Clinton adviser on air at CNN GOP debate

Clinton adviser on air at CNN GOP debate

	Published : Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:50 By : Agencies Print this Story

NEW YORK (AP) - CNN is calling its Republican presidential debate a roaring success, despite a flap over one on-air questioner who turned out to be an adviser to Hillary Clinton.

'The realty is, the questions are the heart of the debate, and the questions were great,' said David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief, who produced the debate. 'The answers, by and large, were great, too.'

Even so, CNN was caught by surprise when one participant in the open-forum event turned out to be a member of a steering committee of gays and lesbians for Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

During the CNN/YouTube Debate, aired Wednesday from St. Petersburg, Fla., Keith Kerr of Santa Rosa, Calif., a retired Army colonel who served as a brigadier general in the reserves, asked the eight candidates about their views on gays in the military, and identified himself as gay.

In response, Republican candidates Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Duncan Hunter all said they supported the current 'don't ask, don't tell' policy.

Kerr's connection to Democratic hopeful Clinton came to light later in the evening when Bill Bennett, the conservative author who is also a CNN contributor, raised the issue in a post-debate discussion with moderator Anderson Cooper.

Cooper acknowledged he had not known of the connection.

Kerr's appearance quickly became a topic on the blogosphere, and in particular on a number of conservative Web sites, which lambasted CNN for including him.

Kerr was one of 5,000 people who submitted videotaped questions through YouTube, and was among a handful invited to be part of the audience, where he was given the chance to ask debaters in person, 'Why you think American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians?'

On a subsequent interview on CNN, Kerr said he had done no work for the Clinton campaign.

Bohrman said on Friday that, in checking Kerr's background, CNN had verified his military experience, and determined through Federal Election Commission records that he had contributed no money to any political campaign.

'We thought a question on this topic would not be inappropriate,' said Bohrman, 'and who better to ask it than a real general who was out as a gay and had not given any political contributions?'

But had CNN known beforehand of Kerr's Clinton connection, he would have been passed over in favor of someone else with a similar question, Bohrman added.

'I wish we had known,' he said.

He said the network's primary goal in vetting questions had been to avoid 'obvious Democratic `gotcha' questions' and fact-check any statements contained within the questions. He described the CNN/YouTube format as a learning process.

CNN first teamed with YouTube last July for a Democratic debate similarly using citizen-submitted videotaped questions. Wednesday's Republican followup attracted more than 4.4 million viewers, which CNN called the most-watched primary debate ever on a cable news network.