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Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean has abolished the Democratic Party’s constituent outreach desks, including the post of director of lesbian and gay outreach. According to Southern Voice, gay Democratic Party activist and fundraiser Jeff Soref of New York City said he resigned from the DNC and from his position as chair of the gay caucus in August largely because of Dean’s decision to eliminate the gay outreach desk. "
It took us many years to win that position, have it funded and make it effective," Soref said.
Soref said he told Dean "it was not credible" to simply assume that combining all constituent groups into one program without a specific gay coordinator or director would be effective because it would likely result in less attention to the specific concerns of gay Democrats.
"I thought this system could lead to us being re-marginalized by the party," Soref said in an e-mail message. "I have seen or heard nothing since that makes me feel that is not happening," he said.
Donald Hitchcock, a friend of mine, is director of the DNC's Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council, which raises money for the party from gay donors.
We will closely be watching this controversy, to see how it affects GLBT outreach in this crucial mid-term election year.
9 Comments:
Couple this with the Dem's choice of a homophobe to deliver the State of the Union rebuttal.
Marginalize gay Dems for the good of the party and backstep from support for a woman's choice. These ideas were tossed around after the 2004 election theft.
I think the DNC is making a huge mistake in eliminating the Director of GLBT Outreach position.
In 2004, Kerry got about 400,000 more self identified GLBT Votes than Gore did in 2000. There are lots of reasons why this happened, but one of those reasons was an organized strategic GLBT Outreach Plan at the DNC spearheaded by Eric Stern.
GLBT folks are the second most loyal voter base for Democrats (second only to African Americans), and the second highest donor base for Democrats (second only to Labor) in 2004. The DNC has a lot to lose by ignoring GLBT Voters. After all, 4.6 million self-identified GLBT voters cast ballots in the 2004 presidential race.
posted by Anonymous, at
2/07/2006 12:06 AM
