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GAY POLITICS
End of an era
BY SETH GITELL

A point not made during last week’s scrum of media coverage on the gay-issue stances taken by gubernatorial candidates Shannon O’Brien and Mitt Romney is the fact that Romney’s candidacy marks an end to the heyday of gay GOP political activism in the Commonwealth. Even with the nominal support of the relatively anemic Log Cabin Club, the Romney candidacy represents the end of an era.

Vincent McCarthy, a long-time Brighton Democrat, knew former governor William Weld from his pre-gubernatorial law-firm days at Hale & Dorr. Despite his prior activism in the Democratic Party, McCarthy was instrumental in getting gay backing for Weld over his Democratic opponent, John Silber, in 1990. McCarthy now supports O’Brien. Patrick Guerriero, the former mayor of Melrose, was slated to be the highest-profile openly gay candidate for statewide office in Massachusetts as the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. That is, until Governor Jane Swift dropped out of the running back in March, and Romney elbowed him out of the race. And Abner Mason, perhaps the most influential gay member of the Swift administration, who cut his political teeth during Weld’s reign, has sold his Boston condo and plans to move to Los Angeles, where he is starting the nonprofit Accountability for Global Funding. The organization will monitor funding earmarked for AIDS treatment, education, and prevention in developing countries. His work will bring him back into contact with former Paul Cellucci–administration member Andrew Natsios, who now heads USAID, which administers 90 percent of America’s AIDS funding.

It’s easy to forget now, but Weld ushered in an unprecedented cadre of openly gay (yes, they were almost all men) political aides and appointees. To name just a few: Mike Duffy was appointed commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination; Mitchell Adams was named commissioner of revenue; Michael Joseph Gross was brought in as a speech writer; Don Gorton was named co-chair of the Governor’s Task Force on Hate Crimes.

" Weld was extraordinary, " McCarthy recalls. " He was never a homophobe. By the time he left office, he wanted it to be no longer civilized for homosexuals to be disparaged. "

Can anyone imagine Romney feeling the same way? McCarthy, for one, cannot. Romney, he says, is " a dangerous political animal in terms of social-liberal issues. "

Guerriero, who supports Romney, is obviously more comfortable with the GOP candidate than is McCarthy. " I’m doing some low-key advising for [the Romney campaign] on municipal issues, gay-and-lesbian issues, " he says. Still, he readily concedes he’d much rather be running for lieutenant governor. " I would have preferred if I was selected as a running mate, " he says. " The case I did make privately was to have somebody [as a running mate] who was elected five times, who was Italian-American, who stood on the side of the people of the state. I didn’t succeed. "

In retrospect, Romney’s decision not to stick with Guerriero looks like a mistake. The former Melrose mayor possesses several qualities that would have helped Romney. Having an openly gay man on the ticket would have inoculated Romney from the criticisms he just spent a week deflecting: namely, that he’s anti-gay and, as McCarthy puts it, " dangerous " when it comes to social issues. Perhaps more important, though, Guerriero is an Italian-Catholic with a history of service in the Commonwealth. It’s interesting to note that with the exception of Frank Sargent, John Volpe’s former running mate who assumed the governorship when Volpe became secretary of transportation, no Republican has been elected governor without an Italian on the ticket since Christian Herter, a former aide to Herbert Hoover, was elected in 1952.

And, finally, there’s Abner Mason. He was a loyal Republican who got behind Weld early and served in the administrations of Weld, Cellucci, and Swift. For his own personal reasons, Mason won’t be part of any Romney team.

Win or lose, Romney’s candidacy marks a closing of the book on an important era of the state's Republican Party.

Issue Date: October 24 - 31, 2002
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