What the flip is up with the DNC?

by: Pam Spaulding

Mon Jan 14, 2008 at 06:00:00 AM EST

Earlier this week, the infamous "birdcage memo" was released, in which in the DNC tried to decide what to do after the Washington Blade refused to do a puff piece on the organization's LGBT outreach.  Deputy finance director Julie Tagen wrote in the email that she uses the Blade to line her birdcage.  The Blade's editor, Kevin Naff, responded:

To get back at the Blade for this slight, DNC Communications Director Karen Finney suggests handing an exclusive story to the Advocate or another Blade competitor. Julie Tagen then adds that she uses gay newspapers for "the bottom of the birdcage."

I'll take the high road - someone has to - and ignore the personal attacks. It's astounding, though, that the DNC's communications director has time in her day to plot revenge against the Blade.

The reality is that the Blade has covered the DNC and its delegate training program. In addition to two news stories on the subject in the past year, I personally extended an invitation to the DNC to draft an op-ed on its program, which I later published.

DNC Chief Counsel Joe Sandler sent over this statement:

The DNC has consistently refrained from commenting about ongoing litigation out of respect for the legal process and to protect the interests of everyone involved.  It is therefore unfortunate that Donald Hitchcock has chosen to abuse the discovery process by selectively leaking documents.

We can't say where we got the documents, but we can say we don't find anything "unfortunate" about it...

In other news about the trial, DNC Chief of Staff Rev. Leah Daughtry will be deposed this Friday.  Daughtry is a Pentacostal minister who oversees the DNC Faith Outreach department.

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Sigh. If that hoo-hah isn't embarrassing enough, there's more -- the latest nonsense is a case of completely unnecessary DNC prevarication over something that happened back in May 2006 over whether Howard Dean did or didn't give an interview to the 700 Club (!).

More after the jump...

Yesterday on a listserve for LGBT Democratic donors the DNC Treasurer continued the lie that Howard Dean did not interview on The 700 Club, but instead interviewed for the ABC Family Network. (This was the interview where Dean "misspoke" about the party platform and prompted NGLTF to return a $5K donation from the party.

I am certain that one of the EIGHT religious outreach staff that have been hired by the DNC know and understand the difference between ABC Family and CBN and that is exactly why it was chosen.

To find the truth I contacted David Brody who was the Christian Broadcast Network (yes, the one founded by Pat Robertson) reporter who conducted the interview and he had this to say: "When I interviewed Gov. Dean in 2006 he and his staff knew it was for The 700 Club. That was made very clear." (My orginal email and his response are below.)

Even after being confronted with the truth the DNC Treasurer still repeated his false claim that it was not made clear to the DNC staff that the interview was for The 700 Club. Finally, after being confronted by a blogger on the same listserve he parsed his response by claiming that he might have been "misinformed" by a DNC staffer. (So, now we have a "misinformed" Party Treasurer, a "missspeaking" Party Chair and I am sure the next response will be that the DNC staffer "misunderstood.")

The facts are that Howard Dean's interview was an "exclusive" on the Christian Broadcast Network (CBN) and was intended for use on The 700 Club. CBN "exists as a production company for The 700 Club" even though it was bought by FOX and then later sold it to Disney/ABC Family according to Wikipedia.

The former presidential candidate, who will speak at this weekend's Oregon Democratic Convention in Eugene, says his party must do a better job of winning the support of evangelical Christians, who have voted Republican in recent elections.

To that end, Dean recently appeared on Pat Robertson's "700 Club.'' The appearance wasn't without its bumps. Dean had to later apologize to gay-rights leaders for incorrectly stating during the program that the party's platform said "marriage is between a man and a woman.''

Still, Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview with the Register-Guard newspaper that he hopes to eventually make another appearance on the Christian Broadcasting Network - and that he's encouraging rank-and-file party members to discuss faith and morality.

Remember, this was during a time when the DNC was figuring out how to spin or avoid the gay press about its LGBT outreach, but it was happy to extend availability of Chairman Dean to the 700 Club.  Help me out here folks -- what is the point of trying to cover up/rewrite history about this appearance on Crazy Pat's network at this point, after Dean's apology and all the press about it? I just don't get it.

Quite frankly, Howard Dean and the DNC were courting the evangelical vote and were quite proud of the results, so why deny the whole 700 Club matter  now? I was there in Houston at the International Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference in November 2006, when Chairman Dean spoke, ecstatic that the Democrats received a larger chunk of the evangelical vote. What I blogged at the time:

I hate to say it, but the room was also full of too much backslapping during Dean's speech over the Dem takeover of the House and Senate; I couldn't believe it when Chairman Dean positively glowed over the fact that a third of evangelicals crossed over to vote Dem in this election. I hate to break it to him, but in the states with amendments on the ballot, those evangelicals, even as they crossed over because they were disgusted with the GOP, still chose to vote for a marriage amendment.  Is he ok with that? While that crossover might bring on cheers in another venue and encourage the party to further court The Base, for LGBT folks that's not exactly comforting.

From the time capsule:
*  NGLTF slams Dean and DNC, returns $5K gift
*  Dems to homos: re-closet yourself in 2006