On Martha's Vineyard, a Clinton-Obama divide

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Politics at Play on Martha’s Vineyard
By MICHELLE HIGGINS
Published: August 17, 2007


(Robert Spencer for The New York Times)
A cardboard cutout of Senator Hillary Clinton is seen outside of Wicked Martha's, a store featuring many "Hillary for President" items.

THE paella has been ordered, the invitations have been sent out, and a large white tent has been reserved for the lawn. Next weekend, a few hundred guests, many who spend their summers on this dune-swept island off the coast of Cape Cod, will gather in Edgartown at the waterfront home of Frank Biondi, a former chief executive of Universal Studios and Viacom, and his wife, Carol, for a fund-raising party for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. Donations for the fund-raiser, which is also being coordinated by Jill Iscol and her husband, Ken, who was principal owner of Cellular One, have been set at $2,300 and $1,000. Helping with the event are Clinton friends like Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and the Washington power broker Vernon Jordan.

Meanwhile, about 10 miles from the Biondis’ home, on the northeast side of the island in Oak Bluffs, similar preparations are being made for a fund-raising party for Senator Barack Obama, to be held the following Tuesday at the home of Ron and Judy Davenport, founders of Pittsburgh-based Sheridan Broadcasting....

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Carol Craven, the owner of a gallery in Vineyard Haven, who is on the host committee for the Obama fund-raiser, acknowledged that some of her friends won’t be at the party. “An awful lot of my pals are Hillary people,” she said. It’s turning out to be that kind of summer on Martha’s Vineyard, long a Democratic enclave — one in which a highly charged political season, with two prominent candidates with powerful personal stories to tell, is dividing old loyalties, testing longtime friendships and causing a few awkward moments at the island’s many dinner parties....

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For decades, Martha’s Vineyard has been known as a summer enclave for the rich, the famous and the powerful — perhaps no more so than during the years of the Clinton presidency, when Bill and Hillary, with no permanent vacation home of their own, would regularly visit and stay with friends who had places on the Vineyard. For a time, they almost turned the Vineyard into a de facto Summer White House....That’s why this summer has been such an interesting one on the island, with Mrs. Clinton running for president — a favorite daughter, if you will — and with many people both wishing her well and reveling in their proximity to the woman who could be the country’s first female president.

Yet, the emergence of Mr. Obama as a serious rival — and with his own “first” at stake — has begun to set friend against friend and, at times, has brought a decidedly hard edge to the usual summer banter....

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/travel/escapes/17vineyard.html