2 State GOP Officials Join Gay Republican Club

In a gesture of outreach to the state’s gay Republicans, two executives of the state Republican Party have joined the Log Cabin Club, a gay Republican organization that has often felt itself to be on the chilly edges of the GOP.

Appearing before the Los Angeles chapter of the club Monday night, Bob Carpenter, executive director of the state Republican Party, and his wife, Pat Giardina, the state party finance director, paid $50 each to become members of the nationwide group.

“My wife and I had discussed it and we had made a decision that many of the tenets of the Log Cabin Club are things we believe in and stand for, so we thought it was appropriate to join,” Carpenter said in an interview Tuesday. “We felt that they are active, good Republicans and we wanted to support them.”

Although Carpenter said he did not want his Lob Cabin membership to be interpreted as “any big statement,” it was an implicit rejection of the fiercely anti-gay positions espoused by the most conservative GOP factions--as well as the perceived political costs of such attacks.

“I think we all sense the only way to become the majority party is to be inclusive,” Carpenter added. “I don’t think a super majority of our party agrees with discrimination of any kind.”

Log Cabin officials welcomed Carpenter’s overtures as a significant step. “The party itself is rejecting any sort of narrow definition of what it means to be a Republican,” said Ritch Colbert, president of the Los Angeles club. “They’re saying the right wing fringe doesn’t have the right to define the Republican Party.”

Carpenter’s Log Cabin appearance reflected last year’s ascendancy of moderate Republicans within the state party apparatus after years of dueling with the conservative wing.

Indeed, Republican political consultant Paul Clarke recalled Tuesday that the current state party chairman, Dr. Tirso del Junco, attended a Log Cabin meeting more than a decade ago, when he was also party chairman, to welcome the group to the GOP fold.

“It’s coming full circle,” said Clarke, who thought Carpenter’s move was a wise one. “From a political point of view, it makes extremely smart sense to take every Republican you can get.”