May 19, 2006  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Democratic Party Treasurer Andy Tobias, the party’s highest-ranking openly gay official, sought to calm irate gay Democrats last week after party chair Howard Dean’s appearance on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

In an e-mail message to gay Democratic activists, Tobias defended Dean’s taped appearance broadcast on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” program, saying Dean was reaching out to evangelical voters, and that could help Democrats in the congressional mid-term elections this fall.

“If by reaching out we can get 37 percent of the evangelical vote, as President Clinton did, instead of 21 percent, as Senator Kerry did, we will win elections and get the country back on track,” Tobias wrote.

He was referring to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s defeat in the 2004 presidential election by a razor-thin margin to President George W. Bush. Some political observers said conservative religious voters decided the election by rejecting Kerry on grounds that the Democrats were sympathetic to gay marriage, even though Kerry himself opposed same-sex marriage in favor of civil unions.

Dean outraged many gay activists last week when he stated in the CBN interview that the Democratic Party platform called for leaving marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The platform, in fact, has no such language. Instead, it calls for providing equal rights and benefits to gay families, and it leaves the question of marriage to the states.

Dean later issued a clarification, saying he misspoke in his reference to the party platform. Like Kerry, Dean has long said he opposes same-sex marriage and favors civil unions. He has been a longtime gay rights supporter on other issues.

Dean’s dispute with gays about marriage, coming on the heels of his earlier decision to fire the Democratic National Committee’s gay outreach adviser, and his decision to abolish the DNC’s constituency desks, including the gay desk, have fueled speculation that he is positioning the party more to the center for the fall elections.

This has always been the mantra of the party’s moderate-to-conservative wing, led by the Democratic Leadership Council, a party think-tank that liberal critics have called the party’s “Republican wing.” Although Dean famously remarked that he considers himself from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

Terry Michael, a former DNC press spokesperson who now is director of the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism, said Dean might be hurting rather than helping the Democrats’ chances of winning back Congress this year.

Michael, who is gay, said a centrist strategy often works in presidential elections but usually fails in midterm congressional elections, when far fewer voters turn out to the polls.

In low-voter turnout elections, Michael said, loyal activists of both major parties — referred to as the parties’ “base vote” — play a pivotal and often decisive role in the outcome of an election.

Tobias and DNC spokesperson Damien LaVera took issue with Michael’s conclusions. Both disputed Michael’s claim that Dean or the party were pandering to the religious right.

While noting that not all Democrats agree on the gay marriage issue, LaVera pointed to Dean's statement in his Christian Broadcasting Network interview that the Democratic Party supports full equality under the law for all Americans. LaVera said Dean also believes he did the right thing to agree to be interviewed by the Christian Broadcasting Network.

“We can’t be a national party if we write off any block of voters, including evangelical voters,” LaVera said. “We feel the issues we stand for, such as fighting poverty, immigration reform, and the environment, appeal to evangelical voters.”

Tobias said it would have been a mistake for Dean to have declined the interview request.

“Should he have said, no I won't do it, I'm not interested in the concerns of millions of evangelical and Christian voters?" Tobias asked. "That makes no sense.”

Dean’s decision to reach out to evangelical voters on the Christian Broadcasting Network last week could backfire on the Democrats, Michael said.

“I feel he undercut the party’s strength with the center of the electorate,” he said. “The center is turned off by the Talibanic wing of the Republican Party. Andy Tobias is wrong. He is mixing up presidential elections with midterm elections. Midterm elections turn on the party base.”

Political strategists from both parties have said the GOP base is divided and demoralized over a wide range of issues plaguing its leaders, including President Bush. Between corruption scandals among GOP lobbyists, the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, the ongoing casualties in Iraq, and the threat of an indictment hanging over top Bush political adviser Karl Rove, the Republican Party is heading into an election in a weakened condition.

With ...