PINK ELEPHANTS

All Of San Diego’s Gay Republicans Want To Be Mayor

San Diego city councilman Carl DeMaio and District attorney Bonnie Dumanis have both decided to run for mayor. Both are gay and both are Republican. But they aren’t the same when it comes to gay issues. Which one is the gayest? Let’s peek our gaydar and see…

Boston.com reports:

Dumanis appears often in public with her partner of 13 years, Denise Nelesen, communications manager for the San Diego County Aging and Independence Services agency. The couple married in 2008, two months before California voters approved Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage.

Dumanis was openly gay when she first ran for office in 1994, winning election to San Diego municipal judge. She says her sexual orientation has surfaced only occasionally during campaigns, and that appearances with her partner put people at ease…

DeMaio has been in a committed relationship for more than two years with Jonathan Hale, publisher of San Diego Gay & Lesbian News and a website that features racy pictures of bare-chested men. DeMaio says he told family, friends and co-workers in 2000 that he was gay… DeMaio was silent during the Proposition 8 campaign, unlike Dumanis, who was outspoken against the marriage ban…

Plus there’s the heterosexual Republican candidate Nathan Fletcher:

[He was the] only Assembly Republican to vote for a bill in July that requires gay history be taught in California public schools. He spoke passionately on the Assembly floor in May to call for an end to the military’s policy of prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving openly and supports a legal right to same-sex marriage.

While the mayoral race won’t be decided purely on each candidate’s LGBT politics, whoever succeeds current mayor Republican Jerry Sanders will stand in his civil rights shadow both for his teary-eyed 2007 speech opposing Proposition 8 and for his 2010 testimony in the Prop 8 trials recounting his conversion from anti-gay foe to equality booster.

But seeing as the San Diego Republican leadership wants to fix San Diego’s $2.1 billion unfunded pension liability that threatens to close fire stations, parks and beach bonfire pits, each candidate’s LGBT politics will likely matter less than their plan to create city revenue.

Images via sandiego.gov and sdcda.org

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