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Feds target gay Iowan senator
A state senator from Iowa defends his innocence after a federal probe finds he may have had a hand in a case of extortion.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted August 15, 2007
Feds target gay Iowan senator

Iowa’s highest ranking openly gay elected official has been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for extortion, facing fines up to $250,000 and 20 years in prison. State Senator Matt McCoy, 41, allegedly attempted to obtain $100 for each installation of a  home security system from an ADT dealership in Des Moines, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The motion-sensor system, called QuietCare, is placed in senior citizens' homes to keep track of their safety. According to the indictment, McCoy collected about $2,000 from the company between Dec. 29, 2005, and March 24, 2006.

A clear target

McCoy, who was outed on the senate floor in 2003 by ultraconservative Republican Senator Ken Veenstra, has been reelected several times since first winning his state House seat in 1992. Veenstra lost his bid for reelection in 2004 after outing his colleague, as did several other antigay Iowa officials.

“Since coming out as an openly gay man,” McCoy said, “I have been a continuous target of groups targeting gays to advance their own agendas of intolerance and hate. Clearly, there is significant speculation about what has motivated federal officials to take this action against me.”

The senator says that U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker, an admitted conservative, targeted him to show his conservative loyalty to the Bush administration in the wake of the U.S. Attorney firings by the Department of Justice. McCoy is an outspoken advocate for gay rights issues, including an efforts to defeat a proposed gay marriage ban as well as to confirm an openly gay man to the state’s Board of Education and also to ensure a $400,000 allocation to provide drugs for AIDS patients. McCoy has successfully pushed an anti-bullying law in public schools and antidiscrimination laws for LGBT people in housing and the workplace.

Local observer David Yepsen noted the unique circumstances of the case. “[T]he indictment was unprecedented and is full of political wrinkles,” he wrote in a March 15 Des Moines Register column. “Old-timers at the Statehouse say that although legislators have been charged with state misdemeanors, they can't recall a sitting legislator being indicted by the federal government.”

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