“Shock” Over Gay DNC Staffer’s Firing

As many of you know, former DNC gay outreach adviser Donald Hitchcock claims the Democratic National Committee sacked him in retaliation for his boyfriend’s public criticism of the party.

Chairman Howard Dean, however, testified earlier this year that he and his peers fired former gay outreach adviser Donald Hitchcock for poor job performance. Said Dean: “The relations with the gay community, which I had a very good relationship when I started, had been deteriorating since Donald came on board.”

Well, that story lost a bit of weight last month when lesbian fundraiser and Dean loyalist Claire Lucas told a DC judge that she was “shocked” by Hitchcock’s firing, because he had, in her opinion, been doing a good job.

Lucas goes on to wonder whether Hitchcock’s sacking had something to do with fundraising:

[Lucas] says in her deposition that she had “no personal knowledge” regarding the reasons behind Hitchcock’s firing, but supposed it could have been tied to his fundraising numbers.

“I definitely enjoyed working with Donald and I did think in general he did a good job,” she says. “But … I think we were doing less events and the amount of money that was coming in was not what it had been before.”

That’s queer, because Dean swore Hitchcock received the boot for failing to win over gay voters, who were apparently being tainted by the big bad press. From the horse’s mouth: “The problem was the community itself was getting a bad impression because Donald wasn’t able to counteract in the community what the press was writing.” So, if Dean’s to be believed, it wasn’t lack of dough that led to Hitchcock’s firing, but bad press.

Why, we wonder, would a gay outreach adviser be responsible for bad press? Isn’t that – oh, we don’t know – the press secretary’s job?!