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Bush's Efforts to Court the Catholic Vote Takes a Slight Detour
Oh so slight:
| quote: | Catholic publisher quits Bush campaign
David D. Kirkpatrick
New York Times
Published August 19, 2004
Deal W. Hudson, the publisher of the conservative Roman Catholic journal Crisis and the architect of a Republican effort to court Catholic voters, said he is resigning as an adviser to the Bush campaign because of a Catholic newspaper's investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct. The accusations involve a student at a college where he once taught.
"No one regrets my past mistakes more than I do," Hudson wrote in a column posted Wednesday on the online edition of National Review announcing his resignation. "At the time, I dealt with this in an upright manner and the matter was satisfactorily resolved long ago," he wrote, without specifying the accusations. Hudson, 54, said he had been happily married to his current wife for 17 years. Called for comment, he declined.
At Fordham University, a Jesuit school in New York where Hudson taught from 1989 to 1995, a university spokeswoman confirmed that the episode had led to Hudson's resignation. The spokeswoman, Elizabeth Schmalz, said: "Fordham followed its policy rigorously in this matter and initiated an investigation upon receipt of the student complaint. The professor later surrendered his tenure at Fordham." Schmalz added, "Something inappropriate was done."
A person involved with the university's investigation said that a female undergraduate in one of Hudson's classes reported to the university that, after she had become drunk at a bar, Hudson made sexual advances toward her. After several weeks, she charged him with sexual harassment. The accusations were made near the end of a school year, and Hudson left academia.
Hudson, a former Southern Baptist who converted to Catholicism at the age of 34, has been an influential adviser to President Bush and a close friend of White House political strategist Karl Rove since the late 1990s. Hudson first caught Rove's attention by publishing a study in Crisis in 1998 arguing that Republican candidates could make inroads among traditionally Democratic-leaning Catholic voters by focusing on regular churchgoers, a strategy that dove-tailed with Bush's emphasis on "compassionate conservatism."
Hudson signed on as an adviser to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, and for the last four years has been a prominent participant in a weekly conference call held by the Republican National Committee with influential Catholic supporters.
© Copyright 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/4935870.html
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___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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