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Dean claims DNC fired gay man for poor performance
DNC chair acknowledges tension between blacks, gays over delegate selection

JOSHUA LYNSEN
Friday, March 28, 2008

Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean says poor job performance — not discrimination — prompted the organization to fire a gay man who is now suing for wrongful termination.

Speaking under oath during a deposition in the case, Dean said he authorized the firing of Donald Hitchcock because the DNC’s gay outreach director did not effectively rally gays to support the Democratic Party.

“I don’t know what Donald was doing,” Dean said. “I know what he wasn’t doing. He wasn’t getting us the support in the gay community.”

Hitchcock became director of the DNC’s Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council in June 2005. He was fired in May 2006, following a series of gay press articles challenging the organization’s handling of gay issues.

“I wasn’t able, we weren’t able, to break through,” Dean said. “The relations with the gay community, which I had a very good relationship when I started, had been deteriorating since Donald came on board.”

Dean said he didn’t hold Hitchcock responsible for the negative press, but approved the firing after Hitchcock failed to effectively counter it.

“The press is not the problem,” Dean said. “The problem was the community itself was getting a bad impression because Donald wasn’t able to counteract in the community what the press was writing.”

Hitchcock’s firing came days after his domestic partner, Paul Yandura, a longtime party activist, sent an open letter to gay Democrats criticizing Dean and suggesting that gays should temporarily withhold donations to the party.

Dean said the letter “never came up” when he discussed with other DNC officials plans to fire Hitchcock, though, and he was “unaware of the letter until long after” the firing.

Dean instead cited the media’s “unfair and unwarranted” criticism of his 2005 decision to abolish a gay outreach desk and Hitchcock’s inability to get gay donors to “buy” the DNC response as the reason he was fired.

“You are supposed to have clout,” Dean said. “In this job you have to have the respect and the clout in the community so they do buy it. And if you don’t have that clout, you can’t do the job.”

But an attorney for Hitchcock said the former Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council director “did his best” to stop Dean’s decision to abolish the gay outreach desk “from being an embarrassment to the DNC.”

“Donald did what he could do to defend the DNC,” said Lynne Bernabei. “But the key policies and actions of the DNC that were criticized in the press were things that Donald had no control over.”

In his deposition, Dean noted that DNC officials gave Hitchcock the option to resign, but Hitchcock declined.

“You know, I personally liked Donald Hitchcock as a human being and I had no will to harm him in any way,” he said. “And normally the way we handle people who in our opinion can’t do their jobs is leave them a viable option for future employment. And he refused that viable option. When he did, I realized that he was going to be very confrontational.”

Eleven months after he was fired, Hitchcock filed a lawsuit alleging the DNC discriminated against him during his time on staff. The lawsuit also alleges Hitchcock was the target of retaliation and defamation. DNC attorneys have said the allegations have no merit.

The lawsuit names as defendants the DNC; Dean; Andy Tobias, the DNC’s treasurer; and Julie Tagen, the DNC’s deputy finance director. Dean’s deposition, obtained by the Blade late last week, was triggered by the lawsuit.

Contentious debate

During his deposition, Dean also answered questions about the DNC’s handling of gay issues, including efforts to bring more gays to the party’s national conventions.

He acknowledged a proposal by gay DNC member Garry Shay of California to add gays to the party’s affirmative action guidelines for selecting convention delegates triggered a contentious internal debate.

Dean said some “influential individuals” within the DNC Black Caucus, such as Donna Brazile, opposed the plan because it was seen as “an affront to the civil rights movement.”

Brazile, who chairs the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute, declined to comment for this article.

Dean said the dispute grew to the point where “we had two very important groups of people in the DNC disagreeing with each other” and several DNC and caucus officials were asked to broker a deal that would make peace on the issue.

“I wanted equal representation for gay and lesbian Americans,” he said, “and I wanted to achieve it in a way that wasn’t offensive to the history of the civil rights movement.”

Other case documents suggest Leah Daughtry, Dean’s chief of staff and coordinator of the party’s upcoming convention in Denver, also opposed Shay’s proposal. Dean, however, said he couldn’t recall her position.

“She definitely didn’t take a strong position against this,” he said. “She was there to mediate and to help.”

