DeMaio’s Fight

Californian Carl DeMaio has an excellent shot at being among the first openly gay Republicans to be elected to Congress. But as I’ve said before (and to the annoyance of the partisan lock-step brigade, will keep saying), successful openly gay Republican officeholders are LGBT progressives worst nightmare.

As noted in this report by Foxnews.com:

DeMaio has been the target of homophobic attacks. But where are those attacks coming from? It’s not always from the far right social conservatives you’d expect; rather, it’s been from DeMaio’s left—the liberal and Democrat-affiliated groups that you’d think would be proud that an openly gay successful businessman has decided to run for office.

One false attack drew the attention of the San Diego Ethics Commission. An anonymous left-wing group funded a SuperPac and sent mailers of DeMaio Photoshopped next to a drag queen to neighborhoods with a majority of elderly and African-American voters, knowing that such a photo would depress support for DeMaio. That was so egregious and false that the group was fined by the city’s Ethics Commission, but even after that, and with his 100 percent voting record with the LGBT community, the Left still didn’t speak up to defend him. …

As the race heats up and DeMaio gains in the polls ahead of the Republican primary on June 3rd, the LGBT groups have gone from silence about his candidacy to actively working against him.

What would be the impact if one, two or even three openly gay Republicans were elected to Congress in November (counting Richard Tisei in Massachusetts and Dan Innis in New Hampshire), as now seems possible? It could hasten the inevitable sea change within the national GOP on gay issues.

15 Comments for “DeMaio’s Fight”

  1. posted by Houndentenor on

    Tisei does indeed seem to have a shot at that House seat. (At least according to the most recent polling.) Although his decision not to attend the state GOP convention because the party is too anti-gay. One has to wonder why he doesn’t run as an independent and therefore free of that baggage. As I do not vote in Massachusetts and have no money to donate to anyone’s campaign, my opinion does not matter. It does look like he’s better than anyone the Tea Party nutjob that will run unopposed (or may as well be) in my district. Too bad these moderate Republicans aren’t running somewhere that would actually move the party to the center rather than in places where if they win would further secure the far right policies of the current House majority leadership.

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    But as I’ve said before (and to the annoyance of the partisan lock-step brigade, will keep saying), successful openly gay Republican officeholders are LGBT progressives worst nightmare.

    Well, you’ll have a hard time supporting that particular paranoia from anything written on IGF. Enough said.

    So let’s look at the rest of the post:

    First off, you should be skeptical of anything reported on Faux News. Faux has a well-deserved track record of distoring facts to score political points, and Dana Perino’s article is no exception.

    It took me about 15 seconds to find a U-T San Diego news article titled “Backers of gay-baiting DeMaio ads revealed” by Craig Gustafson, October 11, 2013, reporting on the story. The facts are simple enough. A wealthy Filner supporter, Charles McHaffie, set up and funded a spurious PAC, “Conservatives for Gay Rights Supporting Carl DeMaio for Mayor 2012”, and distributed literature in African-American neighbors. The group illegally coordinated with the Filner campaign, apparently, operated out of a false address and failed to maintain records required by law. Dirty politics, to be sure, and illegal to boot. But the group had no ties to LGBT groups in San Diego or elsewhere, and the “LGBT community” was not involved.

    So far, so good. Then comes the part that is not so far, so good. The Faux News report you cited trumped those facts up into a “story” about how the “LGBT community” is attempting to sink DeMaio in his primary contest against Kirk Jorgensen, who is a major-league social conservative turd.

    The article offers no evidence whatsoever in support of its statement (as you quoted it): “As the race heats up and DeMaio gains in the polls ahead of the Republican primary on June 3rd, the LGBT groups have gone from silence about his candidacy to actively working against him.” The only thing offered up to support the statement is DeMaio’s claim that it is true: “Despite claims that they insist on tolerance, diversity and acceptance on all political issues, I suspect that they really want to keep intact their alliance with unions so that they don’t upset their funding sources and coalition. The Democratic groups need the GOP to remain the bogeyman because if the Republicans are no longer a threat, who needs to donate to these LGBT political groups? he said.

    It is just nonsense, trumped up politics filtered through Faux to give it substance.

