Openly Gay Dean Staffer Harassed at Gephardt Event

(The following is taken directly from the official Dean blog):

Yesterday, an openly gay Dean for America staffer who attended an event for Congressman Dick Gephardt in Iowa (as is common practice among campaigns) was pushed and grabbed by Gephardt staffers, one of whom derided him as a "faggot."

In response, Dean for America campaign manager Joe Trippi wrote a letter to Gephardt for President campaign manager Steve Murphy, calling upon him to find the staffer responsible for this egregious behavior and fire him.

Governor Dean, who signed the nation's first civil unions law in Vermont, is a strong supporter of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. Congressman Gephardt has also spoken out against anti-gay harassment. Joe Trippi's letter is below.

October 28, 2003

Steve Murphy, Campaign Manager

Gephardt For President

P.O. Box 34607

Washington, DC 20043

Dear Steve:

I would like to raise with you a very troubling episode which occurred on the campaign trail today.

At one of Congressman Gephardt's events in Iowa this afternoon, members of your staff - including your Iowa state director -- accosted a Dean for America staffer who was recording Gephardt's remarks. The Dean staffer was pushed and grabbed, and a member of Congressman Gephardt's staff went so far as to call the Dean staffer a "faggot."

You and I have known each other for quite some time, and we both have a long history with Dick Gephardt. This behavior from a campaign staff member is beyond the pale.

Democrats, including Congressman Gephardt, are fighting this sort of bigotry in the hearts and minds of Americans, as well as in our laws. The fact that the Congressman's own staff member would use a slur like this goes directly against the values and goals of our Party.

I urge you to find the staff member responsible and fire him, and send a strong signal to the rest of your staff that behavior of this kind will not be tolerated in a campaign for the Presidency. I trust you'll do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Joe Trippi

so i hope this means you'll all stop yammering on about dems. being so wondrously & uniformly tolerant. guess your mantra about dems. being such a powerful vehicle for gay folk needs a little adjustment.

>so i hope this means

What it means is that Dean and his campaign are strong supporters of the GLBT community.

if this behaviour took place at a republican event, you'd all be salivating & saying it is typical.

let's admit that stupidity doesn't tow a party line?

>What it means is that Dean and his campaign are strong

>supporters of the GLBT community.

Wouldn't you say the same for the Gephardt campaign? Even Joe Trippi's statement acknowledges that Gephardt has long been a supporter of gay rights.

Does one person in a campaign who (allegedly) utters an anti-gay epithet during a heated confrontation impugn the entire campaign as anti-gay?

Don't you think that there is a Dean supporter somewhere - attracted to him for his anti-war views or his balanced budget history - who doesn't think fondly of gay people and is even anti-gay? I would be willing to bet there is a lot more than one such supporter. So what?

It strikes me that the publicizing of this event by the Dean campaign is somewhat exploitive and pandering. Nobody thinks Gephardt is anti-gay or that his campaign is filled with anti-gay haters. So, other than to have the Dean campaign pander to gays and make Gephardt look (unjustiifably) bad for this, what is the purpose of this public usage by Dean's campaign of this incident?

What I have liked about Dean's campaign so far is that it's usually free of this sort of petty game-playing and manipulative political tactic - but this strikes me as being exactly that.

>Does one person in a campaign who (allegedly) utters an

>anti-gay epithet during a heated confrontation impugn the

>entire campaign as anti-gay?

No, and it says in the post (which was written by Mattew Gross, the blogmaster) that "Congressman Gephardt has also spoken out against anti-gay harassment" and Joe Trippi states that "Democrats, including Congressman Gephardt, are fighting this sort of bigotry..."

>It strikes me that the publicizing of this event by the Dean

>campaign is somewhat exploitive and pandering.

It hasn't been publicized. There was no press release and no statement by Gov. Dean. It was simply a post on the Dean blog, which, while anyone can access and view it, is directed to Dean supporters. There are dozens of official posts on the Dean blog each day, including statements by Gov. Dean, along with hundreds of posted comments by "regular folk," including me. I reprinted this one because of the gay subject matter. That's all.

