Senator AWOL and the company he keeps

From today’s New York Post Page Six:

THE 2004 Democratic wannabes are going all-out to court gays. So it raised eyebrows that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) had his Columbia, S.C., headquarters opened yesterday by a candidate who was accused of gay-bashing last year. While running for U.S. Senate (he lost), Alex Sanders called Rudy Giuliani "an ultraliberal" because "he supports gay rights, he supports banning all handguns, he supports abortion. His wife kicked him out, and he moved in with two gay men and a Shih Tzu. Is that South Carolina values? I don't think so." Kerry's campaign spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said the remark "clearly was wrong." An unrepentant Sanders told The Post's Deborah Orin that he's pro-gay rights and his crack at Rudy was legit, since it came in response to a charge that Sanders, who was backed by Barbra Streisand, was "ultraliberal."