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CHRIS JOHNSON
Friday, July 04, 2008
Members of the “Austin 12,” the group of prominent gay Republicans who famously met with George W. Bush in 2000, are not exactly rallying around John McCain.
Several members of the group told the Blade this week that they are considering voting for Barack Obama in November, while others announced tepid support for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
In all, three said they either would vote for Obama or are seriously considering it; three are undecided between McCain and Obama; three are backing McCain and three others declined to comment.
The “Austin 12” gained notoriety after meeting with Bush in Austin in April 2000, when Bush was still governor of Texas and a candidate for president.
During the meeting, the “Austin 12” urged Bush to appoint open gays to federal offices, include an openly gay speaker at the 2000 Republican National Convention and maintain President Clinton’s executive order banning discrimination against gays in the federal workforce. Bush complied with each of those requests during his presidency.
But Bush’s record, most notably his endorsement of the Federal Marriage Amendment, has soured some members of the “Austin 12” so much that they refuse to support the Republican Party’s presidential choice, even though McCain voted against the FMA in the U.S. Senate.
David Greer, who was appointed to Bush’s AIDS advisory board in 2003, left the Republican Party that same year and has been a registered Democrat since then. He said gay Republicans would never be a strong enough voice to influence the GOP and that the party is more interested in exploiting gay Republicans for political gain.
“As long as there’s a far right in the party, gay Republicans are way too small in numbers … to have any effect on the party,” he said. “We actually end up doing greater and lasting harm to the whole GLBT community.”
Greer resigned his position on Bush’s AIDS council after the president endorsed the marriage amendment. He now works as a speechwriter for the National Association of Realtors.
The former Bush adviser said supporting the Democratic Party is the best way to achieve gay equality, but he added that Democrats are “mediocre on our issues at best.” Greer said he would have voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton had she won the Democratic presidential primary, but he is not quite ready to embrace Sen. Barack Obama as a candidate.
Greer argued that McCain “doesn’t care a lot” about gay issues, and since the GOP candidate is having trouble mustering support from its conservative religious base, McCain will probably let the “far right” control his positions on those issues.
David Catania, an at-large City Council member for the District of Columbia, was similarly skeptical that McCain would change GOP policy on gay issues.
“I wouldn’t give supporting him a second thought,” he said. “The cards are on the table. I think gays are kind of kidding themselves if they think John McCain is going to be any better for the gay community than George Bush.”
Like Greer, Catania left the Republican Party in 2004 after Bush announced his support for the marriage amendment. He now identifies as an independent. Catania said he will vote for Obama in the general election.
Brian Bennett, head of the ABC Advocacy Group, a public affairs consultant company in California, argued that McCain is more hostile toward gays than Bush was in 2000. He compared Bush’s efforts at reaching out to the “Austin 12” in 2000 to McCain’s recent endorsement of a California ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in the state.
Protectmarriage.com, the organization leading the campaign for the amendment, announced on June 25 that McCain sent an e-mail to the organization expressing support for the measure.
By endorsing the initiative, McCain is “alienating himself from the gay and lesbian population that he had a fairly decent reputation with,” Bennett said.
“I think he needlessly injected himself into this race to pander to the [James] Dobsons and others on the right,” Bennett said. “Is he going to take a position on the rest of our ballot initiatives? I don’t think so.”
Bennett is one of the plaintiffs in the case recently brought to the California Supreme Court known as Bennett v. Bowen, in which petitioners are arguing for the removal of the amendment from the November ballot. The high court is expected to make a decision on that case before Aug. 8.
Bennett still considers himself a Republican and voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, even though he disagrees with Bush’s support for the marriage amendment. But Bennett is undecided on how he will vote in the general election this year. He recommended that the Log Cabin Republicans not endorse McCain.
Daniel Stewart, head of the New York State Commission of Corrections, said the entire Republican Party has turned him off in the last few years.
Stewart was elected to the City Council in Plattsburgh, N.Y., as a Democrat, but former New York Gov. George Pataki convinced him to switch to the Republican Party to run against the city’s mayor in 2000. Stewart won the election.
But now Stewart is planning on leaving the Republican Party because the party is not moving where he’d like on issues that affect him personally, such as same-sex marriage. He noted his resentment over having to travel to Canada in 2004 to marry his partner.
“Just as I felt abandoned by my party for the longest time, I’m probably going to leave the Republican Party — I just have to figure out if I’m going to become a Democrat or an independent,” he said.
Stewart was disappointed that the inroads the “Austin 12” made in 2000 with Bush did not hold through his administration.
“When we met with George Bush back in 2000, we were really feeling as though we were going to make some progress, and if you look at what’s happened in the last eight years, that was a lie,” he said.
While he’s not supporting McCain, Stewart is also not on board with Obama. Stewart supported Clinton during the Democratic primary and said Obama needs “more than just a ‘change’ message” to win him over.
While some members of the “Austin 12” are unhappy with McCain, others declared their support for him.