It does seem pretty opportunistic of the Dean campaign to publicize this matter. And, after all, that is what you are doing when you post it on an internet blog presumably read by hordes of Dean supporters.

>>It strikes me that the publicizing of this event by the Dean

>>campaign is somewhat exploitive and pandering.

>

>It hasn't been publicized. There was no press release and no

>statement by Gov. Dean.

What you posted was written in the form of a private letter to a Gephardt aide. Had the Dean campaign really intended to keep that letter private, they would have sent it privately, the way most people do with private mail.

Instead, they posted it on their Internet site, which hundreds of thousands of people , including lots of members of the media, read. How can you possibly say with a straight face that they're not "publicizing" it? That's exactly what they're doing.

In fact, I didn't read about this incident first from your post. I read about it on the Drudge Report, which was based on the letter posted on Dean's site. There's also an AP article quoting the Dean campaign staffer and quoting from the same letter.

Of course the Dean campaign was trying to publicize this in order to make Gephardt look bad, because they're competing with him in Iowa, and I think it's a cheap shot. I know you love Dean, but you shouldn't defend his campaign when they do wrong things - especially with patently false claims such as "it hasn't been publicized." I don't think his candidacy is well-served by these tactics, nomrally

engaged in by the "standard politician," which Dean is not.

Dean is a great candidate and his campiagn has been brilliant so far, but I this his staff has shown some signs of a little overzealousness and dirty tricks which can be troublesome.

The way they tried to sabatoge Wesley Clark's candidacy by leaking to the press, days before his announcement, that Clark met Dean to discuss the possibility of Clark being Dean's VP left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, including Clark's, which may have been what spurred him to run.

I just hope Dean continues to be the ANTI-politician candidate - running his campiagn on passion and conviction and a platform that transcends typical ideology, and not petty cheap shots which are based on distortions and which are intended to pander to or manipluate people.

>Of course the Dean campaign was trying to publicize this in

>order to make Gephardt look bad

I didn't know that the AP had picked up on it. If that's true, I have no problem with it. The "smear-Dean" website that the Gephardt people created (and link to on his official site) was very dirty politics. They have not been playing fair for months.

>I didn't know that the AP had picked up on it. If that's

>true, I have no problem with it. The "smear-Dean" website

>that the Gephardt people created (and link to on his official

>site) was very dirty politics. They have not been playing

>fair for months.

Oh, so you're using the "he-started-it" defnese?

The WHOLE APPEAL of Dean's candidacy is that he's NOT LIKE those other candidates. Saying that it's ok or smart for him to do it because they do makes no sense. If you follow that principle, in no time at all he will be exactly like those other candidates.

>Oh, so you're using the "he-started-it" defnese?

>If you follow that

>principle...

Doug, I am not running Howard Dean's campaign.

OK, Doug and Lucky. I have to admit that I was wrong, but both of you are wrong as well. I hadn't read Dean's blog (or the news) for a couple of days, so when I reprinted that blog post, I didn't know the facts. I've now found out that this event had already been reported by the news media before Joe Trippi's letter was posted on the blog (Doug, the article you refer to on Drudge Report was posted on 10/29 at 10:17 ET, 6 hours before Trippi's letter was posted on the blog at 4:07 PM). Apparently, the news stories are not telling the entire story (most are omitting any reference to the epithet "faggot," and several report that the Gephardt campaign claims the Dean supporter started it). All CNN mentioned was that there was some sort of a catfight involving someone getting shoved. The intention of the blog entry, apparently, was so supporters could know more behind the story than what the media had been reporting.

Some comments from the blog:

"I think Joe Trippi handled this well, campaign manager to campaign manager, and posting on the blog only AFTER it was already out in the media. It's a good idea to keep supporters updated on the campaign's version of events, so that we aren't caught off guard when hearing about it or seeing other versions elsewhere."

"I think Trippi did the right thing. He stood publicly by his staffer, demanding that appropriate steps be taken to redress the wrong. The wrong thing to do would be to handle this like a dirty little secret worthy only of backroom-to-backroom 'handling.'"

