National
Fla. Log Cabin members tilt toward Romney
Former Massachusetts governor wins straw poll at ‘gay’ GOP caucus in Miami
MIAMI — Two days before the hotly contested GOP presidential primary in Florida, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney beat his three remaining rivals by a lopsided margin Saturday night in a straw poll of gay Republican activists in the Sunshine State.
The poll of just 34 Log Cabin officers and active members from the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Tampa areas was billed as an unscientific sample of LGBT Republicans in the state.
It took place at an informal “cocktail caucus” of Log Cabin members at a Miami restaurant. In secret balloting, Romney received 24 votes, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich received 6 votes, Texas Congressman Ron Paul received 4 votes, and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania received no votes.
“It’s a reflection of some of our most active and politically informed members mostly from the Miami-Dade area,” said R. Clarke Cooper, president of the national Log Cabin Republicans organization.
Officials from the group’s Florida chapters said the outcome was consistent with anecdotal information they’ve received from club members and gay and lesbian Republicans across the state – that a majority of Florida’s LGBT Republicans, including those who initially backed former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Texas Congressman Ron Paul, have shifted their support to Romney.
Huntsman has dropped out of the race and most political observers believe Paul has little chance of capturing the Republican nomination for president.
Shortly after Log Cabin’s cocktail caucus adjourned on Saturday evening, the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, and the Tampa Bay Times released the findings of a joint poll that showed a large majority of the state’s Republican voters were in agreement with the Log Cabin members.
The poll of 800 likely GOP voters showed Romney had a commanding lead of 42 percent, with Gingrich coming in second with 31 percent. Santorum came in third with 14 percent. Paul received 6 percent support from the GOP voter sample.
The Florida primary takes place on Tuesday. Thousands of GOP voters have already cast their bollots under the state’s early voting law.
Mimi Planas, co-director of Log Cabin Republicans of Miami, said her group organized the cocktail caucus in honor of members of the national Log Cabin Republicans board of directors, which met in Miami earlier in the day.
Planas, a Cuban American, was among several Hispanic Log Cabin members and officers that attended the caucus. The other co-director of the Miami chapter, Eddie Sierra, is also Cuban American.
Planas said her perception was that many LGBT Hispanic Republicans were in agreement with a majority of their straight counterparts in believing that Romney would be the best candidate to challenge President Obama in the general election in November.
“I can you tell that I, as a Republican gay voter, will be voting for Romney in the Republican primary and will support his campaign 100 percent,” said Planas, who works as an executive assistant to the president of a Miami company.
She acknowledges that Romney isn’t as supportive on LGBT issues as she would like, especially on the issue of same-sex marriage, which Romney opposes. But Planas and nearly all the others at the cocktail gathering who spoke with the Blade said their decision on which candidate to support for president was based on a wide range of issues in addition to LGBT issues.
“We see many of the LGBT Democrats as being one-issue voters,” said Planas. “We’re multi-issue voters who care a lot about a strong national defense, regulatory reform, and less, not more, government intrusion in the private sector.”
Jim Pease, president of the Tampa Bay Log Cabin Republicans chapter, said he’s developed a “sound bite” answer over the past ten years to the question by gay Democrats and others on why gay Republicans support a party or candidates that oppose LGBT rights.
“If you’re going to be a single-issue voter, than, yes, you’re going to have a problem,” he said. “But you’ve got to look at the whole picture. I’ve never found any candidate whose platform I agree with 100 percent.”
Pease added, “I have to look at what’s best for America. I want to keep America safe, I want a strong defense. I want a strong economy. I want to keep it so we have the liberties and the freedoms that we enjoy so we can be gay Republicans, so that we can be gay Democrats.”
Andy Eddy, president of the Log Cabin Chapter of Broward County, which includes the city of Fort Lauderdale, said he, too, is supporting Romney.
“I was originally supporting Huntsman and I was leaning toward Gingrich,” Eddy said. “But I was disappointed in a couple of things about Gingrich. I decided Romney would be the best person to win the Republican ticket in November 2012.”
Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum have each signed a pledge vowing to support a U.S. constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The anti-gay National Organization for Marriage sent the pledge to all Republican presidential candidates last year. Paul and Huntsman were the only two of the original ‘top tier’ candidates to decline to sign the pledge.
