Oct 10, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR  | COMMENTS     

Was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice considered and later dropped as a possible vice presidential pick by top advisers to GOP presidential nominee John McCain because of persistent rumors that she’s a lesbian?

That’s the opinion of a Republican Party insider who had access to the McCain campaign’s inner circle of advisers, according to investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Ian Halperin.

Halperin published the unidentified Republican insider’s account of the McCain campaign’s deliberation over Rice as a possible vice presidential nominee two weeks ago in his blog, Ianundercover.com.

“According to a prominent member of the Republican National Committee privy to the [vice presidential] search process, many in McCain’s inner circle argued furiously for the selection of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the other top contenders, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Tim Pawlenty,” Halperin wrote in his blog.

But rumors about Rice’s sexual orientation, fueled by a recent book by Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler, which reported that Rice jointly owns a house and shared a line of credit with an unmarried woman in California, made it politically untenable for McCain to select Rice as his running mate, Halperin reported the GOP source as saying.

Further speculation about Rice’s sexual orientation surfaced in recent weeks when a reliable, independent source told the Blade that a business adviser to former tennis star and lesbian activist Martina Navratilova boasted about having dated Rice in a clandestine lesbian relationship in Washington a few years ago.

When contacted by the Blade, Navratilova staffer Yelena Bakaleva, an out lesbian, disputed the source’s report that she had an affair with Rice. Bakaleva said the source’s claim could be based on confusion over the fact that Bakaleva had once dated the housemate of Rice’s personal assistant in Washington.

“I never met her,” Bakaleva said of Rice. “My ex-girlfriend was living at the same house as Condoleezza Rice’s personal assistant.”

“I don’t know her personally,” she said of Rice, joking, “She’s not my type.”

The Blade’s source, however, said Bakaleva clearly and definitively stated she had been dating Rice, not a roommate of Rice’s assistant.

State Department spokesperson Gordon Duguid told the Blade this week that neither the department nor Rice would comment on “rumors on the Internet” about Rice’s personal life.

As to whether Rice had been under consideration for McCain’s vice presidential selection, Duguid said Rice has stated publicly on several occasions that she plans to work in academia after she completes her term as Secretary of State.

Most gay activists and Washington insiders interviewed for this story said they have heard the rumors about Rice being gay but compared them to the “celebrity gossip” that is pervasive in both Hollywood and Washington.

“I haven’t seen any evidence to confirm these rumors, and Ms. Rice has said she’s straight,” said one prominent gay activist who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Kessler, whose recent biography of Rice, “The Confidante,” has been widely read by Washington’s political establishment, told the Blade he never asked Rice if she was a lesbian and never obtained convincing evidence about her sexual orientation.

Kessler's book notes that Rice became friends with Blacker and Bean during Rice's long affiliation with Standford University. She served as a political science professor at the university beginning in 1981 and served for six year's as the school's Provost in the 1990s. Rice joined the Bush administration in 2001 as U.S. national security advsor before.Bush appointed her as Secretary of State in January 2005.

Bean recently told Radar-online.com that her arrangement with Rice on the house “was strictly business” and that Rice and Blacker stepped in to help her buy the house at a time when she was in financial need due to mounting medical bills.

Bean identified herself as straight, saying that if she were gay, “I’d be out, loud, and proud” due to her long history of political activism.

‘Culture of the closet’

While declining to speculate on the record about the sexual orientation of Rice or other high-level Washington officials, many activists and political observers agreed that the political atmosphere set by the Bush administration and anti-gay conservative groups has forced public officials — both Republicans and Democrats — to stay in the closet.

Some activists have cited Condoleezza Rice as a case study of the “culture of the closet,” even though most acknowledge they don’t know if she’s gay or not.

“I feel she was rejected as a vice presidential candidate due to her personal life, regardless of whether she is gay or straight,” said gay Republican activist Jim Driscoll of Virginia.

“She ...