Jan 23, 2004  |  By: JOE CREA  | COMMENTS     

A year ago, Paul Yandura did not know which one of the Democratic presidential candidates to support. But after receiving an invitation from Sen. John Edwards to attend a small dinner at his home, where the two discussed gay and lesbian issues, Yandura decided to back the North Carolina senator’s presidential bid.

“He was very comfortable with the issues and understood them,” Yandura said. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to have to support this guy.’ Here’s a Southerner who takes the courage to talk about gay and lesbian issues in a civil rights context. I found both him and his wife to be personally committed to viewing gay and lesbian equality, so I started helping him.”

Yandura, a former White House aide during the Clinton administration, was hired last year by the Edwards campaign as an adviser on gay and lesbian issues. Yandura has a history of political and executive experience, including leading gay constituency outreach and fund-raising for the Clinton/Gore re-election effort in 1996. He also served as interim leader of the National Stonewall Democrats, the party’s official gay organization.

Yandura and his business partner, Marsha Scott, the former deputy assistant to President Clinton, own Scott + Yandura, a marketing consulting group based in Washington, D.C.

Yandura is now a full-time volunteer for the Edwards campaign. His contract as an adviser expired earlier this month and is under negotiation.

Yandura lauded Edwards’ ability to discuss gay and lesbian issues in a region of the country that has typically been hostile to such issues.

“He talks about it all the time,” Yandura said. “Discrimination goes against everything he believes in.”

Yandura expressed disappointment with criticism Edwards has received from some gays following the candidate’s attack on former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who Edwards critized for saying he would win votes in the South by forcing the debate beyond “guns, God and gays.” Dean said Democrats have fared poorly in the South because the debate often centers on controversial social issues rather than economic issues.

Edwards criticized Dean’s remarks and suggested Dean was seeking to “duck the values debate.” Edwards noted that values are important to Southerners and that such issues will not go away.

“I think we’ve gotten the tar for that,” Yandura said. “Edwards believes that we should not allow the other side to co-opt the values debate. He knows that values are important to the South. And he will continue to talk about gay issues. But these are issues that people do care about and people may not like talking about them, but you have to.”

Edwards implicitly criticized Dean’s remarks in a speech last month.

“They want to say to America, ‘We’re not interested in your values; we want to change the subject to anything else.’ That’s wrong,” Edwards said. “You can’t tell voters what to believe or what to vote on. Where I come from, voters are looking for answers, not attitude.”

Yandura added that the values debate is a critical component of the Senator’s overall leadership qualities.

“He believes he has a strong value system, and he wants all people to be treated equally and respectfully under the law,” Yandura said of Edwards.

When selling Edwards to gay men and lesbians, Yandura stresses that this election “is really about electability.”

“Look at the candidates up against George Bush. The reason some like the president is that they feel they can connect with him,” Yandura said. “John brings that. There’s a realism that he can bring to the presidency. People see that he is sincere and they can connect to that.”

Yandura said that Edwards supports federal partnership benefits for gay couples. The candidate has said civil unions should be left to individual states, and he opposes a constitutional marriage amendment, calling it divisive and unnecessary.

Edwards has said he does not support gay marriage, but reiterated his general support for gay rights after the landmark decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in November.

Yandura noted that Edwards was a co-sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. He has a 100 percent pro-gay voting record during his one term in the Senate, according to the Human Rights Campaign.