Cooper, who heads the national Log Cabin organization, and several officials with the group’s Florida chapters, including Eddy, said on Saturday that it would be unlikely that the national group would decline to support Romney in November should he win the nomination based on his position on gay marriage.
Cooper said Log Cabin traditionally waits to decide whether to endorse a Republican presidential candidate until the time of the GOP national convention.
In a controversial decision, the national Log Cabin Republicans group chose not to endorse President George W. Bush for re-election in 2004 based on Bush’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would add a permanent ban on same-sex marriage in the U.S. Constitution.
Eddy noted that Log Cabin’s action in 2004 left it open for its chapters throughout the country to endorse Bush, enabling the chapters to avoid sanctions or expulsion from their local or state Republican committees. A number of Log Cabin chapters, including those in Miami-Dade and Broward County in Florida, have been accepted as official arms of the Republican Party Committees in their respective counties or cities.
Cooper said he and other Log Cabin officials believe Romney’s position on gay marriage is more nuanced than that of President Bush in 2004, who actively backed a constitutional ban. Cooper said that Romney, while signing the National Organization for Marriage pledge, refused to sign a “far more extreme” pledge against gay marriage sent to him and other candidates by the Iowa based Christian conservative group The Family Leader.
According to Cooper, Log Cabin’s decision not to endorse Bush in 2004 under group’s then president Patrick Guerriero was also based, in part, on the national Republican Party’s strong backing of referendums in several states seeking to ban gay marriage.
Cooper said the party was using gay marriage as a “wedge issue” to divide the electorate and increase the turnout of conservative voters at the polls.
“Romney has said doing a constitutional amendment is not realistic and that’s not something that’s going to happen,” Cooper said. “So when you have candidates like him and Ron Paul saying that’s not a realistic option, that’s far different than from saying I’m going to push for a federal marriage amendment.”
Eddy said he and other Log Cabin members planned to attend a Romney rally Sunday afternoon in Pompano Beach near Fort Lauderdale.
Jerame Davis, executive director of National Stonewall Democrats, an LGBT group aligned with the Democratic Party, disputes Cooper’s view that Romney’s statement that a federal constitutional amendment seeking to ban gay marriage is not likely to be seriously considered offsets Romney’s support for NOM’s federal marriage amendment pledge.
“It’s the height of hypocrisy that Log Cabin would try to excuse Mitt Romney’s adoption of NOM’s insidious hate pledge,” Davis said. “In 2004, LCR took a principled stand and refused to endorse George W. Bush for his misguided push for a federal marriage amendment.”
U.S. Military/Pentagon
Federal appeals court rules White House illegally banned trans troops
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says Pentagon will appeal to SCOTUS
A panel of federal appeals court judges ruled that President Donald Trump’s policy banning transgender troops likely violates their constitutional rights.
The three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that Trump’s Executive Order 14183, also known as “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” was created with the intent to exclude people from the military based on their gender identity.
The policy argues that trans people are inherently incapable of meeting the military’s “high standards of readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” citing a history of or signs of gender dysphoria as the cause. According to the Defense Department, this creates “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on [an] individual.”
The policy states that, regardless of the physical or intellectual capabilities of each applicant, it views trans military applicants as a monolith, considering them less qualified than their cisgender peers.
Despite the panel’s majority opinion issued on Monday, the first day of Pride Month, the ban remains in effect. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Pentagon to enforce the policy last year and will continue to allow it to remain in place as litigation proceeds.
The panel’s new ruling will prevent the military from discharging current service members named in the lawsuit, but it does not allow new transrecruits to join.
The policy “appears to be driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group: persons who identify as transgender,” Judge Robert Wilkins, a Democratic appointee of President Barack Obama wrote for the majority.
Judge Justin Walker, the author of the dissenting opinion and a Republican Trump appointee, argued that the authority to determine military policy does not rest with the courts. Instead, he wrote, the Constitution grants that power to Congress through legislation and to the president as commander in chief of the armed forces.
“We have neither the expertise nor the authority to decide whether the military can exclude the plaintiffs from its ranks. The Constitution assigns that authority to Congress and the commander-in-chief,” Walker wrote.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indicated that an appeal is in the works, posting, “See you at SCOTUS” on X on Monday in response to the ruling.
Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, which has led the litigation since last November, applauded the decision.
“Today’s decision is a powerful vindication of the plaintiffs’ extraordinary courage and unwavering commitment to their country,” Levi said.
The Washington Blade spoke with Second Lt. Nicolas (Nic) Talbott of the U.S. Army, the lead plaintiff in the case, and Levi from GLAD Law back in November.
While discussing the case and his experiences as a trans service member, Talbott said his identity is an asset rather than a hindrance, particularly when it comes to identifying problems and finding solutions, regardless of what others may think or say.
“Being transgender is not some sad thing that people go through,” Talbott told the Blade. “This is something that has taken years and years and years of dedication and discipline and research and ups and downs to get to the point where I am today … my ability to transition was essential to getting me to that point where I am today.”
He also discussed the impact of removing qualified and dedicated service members from the military, arguing that the consequences will be felt long after Trump leaves office.
“When we’re losing thousands of those qualified, experienced individuals … those are seats that are not just going to be able to be filled by anybody,” he said. “[That’s] military training that’s not going to be able to be replaced for years and years to come.”
“Every person who puts on the uniform is expected to make a tremendous amount of sacrifice,” Talbott said. “Who I am under this uniform should have no bearing on that … We shouldn’t be picking and choosing which veterans are worthy of our thanks on that day.”
Levi characterized the policy as overtly cruel and legally indefensible to the Blade.
“This policy and its rollout is even more cruel than the first in a number of ways,” Levi explained. “For one, the policy itself says that transgender people are dishonest, untrustworthy and undisciplined, which is deeply offensive and degrading and demeaning.”
She also argued that the administration’s cost justification is flawed, saying that removing and replacing trans service members is more expensive than retaining them.
“There’s no legitimate justification relating to cost … it is far more expensive to both purge the military of people who are serving and also to replace people … than to provide the minuscule amount of costs for medications other service members routinely get.”
National
Results from key Tuesday primary races
State officials in California had not called the governor’s race as of Wednesday morning but Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra appear likely to advance to the general election.
The race for governor has been scrambled several times after Kamala Harris opted not to run, Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out after sexual misconduct allegations surfaced, and Rep. Katie Porter’s campaign fizzled. Becerra would be the state’s first Latino governor since 1875 if elected. Hilton was endorsed by President Trump.
In the Los Angeles mayor’s race, the AP declared that incumbent Mayor Karen Bass will advance to the Nov. 3 runoff while former reality TV star Spencer Pratt and LA Council member Nithya Raman were competing for second place. California is notoriously slow in counting ballots and only about half of the results were available by Wednesday morning.
In San Francisco, Democratic State Sen. Scott Wiener advanced to the general election in November, besting Supervisor Connie Chan, who was endorsed by House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi is retiring from Congress after nearly 40 years in the House.
In Iowa, Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek won the primary for an open U.S. Senate seat, defeating state Sen. Zach Wahls. Turek will face Rep. Ashley Hinson, who won the GOP primary with President Donald Trump’s endorsement, in the general election.
The Iowa seat is open because Sen. Joni Ernst (R) decided not to seek re-election. The primary was closely watched by LGBTQ advocates because Wahls rose to national prominence after a speech he made defending marriage equality went viral in 2011. Wahls was raised by a lesbian couple.
National
White House Correspondents’ Dinner rescheduled after shooting
‘We will not allow an act of violence to have the last word’
The White House Correspondents’ Association announced on Tuesday that it has rescheduled its annual dinner for July 24 after the April event was halted when gunshots rang out at the Washington Hilton.
Cole Allen, 31, is charged with the attempted assassination of President Trump, who was in the ballroom at the time of the incident. One Secret Service officer was wounded in the attack. Officers stopped Allen before he could enter the ballroom where 2,500 journalists and politicos were having dinner and waiting for Trump to speak. It was Trump’s first time attending as president.
“We will not allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are reflecting on the 250th anniversary of America and everything we stand for,” said WHCA President Weijia Jiang in a statement to members.
She did not announce further details, including venue and ticketing.
Washington Blade White House reporter Joe Reberkenny was in the audience when shots were fired and reported live on social media from the scene.
This post will be updated as more details are announced.
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