One can't but help feeling sorry for Arizona border sheriff and GOP congressional candidate Paul Babeu. Mitt Romney, needing to shore up his anti-immigrant cred with hard-right Arizona primary voters, was glad to have Babeu as his state co-chair.
Until Babeu admitted being gay. The Romney campaign promptly heaved him over the side yesterday. And Babeu spent most of his press conference- after denying accusations he threatened to deport his ex-boyfriend is the Mexican every spilled the beans on their relationship- saying, "Well, yes, I am, but look at all the other good American, Republican, conservative things I've done for you, why don't you focus on that?...":
It's wasn't immediately clear if Babeu's admission would hurt him politically, but his primary opponents came out swinging.
Babeu is taking on an incumbent tea party Republican who switched districts, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, and state Sen. Ron Gould, a conservative from northwestern Arizona, in August's 4th District primary.
Gould said he believed Babeu's posting of pictures on what the lawmaker called a "homosexual hookup website" were a "Congressman Weiner type of moment."
"The real issue here is the poor judgment of a government official, posting those kinds of photos on a public website," Gould said. "I think that shows a lack of good judgment."
He also said he believes Babeu's sexual orientation would hurt him in the district. Gould sponsored Arizona's constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, an amendment he said drew extremely strong support in the rural counties he and Babeu seek to represent.
"This is about an abuse of power, a misuse of public trust, bad judgment and the continued use of official resources for personal and political gain," Gosar said in a statement that noted the location of the press conference and the large gathering of uniformed sheriff's personnel at the event.
Until Babeu admitted being gay. The Romney campaign promptly heaved him over the side yesterday. And Babeu spent most of his press conference- after denying accusations he threatened to deport his ex-boyfriend is the Mexican every spilled the beans on their relationship- saying, "Well, yes, I am, but look at all the other good American, Republican, conservative things I've done for you, why don't you focus on that?...":
In a press conference on Saturday, Mr. Babeu said that he had had a personal relationship with Jose, but denied that he had threatened to deport him. The accusations, he said, “are absolutely, completely false — except for the issues that refer to me as being gay. Because that’s the truth. I am gay.”
Even though Mr. Babeu was a minor figure in the Romney campaign, the accusations came at a less than ideal time. With Arizona and Michigan holding primaries at the end of the month, Mr. Romney is struggling to shore up social conservatives’ support and to fend off Rick Santorum, who is surging after winning contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota.
“Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him,” Andrea Saul, a campaign spokeswoman, said in an e-mail statement. “We support his decision.”
The press conference that Mr. Babeu held on Saturday largely turned into a call to look beyond his sexual orientation.
He defined himself as an American, and appealed for voters and the public to view him through the lens of his military service and time in law enforcement.
“I want to be judged on my service: 20 years in the military, two deployments — including one in Iraq — a police officer who has responded to thousands of calls for help, and a sheriff who has cut response times while reducing my own budget,” he said in a statement.
He took the same position on his campaign website, for which he deserves full marks. But Babeu's outing underscores how life in the GOP Closet twists a person. February 18 he's announcing he's gay. February 14 he was posting how "The race in the 4th Congressional District of Arizona is a fight for a return to the conservative values that you and I believe in. This is a fight to define the Republican Party."
The same day "Team Babeu" was posting video of his speech to CPAC, the conservatives' Burning Man, where gay conservatives are banned.
"Over-credentialing" is a common defense in the closet. Gay men have a ready and detailed list of everything else they have accomplished in life, anticipating the day when, sometimes rightly, they anticipate the loss of friends and family that follows coming out. Trying to make a career in Republican politics in Arizona as a closeted gay man is an Olympic-class career in mental contortionism.
The Romney campaign didn't wish him well with coming out, or continue to welcome his support. They just sent out a teeth-gritted email that they had decided he had resigned. Romney, who like all his fellow presidential hopefuls, makes a fetish of thanking vets and serving armed forces members for their service in debates and campaign events; Romney, with the others, was silent when a serving Army member who looked like he could break any of the candidates in half with two fingers, prefaced a debate question last fall by telling them he was gay and was booed by the audience (Romney later defended his silence in interviews). Babeu's military service in Iraq is a problem for the GOP presidential field, who all want to revive DADT. If men like Babeu can pass as straight and serve their country with honor- like Stephen Hill, who was booed- then doesn't that prove, irrespective of its other claimed merits, that DADT can't work? Do we admit that and get on with life, or do we start looking for ways to peer even closer into the lives of the military, to make absolutely sure none of them are like that?
Threat to national security and morals
How will Babeu's political ambitions fare in the hands of his fellow Republicans? Here's a hint:
Babeu is taking on an incumbent tea party Republican who switched districts, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, and state Sen. Ron Gould, a conservative from northwestern Arizona, in August's 4th District primary.
Gould said he believed Babeu's posting of pictures on what the lawmaker called a "homosexual hookup website" were a "Congressman Weiner type of moment."
"The real issue here is the poor judgment of a government official, posting those kinds of photos on a public website," Gould said. "I think that shows a lack of good judgment."
He also said he believes Babeu's sexual orientation would hurt him in the district. Gould sponsored Arizona's constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, an amendment he said drew extremely strong support in the rural counties he and Babeu seek to represent.
"This is about an abuse of power, a misuse of public trust, bad judgment and the continued use of official resources for personal and political gain," Gosar said in a statement that noted the location of the press conference and the large gathering of uniformed sheriff's personnel at the event.
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