Activists Gain Partial Victory in AIDS Fight : Health care: Bob Dole announces July 24 as date for Senate vote on bill funding $690-million program for victims.

BURBANK — What began as a day of protest by activists in Burbank turned into a partial victory Thursday in Washington as Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) scheduled a vote on a bill funding the nation’s largest health care program for AIDS victims.

The welcome news for AIDS activists came as Dole, a candidate for the GOP nomination for President, announced July 24 as the date for a Senate vote on the projected $690-million measure, which has 62 co-sponsors, including Dole.

Three nonprofit AIDs groups had selected state Republican Party headquarters in Burbank for a noisy, one-hour rally, which ended before participants heard of the Dole announcement.

The bill funds medical care, shelter and other services to AIDS and HIV sufferers nationwide until the end of the century. It is expected to pass with broad support from both parties.

“We went into the protest this morning believing the bill was stalled because Bob Dole was acquiescing and pandering to the right wing,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the Hollywood-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which organized the demonstration, along with the AIDS Service Center of Pasadena and Bienestar, an AIDS counseling, prevention and education center in East Los Angeles.

“That was a specter to us that was quite scary,” he added. “The concerns we expressed this morning are still valid, but we’re relieved the wait is over.”

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is one of the largest single recipients of funds under the Ryan White CARE Act of 1990. It operates two hospices and five clinics countywide--including one at the Sherman Oaks Community Hospital--on an annual budget of $20 million, more than half of which comes from private grants and other sources.

But without $9 million a year in federal dollars to continue serving its 2,500 outpatients, Weinstein said he could be forced to close the five clinics in October, after funding expires. And with the threat of closure hanging over the County-USC Medical Center, he added, low-income AIDS and HIV patients would be forced to obtain medical care in the emergency rooms of hospitals.

Protesters also denounced recent remarks by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N. Carolina), who blamed AIDS victims for acquiring the disease through their “deliberate, disgusting and revolting conduct.”

Those remarks not only inflamed Helms’ critics, but prompted them to accuse him of exerting influence over Dole to delay the Senate vote.

Chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Jesse Helms has got to go,” many of the 40 people who protested also described Dole as an opportunist interested only in courting conservative voters to his political advantage.

They repeatedly yelled, “Jesse says, ‘Jump,’ Bob says, ‘How high?’ ” Later, one of the protesters shouted expletives about Republicans in general as a staff worker watching from inside the party’s second-floor offices simply laughed.

“If that system goes,” said 46-year-old Connie Norman of Altadena, a retired AIDS activist who was found to be HIV-positive in 1987, “we’re looking at a bigger epidemic than we have now.”

Republican Party spokeswoman Victoria Herrington dismissed Tuesday’s protest as “another example of the radical left that has taken over the Democratic Party.”

She added that AIDS activists protesting in San Francisco Tuesday caused about $4,000 in damage to a Republican Party office there, prompting staff workers in Burbank to take extra precautions, such as locking the front door during business hours Thursday.