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DIRTY POLITICS
Gay-baiting in the Cambridge state Senate race
BY SETH GITELL

Are we in Massachusetts or Mississippi? It’s hard to tell if you’re following the race to fill the seat of outgoing Senate president Tom Birmingham in the Middlesex, Suffolk, and Essex district. Everett alderman Carlo DeMaria, one of three candidates vying for the open seat, has resorted to old-fashioned gay-baiting to boost his campaign. In a full-page ad appearing in the September 5 issue of the Chelsea Record, DeMaria lists seven reasons why voters should reject the candidacy of openly gay state representative Jarrett Barrios, who is running for the slot, as is Cambridge city councilor Anthony Galluccio. (The ad also ran in the Everett Independent and the Revere Journal.)

Reason number five? " He receives substantial contributions from special interest groups namely the VICTORY FUND, a gay special interest group that supports gay candidates throughout the country! "

Reason number six? " Jarrett Barrios claimed Doug Hattaway as his spouse on his financial statement to the State his past two elections. He does not even acknowledge his existence in this years [sic] State form or during the entire race. Can you trust a person who would trade the person they love for political expedience! "

DeMaria’s campaign manager, Nick DeAngelo, denies that the ad is anti-gay, or that DeMaria’s campaign is engaging in gay-baiting tactics. " It’s not a bad thing, " DeAngelo says of the item explaining that Barrios accepts money from a gay lobbying group. " We just want to point out that he gets money from special-interest groups. It has nothing to do with being gay. "

In fact, DeAngelo charges that Barrios has been trying to hide the fact that he is gay in the Senate district’s conservative communities, including Chelsea, Saugus, and Revere. (The district meanders across Greater Boston from Cambridge to Charlestown.) " He tends to hide it, " DeAngelo says. " Carlo DeMaria is who he is. That’s all he’s about. "

Barrios calls the ads " disappointing " and " divisive. " " One of the reasons I started my door-to-door campaign back in March is that you have to work twice as hard as an openly gay candidate [so when such attacks are levied] people understand you’re a person with a platform and not somebody else’s stereotype, " he says. As for the claim that he is trying to hide his sexual orientation, Barrios says, " One of the nice things about being openly gay is that I don’t have to answer that charge any more. " (For the record, the candidate biography on Barrios’s Web site, www.jarrettbarrios.org, states: " Jarrett lives in Cambridge with his partner, Doug. " )

Sue Hyde, a long-time observer of state and city politics and a member of the GLBT political group the Cambridge Lavender Alliance, is less sanguine. " [It’s] a shocking throwback to gay-baiting, race-baiting, Jew-baiting practice and thinking, " she says. " What decade is this man living in and to whom does he think [these ads] can possibly appeal? "

Amen.

Issue Date: September 12 - 19, 2002
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