And this is from one of the more emotional posters : "SHAME! on all of you who think that this was posted on the blog for political gain. Has Joe Trippi or the campaign ever done a 'stunt' (similar to the seriousness of this incident) before for political gain??? NO!!!! ...If you think the DFA campaign would post an incident like this on the blog for political mud-slinging, maybe you should re-evaluate why you are here."

RE: Openly Gay Dean Stiffer at Gephardt Event

Group Hug!

RE: Openly Gay Dean Stiffer at Gephardt Event

>Group Hug!

Make it a circle jerk and I'm there (in the middle). }(

RE: Dean worship

> I've now found out that this

>event had already been reported by the news media

>before Joe Trippi's letter was posted on the blog

>(Doug, the article you refer to on Drudge Report was posted on

>10/29 at 10:17 ET, 6 hours before Trippi's letter was posted

>on the blog at 4:07 PM).

This is really ludicrous. The Drudge Report story had the exact quotes excerpted from Joe Trippi's letter. How do you think they, and other news outlets, got that letter? Let's see . . . do you think that maybe the Dean campaign leaked it to them? Could that be?

>And this is from one of the more emotional posters :

>"SHAME! on all of you who think that this was posted on the

>blog for political gain. Has Joe Trippi or the campaign ever

>done a 'stunt' (similar to the seriousness of this incident)

>before for political gain??? NO!!!! ...If you think the DFA

>campaign would post an incident like this on the blog for

>political mud-slinging, maybe you should re-evaluate why you

>are here."

This is an extremely disturbing post. For one thing, it is just outright inaccurate - the Dean campaign HAS employed dirty tricks before. "Leaking" to the press that Clark met with Dean to discuss being Dean's VP - regardless of whether it was true or not (and Clark insists it wasn't) - was an extremely dirty trick. They were supposed to be having a private meeting, and the Dean campiagn leaked what they discussed (perhaps inaccurately) to the press in order to harm Clark's candidacy before it even began.

In a separate post, I'm excerpting what the very astute and intelligent liberal blogger Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com had to say about that disturbing incident.

Also, the poster you quoted has a rather creepy cult mentality. If you question the Dean campaign, you don't belong there. To even entertain negative thoughts about the motives of the Dean campaign means that you're a traitor. The Dean campaign is pure and perfect. They would never do anything wrong. Anyone who thinks so should be excommunicated.

I've seen other posts like that before from Dean supporters.

And, that same liberal blogger Josh Mashall - who has been considering supporting Clark - had this to say about the behavior of a MINORITY of Dean followers, based on an e-mail he got from a Dean worshipper:

_____________________________________________________________________

A sampling from the mailbag ...

From: [suppressed]

Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 14:54:04 EDT

Subject: destroying dean

To: [email protected]

X-Mailer: 7.0 for Windows sub 10693

"If you have time, wander over to Billmon and see what's being said about your attempts to torpedo Dean. I think it's sickening that you are determined to stamp out an exciting and potentially successful grass roots effort to choose our nominee. A lot of us are tired of the arrogance of the DNC, DLC and Josh Marshalls who are convinced that they know what is best for us. (Your track record isn't that impressive!) If you succeed in using dirty tricks to topple Dean, I will not be voting in 04, and I know a lot of other Democrats who will join me in sitting it out. Watch the hubris, it could be your undoing! Susan P."

My own feeling is that the only real Democrats are those who will support the party's eventual nominee, end of story. There is an awfully distressing tendency among a minority of Dean supporters to serve up no end of lacerating comments about other candidates and then to react with a sort of stunned and outraged shock when anyone criticizes their guy. It's the flip side of seeing the race in such heroic, if not messianic dimensions.

The primary is actually not concluded yet. And, pace John Calvin, I assume the outcome is not predetermined. So it is still permitted to criticize Mr. Dean and not be an enemy of democracy.

_____________________________________________________________________

I think it does no good to be so enamored of a candidate that you refuse to acknowledge it even when he makes an obvious mistake, or to think that it's perfectly okay for him to engage in even the most tawdry and unethical campaign condcut becasue either "they did it first" or because his victory is so important that any means are justified.

