By Advocate.com Editors
Houston oilman Robert Adam Mosbacher, considered among the greatest fundraisers in the history of the Republican Party and a longtime friend of George H.W. Bush, died Sunday of pancreatic cancer. He was 82.
Mosbacher served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 1989 to 1992 and was influential in helping to form the North American Free Trade Agreement. He also made headlines when, in 1992, while working on the Bush/Quayle election campaign, he took a meeting with gay activists to discuss discrimination, AIDS and homophobic campaign rhetoric.
"Having the highest-ranking member of your re-election campaign meet with the homosexual lobby is a direct contradiction to your attempts to portray your administration as pro-family," Reverend Morris Chapman, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote at the time.
His opposition to the meeting was supported by several right wingers, including a pre Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The Bush campaign told conservatives the meeting was “a personal decision” for Mosbacher.
Mosbacher was also a close friend of now Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who worked for his company Mosbacher Energy for 18 years and pushed for his inclusion in the Houston Hall of Fame while she was a City Council member.
“When I stepped into the City Controller's office, managing about 75 people — the first time I'd had to manage a staff that large — I very much channeled Bob Mosbacher,” she said. “I was sort of a cog in the wheel there, a number cruncher, but he had a profound influence on me. He made it clear he knew something about me personally. He felt it important to make that connection to people. It was good for business and it made the office run more smoothly. I also learned you never fall in love with a deal. The numbers always have to make sense. That is a value I absorbed there and have tried to take into government”.
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