Dean commended Daughtry and the other officials who worked to resolve the dispute for ultimately reaching “an incredibly successful solution” that strongly encouraged but did not require states to send more gay delegates.

“As a result of what I did, we now have three times as many states with inclusion programs for gay and lesbian delegates,” he said. “Forty-seven states, as opposed to 16 when I got there.”

But during questioning, Hitch-cock’s attorney indicated at least one state resisted the revised plan.

In transcripts of Dean’s deposition, Bernabei asks Dean if he recalls the Mississippi Democratic Party state chair indicating that, “he didn’t want to do that?”

When he says that he does, Bernabei asks Dean, “And didn’t you tell him just set the goal, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to meet it?”

Dean replies, “I most certainly said no such thing.”

Bernabei then introduces an unspecified “Exhibit 10,” and the transcript skips 12 pages. A note in the transcript says the pages “are confidential and under protective order.”

The Mississippi Democratic Party did not respond to the Blade’s requests for comment.

Other issues

Dean’s lengthy deposition, which spanned two days and generated a transcript totaling more than 560 pages, covered many other issues.

Bernabei repeatedly asked Dean to explain his views on same-sex marriage and why he misstated the party’s official platform on such unions when he appeared on the “700 Club” in May 2006.

In that appearance, Dean said the party’s 2004 platform states “marriage is between a man and a woman.” His statement contradicted the party’s official stance, which takes no stand and indicates that marriage should be left to the states to resolve.

Gay organizations were quick to criticize Dean for the misstep, and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force promptly returned a $5,000 donation it received from the DNC.

“What I said on television was a mistake,” Dean said in deposition. “I had confused it with a position of the [party’s 2004 presidential] nominee.”

Dean noted that he personally supports same-sex marriage, a position brought about by “getting to know gay people” during and after his 2004 presidential campaign.

“I learned more,” he said. “I learned a lot about the gay community. And I became much more comfortable with the gay community as I got to know more about them.”

Regarding his presidential campaign, Dean also said that “three-quarters of my early money” came from gay donors, and that Claire Lucas, a prominent lesbian activist and Democratic donor, was fired from his campaign.

Donald Hitchcock (right) sued the DNC after he was fired following release of a letter written by his partner Paul Yandura that criticized Howard Dean and the party. (Blade file photo by Joey DiGuglielmo)

In the transcript, Bernabei asks Dean, “Do you recall that at some point in time Claire Lucas worked on your campaign, presidential campaign?”

When he says that he does, Bernabei asks Dean, “And she was terminated because she slapped somebody?”

Dean replies, “Yes.” He also says that he “didn’t find out about that until after the fact.” Neither Dean nor Bernabei discuss any details about the alleged incident.

Barry Reingold, an attorney representing Lucas, issued a statement saying Lucas, who volunteered for the campaign and was not a paid employee, “was never fired for misconduct” and “was never informed” by the campaign “of any alleged misconduct.”

The statement also says Lucas “finds it incomprehensible that Gov. Dean believes” she would have slapped someone.

“Gov. Dean believing that Claire Lucas would do such an act is also incongruous with his subsequent actions,” the statement says. “After Howard Dean’s presidential bid, he became chair of the DNC. He quickly appointed Ms. Lucas as chair of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council. He then offered her a position on the Convention Site Selection Committee. He also just appointed Ms. Lucas to the very prestigious Democratic National Convention Rules Committee. He has also praised her in numerous forums in front of hundreds and hundreds of people.”

Karen Finney, the DNC's communications director, issued a statement in response.

“Governor Dean is grateful to Claire Lucas for her commitment to the LGBT community, friendship to the DNC and her hard work in helping to raise the funds we need to defend the ideals of equal rights for everyone and ensure democratic victories up and down the ballot,” says the statement. “It is disturbing that once again testimony has been leaked as part of an ugly fishing expedition into an unrelated lawsuit for what appears to be personal attacks having no relation to the Hitchcock lawsuit. All of this is a distraction from the facts and from the work that we all need to be united for, winning back the White House and widening our lead in Congress.”

A judge in the case this week ordered Lucas to sit for deposition. Lucas, who had sought to avoid testifying, must give her deposition no later than April 18.

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