Huffington’s Not So Full Disclosure

A friend from back East called me as soon as the new Esquire magazine hit the streets, the same issue with the 1998 Dubious Achievement Awards.

“So,” she said, “did you read that article about Michael Huffington?”

“Did he have a Dubious Achievement?”

“Well, not exactly,” she said.

I asked what that meant.

“Huffington outed himself as gay.”

“He did?”

“Well, not exactly gay,” she said.

I asked what that meant.

“Homosexual, but not gay.”

“Now there’s a dubious achievement,” I said.

“That he’s gay?”

“No,” I said. “That you can be either/or.”

*

Four years and a few weeks ago, Mike Huffington narrowly missed becoming a U.S. senator from California in an election that cost him $30 million of his own dough.

He was married at the time to Arianna Huffington, who, as you know, has since developed a successful career as a right-wing funnywoman.

(I often read Arianna’s writing, since I, like so many others, believe her to be one of America’s few remaining amusing Republicans.)

Mr. and Mrs. Huffington were divorced in 1997. Michael Huffington might be California’s only Republican senator today, if not for a 1994 eleventh-hour revelation that he and Arianna employed a nanny who was an illegal alien. (Michael claims in the Esquire story that he had insisted the nanny be fired, but that Arianna refused.)

Expensive nanny. Cost them $30 million.

Now, with the election and everything else behind him, Michael Huffington seems to be saying:

* He was happy he lost.

* He hated Washington, then and now.

* He dated men, back in the years when he was just out of Stanford and Harvard and again now.

* And, he might be a Democrat.

Golly, I guess GOP fund-raisers and registered voters didn’t exactly have all their facts on the GOP candidate when they went to the polls in 1994, did they? Leave anything else out, Mike?

I wouldn’t personally have cared in the least had Huffington run for office as an openly gay candidate, which might have been tricky, what with the wife and kids following him along the trail that way.

Full disclosure?

Hey, that other guy in Washington didn’t run for office as a man of secret sexual activity, either.

I can’t help but believe, though, that a number of registered Republicans and conservative voters--a large number--might have wanted a tad more information about their candidate back in 1994. Michael, they hardly knew ye.

On the GOP questionnaire, for example, they might have liked it if Mike had put check marks in the boxes next to: “Do you really want to run, or is your heart not in it?” “We know you’re married to a woman, but are you really a heterosexual?” and “You wouldn’t by any chance secretly be a Democrat, now, would you?”

Just a hunch on my part.

I went to the polls in 1994 like any other Californian, armed with a wee bit of information about my candidates. All I really knew about voting for Michael Huffington is that if he won, there was a damn good chance Arianna could show up at the inauguration ball dressed in a floor-length American flag.

Huffington was persuaded to run by a senator and presidential wannabe, Phil Gramm of Texas, in spite of the fact that Michael had no real experience in politics until he attended a 1991 Republican training seminar for people who would like to get into politics.

(Kind of a congressional fantasy camp.)

Oh, Huffington did work once as a George Bush intern, but as we all know, an intern does not a politician make.

Let me rephrase that.

*

Long before clearing $80 million in a half-a-billion Texas oil deal, Esquire reports: “In 1976 and 1977, Mike began to have more sex with men than with women. He was having a horrible time. It occurred to him that he might be gay.”

Yep, it would occur to me that I might be gay, if I was having more sex with men than women.

Furthermore: “He’s not really gay. Gay means so much more, carries so much cultural baggage, and he’s not that. The word gay just doesn’t describe him. It really doesn’t.”

Mmm-hmmm. I have the same problem. I’m heterosexual, but I’m not straight. Straight means so much more.

This is all good to know, though, in case I later run for office. Maybe I should sign up for a seminar.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or e-mail mike.downey@latimes.com.