the good of the country, and that's something I'd like to accomplish too."

Mixner, who today is a political and business consultant, agrees. "Rahm and I will never be friends," he says with a laugh. "But he's running a great campaign, doing all the right things working with and for the gay community."

As a former Clinton official seeking elective office, Emanuel is hardly alone. Several high-level advisers are on the November ballot, promising to measure up to--and even surpass--Clinton's checkered gay rights record. From his aborted attempt to lift the ban on gay and lesbian military service members to his eloquent denunciation of the murder of Matthew Shepard, Clinton's eight years in the White House were a virtual gay political laboratory without precedent in American history.

Today, with the current president all but ignoring gay issues and with the two major pieces of federal gay rights legislation effectively bottled up by the Republican-controlled House, these prominent candidates could be the best hope for carrying the mantle of equal rights for gays into the future of American politics.

They all "lived in an up-close and personal way the beginning phases of gays coming out in national politics," says Richard Socarides, who served as Clinton's liaison to gays and lesbians and is now vice president for corporate relations at AOL Time Warner. "Naturally, their approach to these issues is going to effect the realization of that era--that gays are entitled to full citizenship."

Julian Potter, who also served as Clinton's liaison to gays and lesbians and today serves as cochair of the gay political group National Stonewall Democrats, agrees. "What Clinton tried to do was for the first time really understand where the gay constituency fit in the Democratic Party and the body politic," she says. "It was really an education for everyone, including me, on how to talk about gay life to the nation as a whole."

In addition to Emanuel, other candidates from the Clinton administration include former Energy secretary Bill Richardson, who is the Democratic candidate for governor of New Mexico, and Erskine Bowles, who served as Clinton's chief of staff and is now taking on Elizabeth Dole for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jesse Helms in North Carolina. Two other prominent Clintonites, former attorney general Janet Reno and Labor secretary Robert Reich, went down to defeat in primary races for the governorships of Florida and Massachusetts, respectively. In addition, former Housing and Urban Development secretary Andrew Cuomo withdrew his bid for New York governor before the September 10 Democratic primary.

Bowles, the most conservative of the former administration officials, has so far been reluctant to associate with Clinton's gay rights legacy. But Socarides, who worked closely with him in the White House, insists that thanks to the Clinton administration, Bowles has already come a long way on gay issues. "Erskine is a guy from a conservative state with a relatively conservative upbringing," he explains. "He is a terrific person to work for. He benefited tremendously from working with a diverse group of people and hearing a steady expression of gay politics."

Meanwhile Richardson, who has been a vocal supporter of gay rights, has found that there are political risks associated with such a stand. In recorded messages telephoned to registered voters, the New Mexico Family Council has attempted to tar Richardson as a supporter of marriage rights for gay couples, a risky position in a socially conservative state. "I support ending discrimination against all people," Richardson said in a prepared statement in response to the antigay campaign. "I do not support gay marriage."

While the Energy Department didn't have much to do with gay policy, Mixner says Richardson was always very supportive: "He was one of the cabinet members--and I can't say this about every one--who showed up at [gay] events, adding his prestige and dignity to them. That is definitely paying dividends as he runs for office back home, which has a large GLBT community."

Still, as Reno, Reich, and Cuomo found, it's not always easy to translate national political stature into state or local electoral success. "Some White House types believe that serving in the federal government creates a natural constituency," Mixner says. "Washington can be an unreal, exalted place where everyone has big budgets and staff. But all politics is local." Nevertheless, they took pro-gay positions they may not have taken had they not been a part of the Clinton administration.

Reno, the first woman attorney general (and second-longest-serving), clashed with gay activists at first. "I remember that during the early negotiations over the hate-crimes bill, Reno was very reluctant to support expansion of a federal role by adding sexual orientation," Socarides says. "But by end of the terms she was one of the strongest proponents. She learned from the Shepard case; she learned from her staffers who were gay. I became quite close to her, and site asked a lot of good questions."

In Florida, candidate Reno attacked a state law, which Republican governor Jeb Bush supports, banning adoptions by gays, and she spared no effort to court gay voters--even posing with revelers at a dance club. "It looked like Janet was having a great time hanging out with all the Miami Beach boys," Potter says. "She certainly didn't seem to have much reluctance to embrace the gay community anymore."

Reich likewise showed no reluctance to embrace a still-controversial cause and go well beyond the standard set by his former boss. In his race for Massachusetts governor, Reich became one of the first statewide candidates to endorse equal marriage rights for gay people.

"I don't think either of their losses had much to do with gay rights," Mixner says. "Reno simply ran a bad campaign and didn't have a lot of money to spend. Reich just never gained any momentum." Indeed, Reno's position on adoptions by gays eventually forced her Democratic primary opponent, Bill McBride, to take a nearly identical position on the issue. In Massachusetts, Reich would actually jump briefly in the polls after the media trumpeted his position on same-sex marriage.

And even though it didn't help him win the nomination, Reich hopes the stands he and the other Clinton candidates are taking today will pave the way for progress. "When we look back 30 years at laws against interracial marriages, we're embarrassed," he says. "I hope in 30 years when we look back we'll be embarrassed about this too."

Bull is coeditor of At Ground Zero. Mubarak Dahir provided additional reporting for this article.