Trying to exploit this isolated, ambiguous, ultimately irrelevant incident to smear the Gephardt campaign as being the home of anti-gay bigots is, in my view, beyond the pale, and reflects poorly on his campaign. Those who should support him should be the first, not the last, to make this point.

RE: Dean Campiagn's dirty tricks

>And this is from one of the more emotional posters :

>"SHAME! on all of you who think that this was posted on the

>blog for political gain. Has Joe Trippi or the campaign ever

>done a 'stunt' (similar to the seriousness of this incident)

>before for political gain??? NO!!!! ...If you think the DFA

>campaign would post an incident like this on the blog for

>political mud-slinging, maybe you should re-evaluate why you

>are here."

Contrary to what this worshipper has to say, the Dean Campagin has engaged in one of the dirtiest tricks so far of the campaign - leaking the private conversation between Clark and Dean, perhaps inaccurately, on the eve of Clark's announcement of whether he would run, by claiming that Clark met with Dean to talk about serving as Dean's VP.

Here's what liberal blogger Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com had to say about that incident:

______________________________________________________________

(September 11, 2003 -- 03:57 PM EDT // link // print)

Aha! More news about Dean Campaign Manager Joe Trippi's 'he's-begging-to-be-our-VP' dirty tricks campaign against Wes Clark. This from the just-posted edition of USNews' Washington Whispers ...

"And forget about that talk that all the retired four-star general and former NATO boss wants is the veep nomination. Supporters say that's a dirty-tricks campaign pushed by rival Howard Dean who's scared of a Clark candidacy. Says Frisby: "Wes Clark firmly believes that he is the best choice to be president, not be vice president or hold any other government post."

Leave it to TPM to bring you the scoop first.

And in this just-released AP story signaling Clark's decision to run, see these two grafs ...

"While mulling his options, Clark has met with several presidential contenders who covet his endorsement and might consider him for a vice presidential slot. He met Saturday with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who said it is too soon to talk about political alliances.

"There is a lot of vetting that would have to be done before you would have those kinds of discussions," Dean said when asked whether he had discussed the vice presidency with Clark.

In other words, the Dean camp is trying to pooh-pooh the bogus spin they floated to the Washington Post only yesterday.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave ...

-- Josh Marshall

(September 11, 2003 -- 12:32 PM EDT // link // print)

Is the Dean camp trying to set up Wes Clark? (Yep, I'm talkin' about you, Joe!) This piece in today's Post says Dean and Clark "discussed the vice presidency at a weekend meeting in California." Read down into the article and there doesn't seem to be that much there there. But the story got picked up on CNN too. And now the story of the day is not those very active discussions Clark is having about his own presidential run, but the potential 'Dean/Clark alliance'. And if Clark decides to get into the race after all, doesn't that mean that he wobbled, that as recently as this week he was thinking of taking the number two slot from Dean, or endorsing Dean? (His opponents want to play to the 'indecision' meme, remember.) I think that's what some people would like us to think. The Post calls those people "sources familiar with the [Dean/Clark] discussions." But I think we can imagine who those folks might be.

______________________________________________________________

Yes - how could anyone possibly even wonder if this Gephardt episode is just the latest dirty trick by Joe Trippi to degrade Dean's opponents.

RE: Openly Gay Dean Stiffer at Gephardt Event

Rick, if we did a circle jerk with Doug, you and I would have to be the circle.

I just read through a huge number of comments on the Dean Campiagn blog about this issue, and was encouraged to see that a substantial number (probably the majority) of hardcore Dean supporters agreed that the publicizing of this issue by the Dean campaign smacked of political manipulation and exploitation and pandering, and was exactly the type of political tactic which the campaign has previously avoided, and should continue to avoid.

The Dean campaign has been exciting and encouraging precisely because it's been so real and honest and substantive. I genuinely hope it stays that way and avoids tactics like this. If it does, I think that Dean can generate the type of enthusiasm and new-voter-attraction that just propelled a Republican candidate in California to the Governship of an overwhelmingly Democratic State.

Passion and conviction and excitement transcend ideology, but only if it remains real and from the gut and is non-manipulative.