Oct 22, 2004  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

The board of directors of the national gay group Log Cabin Republicans is renewing the group’s contract for Executive director Patrick Guerriero for at least two more years after praising his leadership skills and dismissing critics who claim he has been too adversarial toward President Bush.

“We have full confidence in Patrick,” said Bill Brownson, a Columbus, Ohio, GOP activist who chairs the Log Cabin board.

Brownson and two LCR board members from Washington, D.C. — Tim Schoeffler, the board’s vice chair, and Bob Kabel, a former Reagan administration official — said the board believes Guerriero has done an excellent job in leading the group through an election year minefield in which Log Cabin chose not to endorse a sitting GOP president.

Guerriero began his job as LCR director in 2003 after serving as a mayor and member of the state legislature in Massachusetts. Gay activists praised him during his first year at Log Cabin for promoting cooperation and civility between gay Democrats and Gay Republicans and rebuilding LCR’s relationships with non-partisan gay rights groups.

His arrival in D.C. came at a time when activists expected battle lines to heat up between gays in opposing parties.

During his first months as Log Cabin chief, Guerriero has said, he expected to continue Log Cabin’s cordial relationship with a Republican administration that had appointed a gay ambassador and broke ground by naming two successive openly gay White House AIDS czars.

Line in the sand
Things changed earlier this year when Bush moved closer to backing a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Log Cabin leaders, expressing hope that Bush would hold off on endorsing a constitutional amendment, declared they viewed the issue as a “line in the sand” and warned they would withdraw support for the administration if the president crossed that line.

The Log Cabin board voted 22 to 2 in early September to withhold the group’s endorsement of Bush following the president’s endorsement and active support for the marriage amendment, which failed despite support from GOP leadership in both the U.S. House and Senate.

Most of the organization’s members, including its more than 40 chapters throughout the country, have been supportive of the non-endorsement decision, Brownson said.

But in recent weeks, sources familiar with the Log Cabin group have reported learning of discontent among the ranks of a small but influential corps of gay Republicans who believe Guerriero has gone beyond the board’s non-endorsement mandate by harshly criticizing the president in television appearances and newspaper commentaries.

The sources, who agreed to be interviewed only on condition that their identities be withheld, said Guerriero and his top lieutenant, Political Director Christopher Barron, have “aided and abetted” Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry through their media criticism of the president.

Guerriero and Barron have said they accepted invitations to appear on television news programs to promote their efforts to defeat the Federal Marriage Amendment, the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage. Log Cabin paid for a series of television ads opposing the legislation.

Some of the critics have circulated anonymous e-mail messages claiming that Barron “worked” for Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, the senator from North Carolina, before Guerriero hired him at LCR.

Barron said he supported Edwards’ 1998 Senate campaign as a Republican when Edwards challenged incumbent Loach Faircloth, who was well known as a strident opponent of gay civil rights.

Barron said he also submitted a written testimonial praising Edwards on a Web site at the time Edwards announced his candidacy for president in 2003. At no time was he ever a member of Edwards’ campaign staff, Barron said.

Bob Kabel, of the Log Cabin Republicans board of directors, praised Patrick Guerriero’s leadership during a difficult period for the gay GOP organization.

Brownson disputes claims by LCR critics that Barron failed to disclose his association with Edwards when the LCR board reviewed his application to become political director. He called Barron a loyal Republican who backed Edwards on the “principled” grounds that Barron could not support someone hostile to gay rights.

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