The Gist

HRC Not Endorsing Any Candidate in Oregon Senate Race?

David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign came on the show today to respond to criticism from Howie Klein, who appeared on the show on Tuesday. Over the course of the next hour -- in a conversation with a caller well after the Smith interview ended -- HRC's odd intentions regarding the Oregon Senate race in the fall became revealed.

Smith defended the group regarding the Jim Neal non-endorsement, and I will link to the audio as soon as it is up, as I'm sure several blogs will post it. We also talked about HRC's support of Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who backed various antigay judges and Supreme Court justices. We worked hard on the show urging people to call Congress, fighting those nominations over the past few years -- the virulently antigay Leslie Southwick, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, and Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts, all of whom Collins voted for, and William Pryor, whom Collins helped to get a vote, breaking the Democratic filibuster as a member of the Gang of 14-- and it's outrageous to see a gay group telling gay people to send money to such an individual.

But the more interesting bit of news came when we discussed Senator Gordon Smith, the Oregon Republican, who has sponsored various pro-gay measures but voted for the federal marriage amendment. David Smith said HRC would not endorse him, which seemed inconsistent: The FMA didn't have a chance of passing, and thus that vote didn't actually do direct harm to us, as heinous as it was. And yet the group is not endorsing this otherwise pro-gay senator but they're endorsing Collins, who actually hurt LGBT people by getting these judges on the bench. David Smith defended HRC to the end, and after he left we took calls from listeners.

After a few calls that were critical of HRC, Terry Bean, an HRC board member, called in to the show to defend the group. It wasn't clear that he was meaning to identify himself as someone associated with the group at first -- he called himself only by his first name, "Terry," from Oregon -- but his use of the word "we" to defend the group's decisions (i.e. "we very carefully weighed all factors") soon brought it out in the open, and I asked if this "Terry" was indeed Terry Bean, who I knew as an HRC board member.

The conversation became heated, as he was clearly frustrated and angry with me for criticizing the group. In the heat of the moment something appears to have slipped out: He said that HRC would not endorse anyone in the Oregon Senate race -- not Gordon Smith, nor the Democrat who will be running against him -- and would remain neutral in the fall. And he claimed that the two Democrats vying for the nomination in that race -- both very pro-gay, one of them a full supporter of marriage rights -- "understand" why the group needs to remain neutral.

Why on earth would HRC not endorse a pro-gay Democrat and remain neutral in the race? That's even more indefensible than if they actually backed Gordon Smith. They're punishing Gordon Smith for his FMA vote by not supporting him or raising money for him, but by refusing to back his pro-gay opponent they're not going to make it too hard on him -- or actually help that pro-gay Democrat elected. And this is a group that claims to support LGBT rights!

(P.S. That audio, of the Terry Bean phone call, will be up in coming days as well).

UPDATE: In listening to the interview with David Smith again, I realized that he in fact said there would be no endorsement in the Oregon race (I thought he'd only said they would not be endorsing Gordon Smith), that they would remain neutral. So this is not something Bean slipped out with -- and it is confirmed, obviously, coming from David Smith himself.