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Kate Runyon (Blade file photo)
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: Amy Cavanaugh COMMENTS
 
Some gay Marylanders are criticizing Equality Maryland’s former executive director, who left the organization last week after six months on the job.
Kate Runyon stepped down June 12 without publicly offering a reason for her resignation. Until a new director is found, Equality Maryland Foundation Board President David Toth is handling daily management of both organizations.
Equality Maryland Board President Scott Davenport said a search for Runyon’s replacement is underway, but it’s unclear when the vacancy will be filled.
“The timeline is as soon as possible,” Davenport said. “A search committee has been formed … and we have eight or 10 resumes from candidates at this stage, so we’re proceeding as quickly as we can.”
But some gay Marylanders are cautioning the organization to proceed carefully, with one knowledgeable source saying the last pick was a poor choice and set the state’s largest LGBT rights group back “more than six months” in its work.
Runyon, who served as interim head of Michigan’s Triangle Foundation before joining Equality Maryland, did not respond to the Blade’s requests for comment.
A source familiar with Equality Maryland who spoke on condition of anonymity said there were “red flags about Kate from the very beginning.”
“She’s a very personable, charismatic person, but from the inception of the process, it was clear that there were going to be significant problems with her,” the source said.
The source noted “that Dan Furmansky, the executive director before her, really never got out of the way and let her make Equality Maryland hers,” but added that Runyon was “just a complete disaster as executive director.”
“This is a critical time in the run-up to next year’s election, and seven months were wasted with her,” the source said. “It will likely take months to find another executive director, and in year in the life of an organization like Equality Maryland that’s poised to achieve marriage equality, that’s just killer.”
Carrie Evans, a former Equality Maryland policy director who competed against Runyon for the executive director job, also criticized Runyon’s job performance. Evans left the organization one month after Runyon came aboard.
“I think it was a case of the board choosing personality over substance,” Evans said.
“Kate’s resume clearly did not meet the qualifications that the job description laid out. The staff and others in the community raised concerns during the hiring process about her qualifications and her ability to lead the organization at a critical time.”
Evans noted the board needed “to bring in someone who could hit the ground running, who knew marriage equality backward and forward, who knew the political players, who knew the major donors, who didn’t have a learning curve in one of the most critical times in the organization’s history. It was not the time to take chances on untested folks.”
Evans said Equality Maryland board members “really gambled” in their decision to hire Runyon.
“They thought they could have their cake and icing as well by keeping the current staff in place, but they were wrong,” Evans said. “I resigned one month after Kate started because I had a lack of confidence about how the organization was going to move forward.”
Evans estimated that “Equality Maryland’s agenda has been set back more than six months,” the length of Runyon’s tenure.
Another source close to Equality Maryland said Runyon’s departure was “bound to happen sooner or later.”
“I think that they hired someone who was unprepared, someone who had virtually no ties to Maryland, and had no experience working on the issues that are going on in Maryland,” the source said. “They hired someone who did not know the message around marriage or transgender anti-discrimination. She was on … WPYR in Baltimore and it was really embarrassing and painful to listen to.”
But other gay Marylanders defended Runyon, saying that she “tried her best.”
“I think Kate is a person with tremendous energy, and I think she genuinely wanted to move things forward with Maryland, but she came to the conclusion that maybe she wasn’t the best fit, but she tried her best,” said Lisa Polyak, an Equality Maryland board member.
Furmansky, who now serves as Equality Maryland’s political consultant and spokesperson, also noted the organization remains on track with its goals.
“Things are going pretty well given that we passed two crucial bills this year in Annapolis,” he said. “One eliminated the inheritance tax, and we also got DP benefits for state employees. We also raised over $30,000 for the [political action committee] the other night [at the Night Out for Equality fundraiser], and I think that shows a sense of the future.”
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