It's being widely reported around the gay blogosphere that the new executive director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) will be Joe Solmonese, the current head of EMILY's List, a group dedicated to electing abortion-rights Democratic women to Congress. (Blade Blog has a good item). The HRC board will meet next week to finalize its (reported) decision.
If this is in fact the case, it doesn't surprise me. Selecting an abortion advocate identified exclusively with electing Democrats would ensure that, going forward, HRC continues to have zero clout lobbying the party that actually controls the presidency and Congress - which is fine with HRC, since it has zero interest in engaging Republicans (or, broadly speaking, red-state voters) in any case. HRC is a feel-good fundraising machine for liberal Democrats, which is all it aspires to be.
As for Solmonese, in 2004 his group contributed as much as $350,000 to Democratic abortion-supporter Inez Tenenbaum in her (losing) race for the open U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina, despite Tenenbaum's pledge to vote for the Federal Marriage Amendment (also supported by her opponent). HRC, by the way, in the past has factored into its scorecards (and endorsement decisions) whether a candidate is pro-abortion rights and pro-affirmative action/mandated race-based preferences. [Update: I've revised this last sentence so as not to overstate HRC's policy in this regard.]
Note: It's possible that the Solmonese "leak" is some sort of
trial balloon. If that's the case, it would certainly be in the
interst of those who have any clout with the HRC board to encourage
them think about actually becoming a bipartisan lobby that could
influence policy. Yes, I know, when pigs fly.