POTENTIAL GAY GOP PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL ASKS FOR MEETING WITH SCHEFFLER
by Jason Hancock 8/18/10 8:47 am
Fred Karger, a gay rights activist who is mulling a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, is in Iowa this week and is asking Republican National Committeeman Steve Scheffler for a meeting.
In May, Scheffler — who also serves as president of the Iowa Christian Alliance — sent an e-mail to Karger telling him he would “work overtime to help ensure that your political aspirations are aborted right here in Iowa.” The reason, Scheffler said, is that Karger is part of the “radical homosexual community.” The e-mail was in response to Karger’s work with Californians Against Hate, an nonprofit he founded to draw attention to the major donors behind California’s ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage.
Karger, a lifelong Republican who worked for both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (he helped run the Willie Horton victims campaign to discredit Michael Dukakis in 1988), has formed an exploratory committee and will soon begin raising money for a 2012 presidential bid. In a letter to Scheffler sent last week, he asked for a meeting to clear the air.
I have been an active participant in Republican politics for over 35 years. I am now seriously considering running for President of the United States in 2012 as an Independent Republican.
If the Republican Party is going to survive, we need to welcome disenfranchised Republicans back into the party and register new ones. We must work especially hard to reach out to younger people and look to the future. This is what I hope to accomplish if I decide to run for President.
As a member of the Republican National Committee I hope that you would welcome everyone to Iowa who is interested in being a part of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Caucuses.
To date, Karger has not received a response from Scheffler, and requests for comment by The Iowa Independent have not been returned. Karger will be a guest on Jan Mickelson’s WHO-AM radio program Wednesday morning.