    Second, a virulent, brutal and well-funded political attack is aimed at DeMaio in the primary race. NOM launched a full-scale attack on DeMaio shortly after he announded his candidacy. It has been well-covered in the left/liberal and LGBT press/blogs (Think Progress, Towleroad, San Diego Free Press, San Diego Gay and Lesbian News, Edge on the Net, and Queerty, to name a few), but I understand that conservatives don’t read left/liberal media, so you are probably unaware of it. But I would point you to gay conservative blogger (The Slowly Boiled Frog) David Cary Hart for a look at the NOM effort, which Hart discusses at some length in the blog, republished in the San Diego Gay and Lesbian News last week.

    I don’t know about anyone else, but it strikes me as very odd that the San Diego Gay and Lesbian News is reporting the real assault on DeMaio, while you and Faux News are conjuring up fictional attacks from the “LGBT community”. Do you, perhaps, have an agenda that is less concerned with supporting DeMaio than with attacking left/liberal gays and lesbians?

    It sure sounds like it.

    • posted by Jorge on

      First off, you should be skeptical of anything reported on Faux News. Faux has a well-deserved track record of distoring facts to score political points, and Dana Perino’s article is no exception.

      You know who else distorts facts to score political points?

      AP.

      But for some reason it doesn’t have that reputation. It well deserves it. But until I see you calling for fair standards in journalism I’m going to take your little drive by cheap shot as about as important as my after-lunch bathroom break.

      Now, unlike most people who cheap shot Fox News every time someone cites it, you’re smart enough to not stop there and attempt to take apart this actual article. And you landed a very good blow. Why on earth did Dana Perino, who is one of the most level-headed, restrained, and reliable people ever to work for Fox News, write that? Your assessment of the point is actually too generous–I don’t see Mr. DeMaio’s comments as supporting it. She does show the Victory Fund playing dirty in another race… actually it’s a little vague whether she’s referring to the previous mayoral race or the present one.

      Since Fox News usually covers its bases well, I suspect it was either an overzealous insert by the editor or a sloppy deletion of the relevant example.

  3. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    I don’t know if we can look beyond the gazillionth post on IGF complaining about Carl DeMaio’s ill treatment at the hands of left/liberals, but an interesting and potentially important lawsuit was filed today in North Carolina. The United Church of Christ of North Carolina filed a federal lawsuit arguing that state laws defining and regulating marriage as being between a man and woman restricted UCC ministers from performing their religious duties and are unconstitutional.

  4. posted by Kosh III on

    Hasn’t there already been a gay GOP Representative? How much did he do to advance equality–zip.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      There have been several. One gave a speech at the 2004 GOP convention. The Texas delegation (seated up front) all turned their backs to him as he spoke even though his speech was about foreign policy and never mentioned gay rights at all. That’s the GOP. I can’t wonder why I wouldn’t want to vote for people who can’t even sit and listen to a gay person talk about a non-gay related topic.

      DeMaio sounds like a nutjob. Every new quote for him is full of rage and nonsense. Tolerance schmolerance. He hangs out with people who wish to do harm to gay people and wonders why the other gay people don’t like him? Really? This isn’t like he’s gay and runs with a moderate fiscally conservative but socially libertarian crowd. He’s in with the social conservatives. That’s just messed up.

      • posted by Lori Heine on

        If DeMaio is a social conservative, I can’t possibly support him. Social conservatives are, by definition, anti-gay.

        And if we’re not — according to the bloggers — supposed to care about anything concerning a candidate beyond his or her being gay, then why are gay Democrats automatically eliminated from consideration?

        That’s a question several people have asked here, and it’s a good one.

  5. posted by Doug on

    This sort of puts your mime about not supporting gay GOP candidates to the test and it fails miserably, Stephen. Maybe you should try writing and telling the truth.

    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/Feb/25/demaio-endorsement-lgbt-congress/

    • posted by Mike in Houston on

      Stephen refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Demaios campaign refused to follow the rules for seeking an endorsement: in-person interviews, on-the-record questionnaire, and support of the Victory Fund objectives… Nor has he answered why he and other homocons refused to support Tammy Baldwin based on the sparse criteria he keeps spouting on about.

