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DNC Chair Howard Dean maintains that former employee Donald Hitchcock was fired for being ineffective. (Photo by Evan Vucci/AP)
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Tempers flare during deposition
Tempers flared and threats were made during Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean’s deposition.
During an aggressive line of questioning, Dean told an attorney for plaintiff Donald Hitchcock that she was “not behaving in a manner which is professionally competent” and that she “ought to learn how to do that.”
Hitchcock’s attorney, Lynne Bernabei, responded that she was trying to draw attention to “lies that you have made.”
Later in the proceedings, Bernabei interjected when DNC attorney Joe Sandler questioned Dean about a grassroots effort to oust the former Vermont governor after he signed the state’s civil unions law in 2000.
The questions came after Sandler asked Dean about a high school student’s essay that praised Dean’s support of the law. A portion of the deposition transcript follows:
BERNABEI: Again I am going to object to this line of questioning. It is irrelevant.
SANDLER: On what basis? Relevance? On what basis?
BERNABEI: It is wasting our time.
SANDLER: Of all people to make such an objection, after you have harassed and abused our witnesses and engaged in unprofessional and unethical conduct throughout discovery …
BERNABEI: Okay. Mr. Sandler, you are making an ad hominem.
SANDLER: … on irrelevant matters, for you to make that objection is beyond belief.
BERNABEI: Would you just certify that? We are going to take that to the judge. You should know better. Mr. Dean is a witness. He doesn’t know better. You know better than to make unwarranted unjustified attacks on me. I have never said anything about your competence, although I have questions about it.
SANDLER: I didn’t say you were not competent.
BERNABEI: I have never said anything about your ethics …
SANDLER: I am saying something about your ethics and we have called it to the attention of the court.
BERNABEI: … and I have never said anything about how you are questioning. I think this is irrelevant. I made a proper objection. We are going to certify this. I am going to ask for sanctions and then you will be sanctioned for ad hominem attacks on me. I have never done anything but make proper objections and ask proper questions and I have a right to say that a high school student’s essay about Mr. Dean …
SANDLER: I am not asking about the high school student’s essay.
BERNABEI: … is irrelevant to this proceeding.
SANDLER: I am asking about his personal recollection …
BERNABEI: And I would ask you to retract the comment. I would ask you to retract the comment.
SANDLER: I would ask you to retract the comment that Governor Dean is a liar.
BERNABEI: We are going to bring this to the court. I would ask you to retract the comments you have made about my unethical behavior. I have never done anything other than in accordance with the rules. |
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: JOSHUA LYNSEN COMMENTS
 
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.
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 ...
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