May 28, 2004  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

In a development that sent shock waves through the D.C. Republican Party, gay D.C. Council member David Catania (R-At-Large) on Thursday resigned as a member of the party’s governing committee after party Chair Betsy Werronen refused to certify his election as a delegate to the Republican National Convention.

Party loyalists received another shock hours later when Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At-Large) resigned as a delegate to the GOP convention in protest over Werronen’s decision to bar Catania from the convention by not certifying him.

Werronen said she based her decision on Catania’s public statements criticizing President Bush for endorsing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and vowing to work for Bush’s defeat in the November election.

“At the end of the day, for us to certify a delegate for the convention, you have to support the re-election of the president,” Werronen said. “That’s why you are there.”

Catania said Werronen overstepped her authority. He said party rules require her to certify duly elected delegates as long as they are pledged to vote at the convention to nominate Bush as the Republican Party candidate for president — something Catania said he had agreed to do. According to Catania and other members of the D.C. Republican Committee, from which Catania resigned, party rules don’t require delegates to back the party nominee in the November election.

“What she has done, on its face, is to hold me to a standard different from everybody else,” Catania said.
He said he believes he could win a legal challenge to Werronen’s action, but said he doesn’t plan to contest the decision.

“I resigned today because I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with this drama,” he said.

D.C. gay Republicans have considered Catania one of the leading forces behind an influx in membership in the local party among gay Republicans, who have been credited with energizing the party in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a nine to one margin.

Catania had been a loyal supporter of Bush up until the time the president declared his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would add language to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex marriage in all 50 states and U.S. territories. Prior to Bush’s decision to back the FMA, Catania raised more than $50,000 for the Bush re-election campaign and planned to campaign for the president in the gay community.

He said he felt betrayed by Bush’s decision to support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, saying the president had privately told him and his domestic partner at a reception at Bush’s Texas ranch that he respected the relationships that two individuals choose to enter. In public statements in recent weeks, Catania has said he believes Bush’s support for the FMA was a calculated ploy to gain votes from fundamentalist Christians and social conservatives.

“I am denouncing him,” Catania said in March. “I will not be supporting him. I will be working to defeat him.”

Earlier this year, Werronen and other party leaders picked Catania and other local gay Republicans to run on an uncontested slate of delegates and alternate delegates to the Republican Convention in New York City in late August. D.C. Republicans elected the slate at a party caucus that same month. Werronen also appointed Catania to represent the D.C. GOP convention delegation on the party’s national platform committee.

After Bush announced his support for the FMA, Catania said he hoped to advocate on behalf of gay civil rights and urban issues at platform committee hearings and at the convention itself.

Werronen said she would replace Catania as a delegate with veteran gay Republican activist Carl Schmid, who won election as an alternate delegate at the February party caucus.

“He was next in line,” she said.

Schmid said he is anguished over whether to accept the position.

“I told Betsy I was against what she did,” said Schmid, in discussing Werronen’s decision not to certify Catania as a delegate. “I considered resigning but I feel I gain a platform and a voice on the issues David and I care about by being a delegate.”

Mark Sibley, another gay member of the DCRC as well as a delegate to the convention, said he is unsure whether he, too, will resign. Gay DCRC member Paul Dione called Werronen’s action “very troubling” and said he was weighing what, if any, action he and other members of the 12-member gay contingent on the DCRC should do.

In a May 27 letter to Werronen, Schwartz said she could not stay on as a delegate following Werronen’s action.

“David has been an enormous asset to us, ...