Jun 13, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Gay activists have expressed alarm that some Democratic Party insiders are asking Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to consider selecting former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn as his running mate.

Nunn has been credited with playing a pivotal role in killing President Bill Clinton’s 1993 proposal to lift the ban on gays in the military while Nunn served as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Before the gays in the military issue surfaced, Nunn confirmed that he forced at least two members of his Senate committee staff to resign in the 1980s after he learned they were gay, saying they posed a risk to national security matters likely to come before the committee.

“Sam Nunn would be a disaster as a running mate and a total anathema to millions of Americans,” wrote gay rights advocate and Democratic Party fundraiser David Mixner on his blog. “His presence would totally diminish the power of the Obama campaign notion of change” and “would show that ‘politics as usual’ has supplanted the ‘change in politics’ mantra,” Mixner wrote.

“It’s premature for us to have any comment on the vice presidential issue,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign.

LaBolt noted that Obama last week appointed a three-member committee to help him establish a process for vetting a vice presidential candidate.

Those named to serve on the panel include Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John F. Kennedy; Eric Holder, former Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration; and Jim Johnson, a Democratic Party insider who advised past Democratic presidential candidates on selecting a vice presidential running mate.

Obama’s decision to create the committee came at a time when many backers of former Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton have called on Obama to name Clinton as his running mate. Clinton, a strong gay rights supporter, ended her campaign Saturday when she endorsed Obama.

Most political observers consider Nunn, a widely recognized expert on national defense issues, to be a long shot contender for Obama’s vice presidential pick. But some Obama backers have said Nunn’s conservative Democratic credentials and ties to the South could help Obama win Georgia and one or more other southern states if Obama selects him as his running mate.

Others have called on Obama to consider Nunn for the post of secretary of defense if Obama wins the November presidential election against the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

In November 1992, then President-elect Bill Clinton reportedly included Nunn on a short list of contenders for the secretary of defense post. According to some Clinton campaign sources, Clinton dropped Nunn from the list after news surfaced that Nunn had forced at least two high-level members of the Senate Armed Service Committee staff to resign in 1981 and 1982 after learning they were gay.

News of the forced resignations, first reported by the Blade, raised concerns by gay activists and civil rights groups that Nunn appeared to hold views that contradicted Clinton’s support for equal rights for gays.

The two Senate committee staffers, attorney Ralph White Jr. and attorney and Vietnam combat veteran Greg Baldwin, each told the Blade that Nunn praised their work but informed them that potential security problems associated with their being gay made it necessary for him to ask them to resign.

Nunn later said that he acted at the behest of CIA officials, who he said claimed that White and Baldwin’s presence on the Senate Armed Services Committee staff could prevent the CIA from providing the committee with classified information.

“If they were not going to be able to handle classified matters, they had to find other employment,” Nunn said at a news conference in November 1992. “They were given every opportunity to find other employment, which they did.”

Nunn said he allowed other known gays to remain on his staff in cases where they were not required to deal with national security issues and classified information.

But White and Baldwin said at the time that Nunn also told them that a gay staff member “wouldn’t go over in Georgia,” suggesting that Nunn sought their forced resignation for political reasons.

Nunn had opposed most gay rights initiatives in Congress at the time and gay activists in Georgia said Nunn’s fundamentalist religious background prompted him to oppose gay issues in his home state.

Last week, Nunn told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he would support a new ...