GOP Leader Who Blasted Right Wing Is Out of Job : Politics: State director made the comments before a gay club. Party chairman calls departure a voluntary resignation.

The executive director of the California Republican Party, Bob Carpenter, is out of his job after a furor over a speech he gave to a gay and lesbian GOP club in which he accused elements of the party’s right wing of being intolerant.

Republican state Chairman Tirso del Junco said Carpenter and his wife, Pat Giardina-Carpenter, the state party’s finance director, “voluntarily resigned.”

But del Junco’s predecessor as chairman, Jim Dignan--among those criticized by Carpenter in his talk to the Log Cabin Club of Los Angeles--said he believes that del Junco forced Carpenter’s removal.

Del Junco severely criticized Carpenter’s April 25 speech, saying in an interview, “It isn’t the role of the executive director of the party to make such remarks. It’s an administrative job. He’s not the spokesman for the party. It’s not his role to advance his own agenda.”

John Allan Peschong, the party’s communications director, was named interim executive director.

Carpenter could not be reached for comment. Del Junco and Peschong said Carpenter and his wife were driving to Washington, D.C., to seek other employment.

The president of the Log Cabin Club’s Los Angeles chapter, Ritch Colbert, commented bitterly, “I can’t help but believe if Carpenter were bashing a more moderate or liberal faction of the party, he would still be executive director.”

In his extemporaneous speech to the club, which was tape-recorded and later written up by a reporter for the weekly newspaper Gay and Lesbian Times, Carpenter vowed, “We’re going to turn this party around. . . . We’re going to make this party tolerant if it’s the last thing we do.”

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Carpenter said he had recently spent a weekend attending a convention of the College Republicans group in Sacramento “with probably the most intolerant people that I’ve ever spent time with . . . the right and the further right,” adding that this demonstrated how intolerant the party had become.

He also criticized Dignan, who is now the treasurer for the insurgent Ron Unz gubernatorial primary campaign against Gov. Pete Wilson. “Probably one of the worst things that our party ever did was to elect Jim Dignan,” Carpenter said.

He added in his speech that he became a Republican 20 years ago because he believed in less government, lower taxes and other principles. “We’ve moved so far away from that,” he declared.

Producing a party card titled, “I’m a Republican because,” he said that nowhere among the eight points listed “does it say, ‘I’m a Republican because I’m straight. I’m a Republican because I don’t believe in alternative lifestyles.’ We’ve got to get away from the intolerance that our party has become.”

To help make their point, Carpenter and his wife joined the Log Cabin Club.

Ted Soojian, state chairman of the College Republicans, said he tried unsuccessfully to reach Carpenter to protest his speech, but abandoned the attempt when he heard “he was not going to have his job much longer anyway.”

“As to the charge of us being intolerant, we are not intolerant of people collectively,” Soojian said. “We believe strongly in the 1st Amendment and individual rights. But we do believe it’s wrong for government to be used to promote alternative lifestyles or agendas.”

Dignan said he was appalled by Carpenter’s remarks “because I don’t believe they were fair statements about our volunteer organizations or the party itself.”

The former state chairman said he did not object to Carpenter and his wife joining the Log Cabin Club, because “any individual can join whatever club they want to, that’s their right.”

But as for the speech, he said, “I felt Dr. del Junco would handle it and he has handled it. . . . Those statements could not be tolerated, and I felt that in time Dr. del Junco would clear this up, and he has cleared it up.”

Del Junco said, “No director (of the party) asked me to fire Carpenter. He came to me and said . . . ‘We’re leaving.’ . . . He’s right, he was having difficulties in his job. For any executive director to bash any element of the party--it’s unacceptable.”

Del Junco contrasted the incident with the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston when speakers such as Pat Buchanan denounced gays.

“This was the reverse of what happened in Houston,” del Junco said. “There it was the bashing of gays. Now, it’s the bashing of the conservatives.”