Scott Huch, president of the advertising agency known as the Delta Group and former vice president of the Virginia Log Cabin Republicans, said recent reports that McCain has been meeting with Patrick Sammon, president of Log Cabin, shows that “McCain is receptive to learning more about issues that affect the gay and lesbian community.”
Although he voted for Ron Paul in the Republican primary, Huch said he would vote for McCain in the general election because of his market-oriented approach to economic issues and a commitment to winning the war in Iraq.
“I’m not going to be voting as a single-issue gay voter,” he said.
Huch acknowledged that McCain has often been criticized for his lack of support for gay issues in Congress, including his “no” votes on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and a hate crimes measure. McCain also articulated continued support for the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy during GOP presidential primary debates.
Huch said he is not bothered by those positions any more than a gay Democrat would be bothered by Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage. Huch said Obama is not as supportive of gay issues as he seems.
“I think if he were really pressed to speak on the record … people would be surprised really at how tepid his support is for a lot of issues that gay people look at as bread-and-butter issues,” Huch said.
Rebecca Maestri, the sole lesbian in the “Austin 12,” is similarly supportive of McCain and called him “the best Republican the party could have offered up this year.” She plans to vote for McCain in the general election.
“I’ve always been a fan of his,” she said. “He is a bit of a maverick, which appeals to me. He doesn’t march in lock-step with the party on every issue or this White House.”
Maestri, who works in international foreign assistance for the federal government, applauded McCain’s opposition to the FMA and said the Arizona senator’s position on Iraq is more realistic than Obama’s.
Maestri said she was “not particularly bothered” by McCain’s opposition to federal hate crimes and employment non-discrimination bills in Congress because she is conflicted on those issues. But she said “there’s still room to talk” to McCain on those issues.
Jim McFarland, an assistant general counsel for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, also intends to vote for McCain in the general election. McFarland may also voice support for McCain during the Republican National Convention this summer because he is an alternate delegate from Wisconsin.
McFarland said he is “cautiously optimistic” that McCain will be “an improvement over President Bush for the lesbian and gay community.” He said McCain should emphasize his experience and his views on foreign policy and the war on terrorism to win the general election.
A poor pick for running mate might change McFarland’s mind on supporting McCain in the general election, he said.
Scott Evertz, vice president for international affairs at OraSure Technologies, hasn’t yet decided between McCain and Obama.
Although he is slated to attend the Republican National Conven-tion, Evertz said he has yet to make a decision on how he will vote in the general election. He has never once cast a ballot for a Democratic candidate for president since he began voting in 1980, but now is considering a vote for Obama.
But Evertz noted he has concerns about some of Obama’s positions on fiscal matters.
“I remain a Republican for a whole host of reasons — many of them would cause concern if Barack Obama were to become President Obama,” he said.
Evertz, who worked for Bush as his AIDS czar and deputy health and human services secretary, said he is also concerned about McCain’s positions on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” hate crimes and ENDA, but believes the presidential candidate “can be worked with and worked on.”
Some “Austin 12” members were particularly concerned over McCain’s perceived lack of attention to HIV/AIDS prevention issues. A recent report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought the issue to prominence recently. Among other findings, the report said that the number of gay men between the ages of 13 to 24 who have been diagnosed with HIV infections has increased 12 percent this year.
Carl Schmid, a D.C. based AIDS activist, said he wants McCain “to speak out on HIV/AIDS domestically and talk about prevention.”
Schmid said the Bush administration has “ignored the gay population as it is related to HIV/AIDS.”
“I think if it were another population, they would be all over it,” he said. “This is an emergency and when you have a medical emergency like this, you deal with it and they’re not dealing with it.”
Greer, while applauding Bush for the attention and funding that he has given to fight HIV overseas, noted his concerns about confronting what he called “an HIV epidemic” within U.S. borders.
“They don’t do anything for gay people where this is exploding in America and they will prevent our own citizens from getting adequate prevention messages,” Greer said.
Schmid would not say how he intends to vote in the general election. He chaired Rudy Giuliani’s failed Republican presidential campaign in D.C.
He generally had positive words for McCain and commended him for not being “beholden to social conservatives.”
In addition to applauding McCain’s opposition to the FMA, Schmid praised the candidate for speaking at the funeral of Mark Bingham, a gay rugby player who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bingham was among the passengers who tried to take control of United flight 93 away from the terrorists who hijacked it. McCain thought Bingham was “an American hero,” Schmid said.
Nonetheless, Schmid said McCain “hasn’t really done anything to earn the right of the gay vote.”
While he undoubtedly will win some votes from the gay community, McCain needs to speak out on issues important to gays if he wants to earn the votes he will win from them, Schmid said.
Intermediaries for Charles Francis, a Washington public relations executive, and Steve Gunderson, a former Wisconsin congressman and president of the Council on Foundations, said they would not comment for this article. Donald Capoccia, a New York real estate developer, did not respond to requests for comment.
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