  6. posted by Jimmy on

    “What would be the impact if one, two or even three openly gay Republicans were elected to Congress…?”

    Most likely, up to three more votes for regressive taxation, supply-side lunacy, disenfranchisement of workers, and the eventual slide into oligarchy. You can bet that if they fail to vote to stick it to the rest of us, they won’t be around long.

  7. posted by Tom Jefferson III on

    Californian Carl DeMaio has an excellent shot at being among the first openly gay Republicans to be elected to Congress —

    That is certainly possible — I do not live in California and I am not a corporation –. However, it is interesting that a gay Republican would ask us to “put aside partisan differences” in order to elect someone who is openly gay to a federal office.

    I say, “interesting”, because many of the Republicans who make this sort of argument, were not exactly eager to have it made with regards to say, the first (I suspect) openly gay U.S. Senator; Tammy Baldwin.

    Some gay voters in the California district may vote for him, others may not.

    Telling a gay voter in his district that they MUST vote for him because he is gay, is probably not the most persuasive argument to make, especially when California is generally a blue or purple state to begin with.

    If he had run as an Independent, it might have been easier for him to generate more broad-based support from the gay community.

    If I lived in his district, I would be open to vote for either party’s candidate, but I would want to know more about their background, beliefs, etc.

  8. posted by MR Bill on

    My brilliant and beautiful daughter and her husband are in the Navy and stationed in San Diego, and reside in this district. She’s concluded on her own that DeMaio is, in her words “a right wing jerk”, and that voting for him would be ultimately against GLBT rights…I support her decision.

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      This is a very interesting and informative insight. Real people are making decisions on the basis of decency and common sense. There’s a concept! And it should have ramifications for how the IGF bloggers treat gay Republican candidates.

      If we’re supposed to vote for them simply because they’re gay, then why NOT vote for gay Democrats for nothing more than that same reason?

      I would not vote for a social conservative. Not if he/she were a Republican, a Democrat, a Libertarian or a Modern Whig. Not of he/she were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, any more than if the candidate were straight. There are social conservatives in almost every political party, because they deliberately join parties across the spectrum trying to influence political affairs.

      And yes, there are conservatives and Republicans of every orientation. Duh. I think by now, we’ve all got that. Either there really ought to come a time when that no longer matters in voters’ estimation, or it should always be a major factor.

      IGF needs to make up its mind.

      • posted by Houndentenor on

        I would think that it would be a better use of time and resources to actively support the gay officeholders who have voted for gay rights and we are then likely to face a challenger in their next primary. The only way that Republicans who are privately either pro-gay or at least neutral are going to stop pandering to the religious right is when it stops being beneficial for them to do so. If they see their colleagues defeated on this issue the next time they have primary that just leads to an even further turn to the right for the party on social issues. Oddly we never see that kind of thing on this site. I really don’t understand why. Instead we see support for gay Republicans who do NOT have a good voting record on gay rights. I find that odd.

  9. posted by Tom Jefferson III on

    It is a good thing that an openly gay man can actually run for federal office in America — as a Republican — and be treated as a serious nominee.

    Yet, should we really vote for any openly LGBT candidate — without regard to party or philosophy — because it will mean more diversity in Washington DC or the state capital? That seems to be the polite way to put the question, right?

    Gay supporters of Carl DeMaio seem to be taking the position that the candidate deserves the support of gay people in the district and (perhaps on a financial level) gay people across the nation.

    That any objections gay voters have to Carl DeMaio — his party or philosophy — should be put aside for the opportunity to elect an openly gay person to Congress. I have two main problems with this argument.

    Firstly, their does not seem to be much intellectual consistency about this argument. When the openly gay candidate is a Democrat (or even a serious Independent or third party candidate), suddenly the “put aside (any objections) for the opportunity to elect an openly gay person to Congress” does not seem to apply.

    Secondly, putting aside all partisan and philosophical objections is easier said then done, even if we just pretend that gay voters only vote on ‘gay issues’. What are gay issues?

    Gay conservatives and libertarians might argue that the 2nd Amendment is a gay rights issue.

    Gay centrists and liberals might ague that affordable health care is a gay rights issue.

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