Aug. 20, 2007

How Bill Richardson Lost Nevada Last Week*
*And How Nobody Else Noticed

By STEVE FRIESS

The morning after, Bill Richardson’s head must have been aching something awful. He was receiving advice from every direction, and not a stitch of it was any good because not a stitch of it understood that the real damage the New Mexico governor had done to himself had been done, first and foremost, in right here in Las Vegas. And because of that, because all of these people who were telling the flummoxed and beleaguered candidate what to do weren’t where I was when he made his likely fatal error, his bid for not just the presidency but just as likely his viability as a vice presidential hopeful looks doomed.

When Richardson made The Gaffe, I was sitting in a darkened room with a gasping crowd of about 100 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Las Vegans and their supporters. They had gathered at our modest Gay and Lesbian Community Center to watch something historic: A live, televised forum in which six presidential candidates including the top three Democrats spent about 20 minutes each answering nothing but questions on GLBT topics. The national GLBT lobbying group the Human Rights Campaign organized the forum in Los Angeles and it aired Thursday on Logo, the Viacom-owned gay cable channel available in 28 million homes.

The turnout at our Gay Center alone ought to tell you that this was a big deal for a GLBT community that usually fails to muster its own political, economic or social clout. In some ways, it’s a function of our assimilation, which is usually a good thing. Openly gay people work at the highest levels of the casino business, have run major sections of our government, perform (of course) in several of our multimillion-dollar productions and live in all of the same neighborhoods from the Scotch 80s to Anthem as everybody else. It’s not to say there aren’t challenges – the rest of you did, after all, decide that insincere straights (hi, Britney) could marry here but we can’t -- but in such a new city that grew in such fits and spurts, Las Vegas lacks a gay neighborhood for folks to form bonds, a sense of community and the ability to fend off such attacks as that gay-marriage ban.

For most of those who came down or watched elsewhere, the occasion was pretty much the point. Six Democrats – including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards – were in the lineup along with Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, taking questions from Human Rights Campaign Executive Director Joe Solmonese, lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge, gay and African-American Washington Post journalist Jonathan Capehart and straight (the distinction must be made) Bloomberg columnist Margaret Carlson. Only two blue non-factors, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, cited scheduling conflicts and declined; every GOP candidate chickened out including that popular one who dresses in homely drag a lot and lived with his gay pals when his wife threw him out for shameless infidelity.

Few expected surprises. There was little sense anything revolutionary was afoot beyond the revolutionary concept that viable major-party candidates would be willing come calling.

And until Richardson lumbered on stage, that was all it was. Barack Obama, aka the Great Black Hope, stuttered and insisted his separate-but-equal idea for civil unions would really be equal for gays even if the same idea failed pretty badly for his black American forefathers. Capehart called Obama’s stance “decidedly old-school,” prompting a testy “Oh, come on,” from Obama but applause from the Vegas audience.

John Edwards earned a similar response for a similar position on marriage. But he also elicited some impressed murmurs from the room for what’s actually a pretty radical notion overlooked later by any media, support for discussing alternative families in elementary schools.

Kucinich and Gravel came on third and fourth, receiving rousing applause for their clear and total support of all gay-rights measures, including full gay marriage and not a facsimile. It felt like comfort food to hear these guys say everything GLBTers want to hear, fun fantasies. But nobody who wasn’t already deluded into supporting these men was likely won over. In spots, both men garnered guffaws for their goofiness, not a trait anyone usually seeks in a president.

We’d seen four candidates for 80 minutes. All, while perhaps not perfect, at least seemed to be having a really good time, as a bright and upbeat Clinton did later giving essentially the same answers as Obama and Edwards.

Before her, though, appeared this disheveled, disoriented man who many viewed as a possible veep.

And it was in that crowded room, with those gasps and boos in the city that Bill Richardson needs support from in order to survive even the first month of primaries, that the hopes and dreams of the New Mexico governor probably died.

* * *

Bill Richardson needs Nevada. He’s said so many times. Without a decent showing our early caucuses, his presidential campaign ends. With it, he might get some money to keep going. Pundit Jon Ralston says often that the governor’s virtually living in the state.

On paper, there’s lots to like. He’s a Southwestern who gets our environmental and economic issues, a minority with real experience (congressman, cabinet secretary, U.N. ambassador, governor) as well as, for nostalgics who dislike nepotism, a Clintonite who isn’t actually a Clinton.

Plus, if you’re gay, he’s got a decent record. He voted as a congressman against the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, supports allowing foreign-born partners of LGBT Americans to immigrate to the country and has, as governor, passed hate crime laws, provided health insurance to domestic partners and tried to get a domestic partnership law passed in a special session of his state's legislature.

