commentary
One of today’s most popular TV reality shows is the Biggest Loser. The contestants are a group of extremely overweight people whose unhealthy lifestyle habits have put them on the path to an untimely death.
Before becoming a member of the Biggest Loser cast, contestants must face rigorous health exams, and a wake-up call from doctors and therapists that includes self-examination and introspection as to how and why they became so unhealthy.
In the end, the new lifestyle regimes imposed by the show and a change in health choices and attitude results in tremendous weight loss. Contestants become healthy people with a positive future.
The contestant who is the biggest loser becomes the biggest winner. The California Republican Party (CRP) at this moment in time could be compared to those pre-show contestants as many political observers agree the political health of the CRP is in major decline and is teetering close to near irrelevance and extinction.
Today, in California, Republicans represent less than 30 percent of voter registration; they have no statewide office and are an impotent minority in both houses of the state legislature. Additionally, the CRP is broke and deeply in debt. The CRP needs to make some changes and they need to do it now.
March 1, more than 1,000 delegates convened at the recent Sacramento Convention where there was a great sense of the need to heed the wake-up call of the last election. Most of the delegates shared a sense of self-examination and introspection and the desire to turn the unhealthy CRP into a viable organization with winning elections in their future.
There is hope for a significant shift in Republican strategy beginning with the election of the new chairman and vice chairman. An overwhelming number of delegates believe that Chairman Jim Brulte and Vice Chairman Harmeet Dhillon will provide the leadership and change in direction that will bring about the necessary changes to renew and revive the CRP. CRP Secretary Patricia Welch and Treasurer Mike Osborn, both loyal supporters of the LCR, were also re-elected. As one delegate put it, “there is nowhere lower to go, and the only way is up”.
This was good news for The 29 LCR delegates that attended the convention and LGBT Republicans in general as all the LCR delegates were actively working for and played a significant role in the election of the new Chairman Brulte and Vice Chair Dhillon, a woman of color and the first woman to hold that office.
Most significantly was the election of Kevin Krick, Bay Area regional vice chair over his anti-gay opponent. Krick welcomed the LCR support and credited the LCR delegates with his smashing victory. An openly gay delegate, Greg Gandrud, was also elected to the top GOP executive board.
LCR held a public board meeting, Saturday afternoon, in the hotel convention site which was listed on the official program and hotel meeting room’s public schedule. The LCR board meeting was attended by a parade of candidates including every person running for a board position from chairman to regional vice president!
This was big change from the ‘80s. when the LCR had to host a room in the hotel across the street and no LCR materials were allowed on the official convention tables. More than 200 delegates attended the annual LCR Luau, a popular and separate event that took place in the hotel restaurant Saturday evening. The Luau was a big hit as usual, and all the candidates stopped by for a Mai Tai, a lei and conversation, including Brulte and Dhillon.
Reaching this point has taken several decades. In the early ‘90s as LCR was nearing the threshold of members and chapters to win official recognition in the form of an official GOP chartered organization, Christian conservatives led a charge to change the party’s by-laws barring a gay-focused group from joining and more resolutions targeting gay rights followed.
However after one crushing defeat after another during the past 20 years, the evangelicals have lost strength and Charles Moran, chairman of the California LCR, said, “The time is right to ‘defang’ the party’s use of LGBT community as a dividing issue.”
Many political observers see Republican antipathy toward gay issues as a turnoff for younger voters. Since the takeover of the Christian right, and their implementation of social issues into the GOP Party platform the CRP has been in a steep political decent. However, in today’s political atmosphere, with more than 60 percent of California voters now favoring gay marriage, the LCR sees some light at the end of the tunnel.
Party leaders, like newly elected Vice Chair Harmeet Dhillon, who is the current San Francisco County GOP chair and a staunch conservative, was quoted saying, “There is no doubt that public attitudes are changing toward gays and their relationships. The Party is changing. We have gay people on our board of directors and they are in committed gay relationships, so I think people are actually very accepting of that. The label of marriage continues to be controversial among some parts of the party.” Dhillon said that opposition among some party members will take time to change.
Although the LCR delegates came away from the convention feeling very hopeful about the change in direction of the GOP, there is still work to do. The state party’s platform includes opposition to same-sex marriage, and changes to the platform are not due until the 2016 revision. The platform also says the party opposes “same-sex partner benefits, child custody and adoption.” However, for LGBT Conservatives/Republicans leaving the party that most represents their governmental and constitutional beliefs is not an option.
The LCR has a great opportunity during the next two years to help bring revival to the CRP through their mutually beneficial efforts of party and organization building. Log Cabin Republicans at the local chapter level provide a place for LGBT Republicans to work toward electing Republicans at all levels of government, and at the same time provides a place for politically like-minded people to share their ideas and work toward the preservation of individual liberty and freedom. In other words, it’s OK to be LGBT and Republican at the LCR!
History shows us that no legislation of major policy and impact on society passes without bi-partisan support. It is vitally important to freedom and liberty in America that we continue to be a two-party system and for LGBT people to be involved on both sides of the isle.
What LGBT equality legislation or what HIV+ funding has been passed in any House of any state recently or the Congress without the votes of Republicans?
As a recent example; several Republicans voted in the U.S. Senate for ending “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell;” New York’s recent legislation legalizing gay marriage passed with Republican help.
In Iowa, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage because of the Republican justices.
In California, a Republican governor, Schwarzenegger, introduced and supported more equality rights bills than any governor in the history of the state.
Lastly our own former mayor, Jerry Sanders has made historic and difficult decisions on behalf of LGBT equality and he continues to be an outspoken advocate at the national level. The more than 100 Republicans who signed onto the Amicus Brief on Proposition 8 and Sen. Rob Portman’s support for marriage equality are more recent examples.
As Congressman McCarthy put it, “Were the state GOP to somehow set aside the visceral social issues and embrace a little bit of our libertarianism, it could become relevant again, especially if the now-omnipotent Democrats overreach or fragment into factions.”
Gregory Angelo, former director of LCR national said, “Just five years ago it would be unheard of to have the Party directly addressing the need to bring gay and lesbian Americans into the big tent of the Republican Party.”
I recently had the opportunity to spend the day with newly elected state Chairman Jim Brulte and stated, “I’m confident we will be seeing him in the near future at a San Diego LCR meeting, and I’m looking forward to working him, Harmeet and our local San Diego GOP chairman, Tony Kravric, and the volunteers, to bring about the changes in the CRP that will move our Party forward.”
Republicans believe that they have the best ideas and solutions for creating jobs, a strong economy, creating prosperity and protecting individual freedom and liberty for all Americans. If they can learn to focus on solutions and communicate to voters on the issues that they, the voters, care about, they will once again become relevant.
And, if the GOP leadership continues down this new path and opens the tent, like the TV reality show where people turn their lives around, the biggest loser could well become the biggest winner.
