In Bill Clinton’s Stump Speeches, Hillary Has Plenty of GOP Fans
Some former antagonists are used to vouch for the Democratic front-runner
ALBANY, N.Y.—Bill Clinton tussled with Republicans throughout his White House years. Now, he is using some of his old antagonists to vouch for his wife.
The ex-president has been mentioning everyone from obscure local Republicans to former congressional leaders who sought to drive him from office in his second term: Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. Mr. Clinton’s point is that in an era of fierce partisanship, even the most hard-bitten Republicans liked Hillary Clinton and worked constructively with her.
How do these Republicans feel about popping up in Mr. Clinton’s speeches? Some are thrilled he is dropping their names; others say the stories are a bit embellished. In one case, it is a mystery as to whom Mr. Clinton is referring while seeking to cast congressional Republicans as friendlier than they appear.
“I know the Republicans are being mean to her now, but that’s just what they do,” he said during an address in Lincoln, Neb.
Mr. Clinton has made about 250 appearances on behalf of his wife. He typically promotes Mrs. Clinton’s credentials, discusses the broader political landscape and trumpets his own record. A recurring theme is Republicans who respect and like the former first lady, senator and secretary of state.
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One person who has figured prominently in Mr. Clinton’s remarks is Mr. DeLay, a former House GOP leader from Texas. As Mr. Clinton tells it, when she was first lady, Mrs. Clinton asked Mr. DeLay if he would help pass legislation aimed at moving children from foster care into permanent homes. Knowing that Mr. DeLay disliked her husband, Mrs. Clinton appealed to him on family grounds, the story goes.
In a speech in Albany, Mr. Clinton said of Mr. DeLay: “He couldn’t stand me.”
“She said, ‘Congressman, I know we don’t agree on much.’ He said, ‘Come on, Hillary? Do we agree on anything?’ She said, ‘Yes we do. You love your kids, don’t you?…For all our disagreements, I know you adopted those children and I honor you for it.’
“And she sort of had him,” Mr. Clinton said.
And so Mr. DeLay agreed to produce legislation that increased the number of children adopted from foster-care homes, Mr. Clinton said.
Mr. DeLay takes issue with Mr. Clinton’s suggestion that it took Mrs. Clinton’s intervention to get him on board, saying foster care has long been important to him and his wife. “That was my issue to begin with!” he said in an interview, adding that he and his wife “were foster parents, and foster care meant a lot to me And adoption out of foster care was very important.”
Mr. DeLay has in the past praised Mrs. Clinton’s work on behalf of foster children. Asked his view of Mr. Clinton’s telling the story on the campaign trail, Mr. DeLay said: “Who can explain Bill Clinton?”
Mr. Clinton declined to comment.
Mr. Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker, once served with Mrs. Clinton, when she was a New York senator, on a panel offering advice on transforming the U.S. military.
“If you elect her president, you will never have to worry there’s somebody she won’t see,” Mr. Clinton said in Omaha, Neb.
Mr. Gingrich said he is “always flattered to have a former president speak about me in non-attack mode.”
Of Mrs. Clinton, he said: “I think she’d be an effective president,” even as he “would disagree with her a lot.”
Also figuring in a number of Clinton speeches is Joe Gergela. He was executive director of the Long Island Farm Bureau, an advocacy group, for 26 years until retiring in 2014.
In Syracuse, N.Y., Mr. Clinton said Mr. Gergela told the media that even though he was a Republican, Mrs. Clinton “is the only politician who actually did something for us.”
Mr. Gergela said he is a fan of the Clintons. But asked if she was indeed the only elected official who delivered for farmers, he paused.
“It’s a little bit of a paraphrase,” he said, adding that other U.S. and state officials were helpful, too.
In his Nebraska remarks, the former president created some head-scratching when he said that when he asked a former Senate Republican leader whether he truly believed the Clintons did anything wrong in the Whitewater land deals in Arkansas that became a focus of congressional investigations, the man laughed and said, “Of course, you didn’t.”
Asked who that was, aides said Mr. Clinton wasn’t talking about a specific senator but was making the broader point that Republicans unfairly targeted his presidency.
Write to Peter Nicholas at peter.nicholas@wsj.com
