THEY could be the lesbian power couple of all time: Randi Weingarten, the new president of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, is dating Hilary Rosen, former head of the Recording Industry Association of America, who appears on CNN and is Washington, DC, editor-at-large for the Huffington Post.
UPDATE: Weingarten Steps Down From United Federation of Teachers
Both women regularly appear on lists of the most powerful women in the US. Tonight, the lovebirds and Kennedy cousin Mark Shriver are co-hosting a party at Art & Soul in DC to launch Julianne Moore‘s children’s book, “Freckleface Strawberry and the Dodgeball Bully.”
A rep for Weingarten at the 110,000-member United Federation of Teachers, which she’s run since 1998, said, “We don’t discuss Randi’s personal life.” Rosen declined to comment. But a friend said, “They are definitely dating.”
Weingarten went public with her same-sexuality in 2007, when she was honored by Empire State Pride Agenda and introduced Liz Margolies, a psychotherapist and health care activist, as her partner.
Rosen resigned as head of the RIAA in 2003, saying she wanted to spend more time with her partner, Elizabeth Birch, and the couple’s twins, a boy and a girl.
When Weingarten came out, openly gay City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said, “Her actions . . . speak to her personal courage and the fact that in our great city, diversity is seen as a strength, not an impediment.”
Besides working in public relations at the Brunswick Group, Rosen is a partner with Ilene Chaiken, creator of the Showtime series “The L Word,” on OurChart.com, a social networking site for lesbians.
The Post dubbed Weingarten, the teachers union capo di tutti capo, as “The Puppet Master” in April after Council members were caught at a hearing on charter schools with cue cards provided by the UFT.