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Sinews
ou may not know me, but until
last week I was the highest-rank
ing member of the Bush admin
istration who is openly gay.”
With that startling revelation,
Fred Hochberg launched into an opinion piece
that ran Feb. 10 in the New York Tones. In actual
ity, he only stayed on board at the Small Business
Administration for nine days to ensure a smooth
transition, but his statement speaks volumes.
In 1998, Hochberg became the first openly
gay person to serve as deputy in a U.S. Cabinet
level agency. He was among more than 150 such
appointees during the Clinton administration;
President Bush currently has only one.
Hochberg, who visited Portland last Novem
ber for the Human Rights Campaign dinner, was
again in town June 26 to deliver a speech about
workplace diversity at the Federal Deposit Insur
ance Corp. Here are some excerpts from his
interview with Just Out.
Jim Radosta: Bill Clinton was the first pres
ident to hire openly gay and lesbian people,
right?
Fred Hochberg: Without question. Erskine
Bowles, who was his chief of staff, actually was
surprised when he was told that this was the first
administration that had so many openly gay and
lesbian people.
JR: And the Bush administration already
has taken a lot of flak from conservatives for
having even one openly gay appointee.
FH: One of the things that’s come through in
the last few years is that one of the hallmarks of
someone being moderate in their approach is,
“Well, they are good on choice, they believe in
gun control, and they’re good on gay rights.” The
MAIL BOXES ETC.'
M inority P riority
rural areas with eco
nomic development.
And that’s also been
cut to zero.
Top Clinton appointee Fred Hochberg
touts workplace diversity by Jim Radosta
fact that those have become the three legs of the
stool that define a moderate Republican is kind of
remarkable. It also just says that this administra
tion doesn’t want to be moderate—or temperate.
JR: What did you accomplish while at the
SBA?
FH: We took loans to minority business own
ers and almost quadrupled them in eight years.
We tripled loans to women. We made two times
more loans to minorities in eight years than the
prior 40 years of the agency’s history. So we real
ly worked hard to really make choices to extend
economic opportunity to all Americans.
And we signed for the first time ever an
agreement with the federal government and the
National Association of Lesbian and Gay Com
munity Centers to bring business counseling,
entrepreneur workshops and so forth to lesbian
and gay community centers around the country.
So we really did work to make sure that when
we talk about this being a country of equal
opportunity, we really meant it.
The current administration seems to be in the
interest of big business and has a much more narrow
view of what that equal opportunity and access is.
JR: Have you noticed changes at the SBA
since your departure?
FH: The Bush administration proposed a 40
percent cut in the budget. That’s still being
Coventry
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JR: Was being
out at work ever an
issue for you?
debated in Congress.
FH: Barney Frank
President Clinton elevat
once said: “We all
ed it to a Cabinet-level
come out retail, one
agency; George Bush chose
person at a time. We
don’t take a full-page
not to continue that. And
ad in the newspaper
then George Bush took, rel
and say: ‘Attention
atively by federal standards,
world!
Everyone
a moderate-size agency and
should know that I’m
whacked it with some of the
largest cuts of almost agency
gay!’ ”
So it becomes an
in the government.
evolutionary process.
In the last eight years,
Coming out, frankly,
between 75 percent and 80
Fred Hochberg’s next mission: serving
when you have a
percent of all the job growth
as senior adviser on former Housing
partner becomes less
was in small business. So
Secretary Andrew Cuomo’s New York
of
a political state
why would you, at a time
gubernatorial campaign
when the economy could be
ment and is much
stalling or certainly not be as robust, want to not more of a personal statement.
I use this analogy: Imagine if you were
shore up one of the best engines for growth
African American and you took a pill and had
we’ve had in the past eight years? It doesn’t
to look white between 9 and 5 and only could be
make sense.
black when you were at home. What a terrible
JR: Is it frustrating knowing that all the way to live your life! And that’s how so many
gay people still have to live their lives.
work you’ve done could be undone so quickly?
One of the things the Human Rights Cam
FH: Sure. It certainly is frustrating and dis
heartening when you see a lot of good things paign has been working on is to pass the
Employment Nondiscrimination Act, in part, to
that were good for the country and good for the
economy being undone.
change that. Our work is such a basic part of
We had put through—and it was passed by a who we are as a people that that’s an important
large bipartisan majority—what we called a New
ingredient to ultimately change this culture and
this society. jH
Market Initiative to really help inner city and
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