[Dooby]

Kerry, Yale liberal leader, member of Republican group?




By DIANE SCARPONI
Associated Press Writer

April 14, 2004, 2:21 PM EDT

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- John Kerry, Young Republican? Or has the Democratic candidate for president been the victim of a prank noticed nearly 40 years later?

Among the many activities listed under Kerry's photo in the Yale University yearbook of 1966 is membership in Yale Young Republicans. But the campaign says the whole thing was a joke, and the club's president at the time says he's not surprised.

"My bet is it's a joke, because John was very careful about what he did and didn't do," says Renny Scott, the president of the Yale Republicans that year. "Everything was with a mind to the future."

Kerry's college roommate, Dan Barbiero, also doubts the yearbook's accuracy. "I can't imagine that," Barbiero says.

Campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Wednesday that Kerry wasn't a member of the club.

"This is, of course, a college prank," Burton said.

Kerry, the junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, earned a degree in political science at Yale in 1966. He was the head of the Yale Political Union, a college debating club, and led the Liberal Party, one of several political parties in the union that hosted events and debated issues.

Kerry also was the treasurer of the Yale Young Democrats in 1962-63.

It was an overwhelmingly Democratic campus in the 1960s, and the Republican club was all but defunct. In 1965, Republicans tried to revive the club with by offering a $3 membership that entitled students to hear speakers the club brought to campus, such as former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and New York Mayor John Lindsay.

Members also were invited to mixers, where students could get free beer and meet some of the girls the club brought onto the all-male undergraduate campus.

Scott joked that many members of the club likely joined as much for the beer and girls as for the speakers.

The club's memoirs in the 1966 yearbook boasted that the club signed up more than 40 percent of the freshman class and threw a fall mixer that was attended by over 300 girls.

One bona fide Republican was not a member of Yale Young Republicans either: George W. Bush. A history major who graduated in 1968, Bush decided not the join the club, Scott recalls.

"He was in with the fraternity crowd," Scott says. "He was not interested in politics at that stage of his life."