The Gay Goodfellas

Patrick Guerriero and Bill Smith of the Gill Action Fund have a problem. Guerriero, former leader of the Log Cabin Republicans and onetime candidate for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, and Smith, a political consultant and former employee of Karl Rove, want LGBT people to understand their strategy for winning equal rights -- a targeted approach to developing what they call “fair-minded majorities” in state legislatures across the country. During the 2006 election, the first cycle in which the organization set its sights on state legislative races, control of 13 state chambers switched hands. Ten were Democratic takeovers -- chambers that are now more likely to make gay-friendly decisions.

Smith and Guerriero want to get that story out, yes, but they don’t want Gill Action to be a centerpiece of the article, nor do they want any of its internal or external machinations to be revealed. No focusing on Gill Action’s founder, Tim Gill, a self-made millionaire who by all accounts is exceedingly modest and usually ducks the press at all costs. No naming any of the state legislators the organization helped to elect in 2006, lest those candidates find themselves in the cross hairs of the Christian right in the next election. They won’t disclose the states they worked in during the last election cycle, and in terms of 2008, they’re willing to discuss only two states in which they will be active: Florida, where Gill Action will be playing defense against a constitutional marriage amendment; and Massachusetts, where they will be helping to reelect Democratic and Republican legislators who had voted to protect the state’s same-sex marriage law. And although I can talk to one of their donors, I can’t name that person in print. Any breach of confidentiality there might scare off future donors or, perhaps worse, let the opposition know where Gill will strike next.

Essentially, Guerriero and Smith want to turn their face to the sunlight ever so briefly, then retreat to the shadowy world of politics to work in virtual anonymity -- developing a hit list of the community’s worst enemies, identifying our best friends, and doing whatever has to be done to get the next hate-crimes bill passed or constitutional amendment killed at the state level.

As a journalist, I felt like they were tying both hands behind my back and smashing my recorder. It would be nearly impossible to verify just how much of an impact they were really having. These were the good guys, I reminded myself, forced to use the same brass-knuckle tactics pioneered by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove. And who better to take the weapons Rove and Gingrich deployed against LGBT people -- and train them back on conservatives -- than a couple guys who came up through the GOP ranks?

Gill Action, in my estimation, bears some resemblance to GOPAC, the political action committee Gingrich wielded to obtain the GOP’s landslide victories in 1994, when -- along with taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in four decades -- Republicans stormed state legislatures to seize power in 18 chambers. In the 2006 election, by its own account, Gill Action’s nationwide donor base directed some $2.8 million to 68 candidates across 11 states. And 56 of those candidates won -- presumably knocking out 56 other candidates who weren’t so friendly with the gays.

Gill Action isn’t the financial juggernaut that GOPAC was, nor does it have the sweeping ideological agenda of Gingrich’s Contract With America. But Gill’s emphasis on growing power from the bottom up -- planting one school board member or city council person at a time until Congress is eventually overrun by politicians who support LGBT rights -- is strikingly similar to the way GOPAC helped create a Congress full of pols who had been vetted by the Christian right before rising up through the GOP ranks. It was Gingrich’s revolution that laid a foundation for the Rovian politics of fear that has locked gays out of relationship recognition at the state level nearly across the country.

In the course of my conversation with Guerriero and Smith, I hesitatingly offer up the Newt analogy, thinking that few self-respecting LGBT activists -- of Republican persuasion or not -- would welcome the comparison. Instead, Smith and Guerriero flash a glance at each other. Far from drawing a distinction, Smith offers, “We’re not afraid to learn from anyone across the political spectrum who’s doing really smart work, be it EMILY’s List or GOPAC.” Sure, you could call these guys activists, but what Smith just gave me is neither gay nor straight. It’s the response of a political operative.

THE PIPELINE

Marilyn Musgrave, Colorado congresswoman and child of the Gingrich revolution, cut her teeth in elective office as a school board member in 1991 focusing on abstinence-only education. She graduated to the Colorado state house and senate before winning her U.S. congressional bid in 2002. Two years later she authored and introduced the first Federal Marriage Amendment.

Representative Musgrave has since survived two takedown attempts by Tim Gill and several other progressive millionaires who threw millions in negative advertising at her races in 2004 and 2006. (One ad famously depicted an actress dressed like Musgrave stealing a watch from a corpse in an open casket -- a direct jab at her vote to tax funeral homes in the state.) The attacks have taken their toll, and Colorado politicians have taken note: Musgrave’s margin of victory in the last election shrank to just over two percentage points in the highly conservative fourth district, where voters should wholeheartedly embrace her ideology.