But the research paid off. Cheney teamed up with a powerful ally to spearhead the effort: International Mr. Leather 1999. Bruce Chopnik lives in Denver and took the crown just about the time Cheney's efforts were getting underway. They flew to San Francisco to meet with leaders of the boycott, and to Chicago to powwow with the owners of the International Mr. Leather competition, which Chopnik said draws 20,000 to 25,000 participants a year to its convention.

"It caused a lot of political unrest on my side," but Cheney was constantly by his side to support and advise him, he said. "Whenever I got slammed with a question, Mary was just a phone call away."

Chopnik said Coors sponsored several leather events around the country, and was considering a donation to the National Leather Archive Museum in Chicago when Cheney left. When he stepped down from his title this May, Coors footed the bill for his farewell roast in Chicago.

He said the leather community was extremely resistant to Coors in the beginning, but now describes them as "highly supportive." He concurred with the assessment of other gay leaders that the impact had rippled out far beyond the leather community.

"In the long run, she's opened the doors to a lot of people's minds," he said. "We worked together to dispose of the mystique about Coors in the gay community," he said. Chopnik said he was also approached by representatives of Procter and Gamble, to ascertain how Cheney made such inroads so quickly.

Cheney is respected in the gay community, yet strangely enigmatic for someone in such a visible role. She conscientiously avoids trading on her family name and plays her political views fairly close to the vest, sources throughout the community report. One activist after another said she seemed to support gay rights causes, but come to think of it, she rarely expressed those opinions directly. There have been occasional glimpses: "She always talks about how important the domestic partner benefits are," one said.

She is considered active, but not necessarily activist. "It's hard to tell how much of it is her and how much is part of her job," one friend said. She is registered as an independent.

Local and national gay leaders are preparing for a fresh blast of attention thanks to Cheney, but their opinions on how it will play out vary widely, with an intricate web of benefits and risks.

So far, the Bush team appears to be welcoming its new gay member with open arms. Its first response leaked out in the Drudge Report Tuesday, in a piece titled, "BUSH SAID TO EMBRACE CHENEY DAUGHTER'S SEXUALITY." It quotes an unnamed "top Bush source" saying: "Being gay or lesbian is not a liability in this campaign. The governor embraces both of Mr. Cheney's daughters and will invite them to campaign with him."

"If the Bush campaign is saying that, that is a positive step," HRC's David Smith said. "It's not something they've articulated before in very clear terms."

Bush spokesman Ray Sullivan said the campaign could not verify those statements.

"Secretary Cheney has asked that the private lives of his family be left private," Sullivan said Friday. He was unaware of any role Mary Cheney would play at the convention, and noted that Bush's daughters had no official role either. He could not say whether Mary Cheney's partner would accompany her to the convention, or onto the podium during the traditional family gathering.

Local gay leader Mike Smith, also co-founder of the Names Project, sees the chief benefit in social acceptance rather than electoral politics. "There's a lot of social positives from this for a vice presidential candidate to have an openly gay child and have that not perceived as a negative in choosing that person," he said.

This week's events seem to contrast to the 1996 campaign, when Cheney decided not to run for president at least partly because of the exposure to his daughter.Lynne Cheney's comments to Cokie Roberts on Sunday, however, suggest that the Bush-Cheney team does not entirely have its story straight about the importance of Cheney's sexuality.

However, some leaders were afraid that an articulate poster child for gay Republicanism might bolster Bush's compassionate conservative appeal, and neutralize some of Gore's expected charges of intolerance.

"There is a danger, and we can back it up with numbers," said National Gay Lesbian Task Force spokesman David Elliot. He said voter research showed 5.5 percent of the electorate identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, and typically voted from 29 percent to 33 percent Republican. But that percentage dropped to an all-time low of 22 percent after the 1992 convention, best known for Pat Buchanan's vitriolic speech, he said.

"Gays and lesbians watched the Republican Convention in '92 and were scared to death," Elliot said. "The number of [gay, lesbian and bisexual] voters plummets when Republicans bash our community, but then some of them drift back when they soften the rhetoric a bit."

He foresees large defections from this Democratic base if the Bush campaign visibly embraces Mary Cheney, and markets her as effectively as they've used Bush's Hispanic nephew George P. Bush in that community.

HRC sees it differently. David Smith said gay issues frequently lie dormant for years with much of the population, until an event like Matthew Shepard's murder, or the killing of PFC Barry Winchell last year, temporarily focuses attention on hate crimes.

Mary Cheney's emergence will force the spotlight onto those issues and embarrass the campaign with intolerant positions, Smith said. "It presents all sorts of difficult questions." He scoffs at the notion that voters will accept what he calls "Trojan horse politics -- all those hard-right positions, packaged as conservative."

"That's not going to happen," he said. "The fact that [Bush] opposes Mary Cheney adopting a child -- it's not going to happen."

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