None of that much matters now, because even before what he’d later consider a gaffe, Richardson’s total demeanor was off on Thursday. He looked unhappy, irritable, unfocused. And whether it reflected his true nature – and I have it on good authority that it is not – he radiated discomfort with gay people and issues. That’s a problem because GLBT people in Las Vegas deal constantly with people -- particularly living among so many Mormons – who “tolerate” them but not-so-secretly wish they didn’t have to.

He actually started out OK, opposing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell again and apologizing for voting for the federal anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act. The candidate started shifting about when Capehart confronted him with using the Spanish slur for faggot on Don Imus’ show last year, reminding folks of his pro-gay record and oddly asking, “Shouldn’t that count for something?”

It started coming off the rails when Solmonese asked Richardson if he’d sign a same-sex marriage bill if his Legislature sent him one. The governor took five long, painful-to-watch seconds to respond with a long-winded, befuddling no.

Then this happened:

ETHERIDGE: Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?

RICHARDSON: It’s a choice. It’s –

ETHERIDGE: I don’t know if you understand the question. (Soft laughter.) Do you think I — a homosexual is born that way, or do you think that around seventh grade we go, “Ooh, I want to be gay”?

GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, I — I’m not a scientist. It’s — you know, I don’t see this as an issue of science or definition. I see gays and lesbians as people as a matter of human decency. I see it as a matter of love and companionship and people loving each other. You know I don’t like to categorize people. I don’t like to, like, answer definitions like that that, you know, perhaps are grounded in science or something else that I don’t understand.

The room at the Center registered audible shock. Few gays view their sexual orientation as a choice because most have very early memories of same-sex attraction and because it’s illogical that so many people would choose to be social outcasts and family pariahs. As Carlson explained in giving the candidate yet a third chance to redeem himself, anti-gay forces use their claim that homosexuality is chosen to argue that gay people don’t deserve equal rights because they can change if they wish.

Richardson didn’t get it, and it was over. Even his supporters knew it, vacating their space at the info table in the Center’s lobby first and punting all questions to a spokesman with a 505 area code.

Summing up the general view was travel agent and activist Terry Wilsey: “I really thought he’d make a pretty interesting vice presidential candidate. But after that? No way.”

* * *

What happens next, though, is almost as bad. The next morning, Richardson left messages on large-donor, A-list gay people’s voicemails apologizing and foolishly claiming he didn’t understand the question that was put to him three different ways. He called a few bloggers, who couldn’t help but feel pandered to. He went on a gay satellite radio show to repeat his admission that he had “screwed up.”

What he didn’t do was more important. He didn’t make any attempt whatsoever to reach out to the gays he offended in the state he desperately needs, the folks with whom I watched him immolate. He didn’t think to offer that apology or explanation to his own full-time gay staffer in Nevada, Lance Whitney of Elko, who quit leadership of his county’s Democratic Party just a week ago to work for the candidate. Whitney, who says he’s still firmly in the governor’s camp, also admits he called the campaign’s Nevada communications director immediately after the gaffe to ask, as the kids IM these days, WTF?

That is, he didn’t reach out to the real gay world, the grassroots that are his only real chance. And there is a real gay world and a fantasy one, as the Logo debate hit home. John Edwards, he of the “two Americas” stump speech, unwittingly proved that there are two Americas even he doesn’t know about, mentioning on Logo his visit to the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Community Center and what a spectacular place it was. It’s fantastic that L.A. can afford a $41 million annual budget, but none of these candidates seemed to realize what an oddity that is and that the nondescript storefront of the Las Vegas Center with its meager $200,000 annual budget is the reality for most of GLBT America.

Richardson’s folks also didn’t understand that the reason the governor’s “screw up” resonated was because of the aforementioned seeming discomfort with gays. You cannot erase that with some phone calls. What he said – that he doesn’t know if being gay is a choice but that it doesn’t matter to the question of equal rights – is actually a pretty awesome view when considered intellectually. He’s right, science isn’t even close to resolving this mystery. But it’s how he said it that poisoned him to people who know that look from rough moments with our parents, co-workers and clergy.

Imagine this instead: Richardson – in a good mood and smiling, hopefully -- visits the Las Vegas gay center. Imagine the visual of him proving he can be in close contact with gay people, real and ordinary ones. He reiterates his apology, shakes hands, answers questions and redeems himself to gays in the city that holds his political future in its grip.

You may wonder if I overstate the value of a small segment of the Democratic vote. Indeed, none of the political reporters in Nevada noticed The Gaffe at all. But micro-politics is what primaries like ours are all about. Most local Democrats have gay friends and family who influence them, and negative buzz kills candidates when there are so many other strong choices out there.

Don’t believe that this segment is key? The candidate himself said so on June 12 to the Bay Area Reporter, a gay San Francisco paper: "I can use a little more support from the gay rights community, both political and financial support. I believe I have the record. I am making inroads.”

Or not.

###