Opinion: John McCain endorsed by high-profile (and very rich) Hillary Clinton fundraiser
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(UPDATE: Updated information attached below.)
Among ardent Hillary Clinton supporters, one of those who most vocally declined to follow the candidate’s lead and line up behind Barack Obama was Lynn Forester de Rothschild (born in New Jersey, she married into the famed British banking family in 2000).
Back in early July, as Obama and Clinton briefly worked the fundraising circuit together, de Rothschild made clear she would have none of the push for party unity. At the time, she told CNN that ‘frankly I don’t like [Obama]. I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.’
Nothing has changed for her since then, and today she formally announced her support for John McCain. In a statement released by his campaign, de Rothschild said:
In an election as important at this, we must choose the candidate who has a proven record of bipartisanship and reforming government, and that’s John McCain. We can’t afford a president who lacks experience and judgment and has never crossed party lines to work for meaningful reform. Amid tough economic times and foreign policy concerns, we need someone who is ready to lead. Although I am a Democrat, I recognize that it’s more important to put country ahead of party and that’s why I support John McCain.
A lawyer and wealthy entrepreneur in her own right who splits her time between New York and a country estate in England, de Rothschild raised scads of money for Clinton and is a member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee (though perhaps not for long).
The statement from the McCain campaign says she plans to campaign for him through election day. Probably not, however, among the lunch-bucket crowd in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and elsewhere.
(UPDATE: In an appearance this afternoon on CNN, de Rothschild told Wolf Blitzer she had resigned from the platform panel, effective today. Quizzed by Blitzer whether, as a supporter of abortion rights, she was concerned that a McCain administration could result in a Supeme Court that overturns the Roe vs. Wade decision that established abortion as federally protected, de Rothschild said she was not.
(Noting that she is a graduate of Columbia Law School, she argued that abortion rights are protected by the Constitution and that she was confident a future high court would not rule otherwise. She also zinged the Democratic Party for, in her view, using abortion and other social topics, such as gay rights, as ‘wedge’ issues to divide voters.)
-- Don Frederick
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