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Conservative Republican Assemblywoman Michele Fiore of Las Vegas invited a few extra guests Tuesday night to the regular pasta dinners she has for constituents. The meal was the last official stop for a group of young conservatives traveling the country — visiting battleground states such as Nevada first — as part of a $1 million campaign to get the national Republican Party to support gay marriage in its party platform in 2016. The group has been to Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina is the next stop. Nevada already is ahead of the curve, said Tyler Deaton, campaign manager of...

Although Mitt Romney has virtually locked up the Republican presidential nomination and all of his serious challengers have conceded the race, presidential candidate Fred Karger is still out on the trail campaigning. Karger, a gay Republican running an issues-based campaign to change attitudes within the GOP about same-sex marriage, took his efforts last week to Utah, which holds the nation's last primary election, on June 26. Karger spent four days in the state, meeting with local Republican leaders and urging the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to stop funding efforts against gay marriage. (Prior to launching his presidential...

As far as Ohio is concerned, Matt Borges is a lobbyist for Equality Ohio, founded in 2005 by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists after Ohio voters’ passage of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He’s also the new executive director of the Ohio Republican Party. Borges, recently named to his role by Ohio GOP Chairman Robert T. Bennett, said he will take a leave of absence from the Columbus lobbying firm Roetzel & Andress through the end of the year and will resign as a lobbyist registered with the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee.

Fred Karger walked into a coffee shop in Manhattan looking every inch the sort of man who wants to be a Republican presidential candidate. The long-time "Grand Old Party" operative, who has served three different Republican presidents, had close-cropped grey hair and wore a sharp blue business suit. He clutched a folder of campaign literature and handed out a T-shirt emblazoned with "Iowa 2012". But one key detail made Karger a little different in a Republican field swirling with names like Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. On his suit lapel Karger wore a badge pairing the...

<p>The civil war in the Republican Party takes another turn on Wednesday night when Sarah Palin basher Nicolle Wallace lends her name to a fundraiser for a pro-homosexual group called American Foundation for Equal Rights. Wallace, an adviser to the 2008 McCain for President campaign, figures prominently in Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, as someone determined to get her on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric so that she could be sandbagged by the left-wing anchorwoman.</p>

Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay. Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition...

Former Republican National Committee chairman and Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman has announced publicly that he is gay, CBS News chief political consultant and politics editor for The Atlantic Marc Ambinder reports. "It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," Mehlman said. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I...

Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay. Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition...

Ken Mehlman, who was President George W. Bush's campaign manager in 2004, has come out as gay - and wants to be an advocate for gay marriage. Mehlman, also a former Republican National Committee chairman, told the Atlantic magazine "It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life." He said friends, family and colleagues "have been wonderfully supportive." When rumors of Mehlman's sexual orientation circulated years ago, he told several reporters that they were false. Mehlman and his aides went to considerable lengths to conceal his sexual identity, arranging "dates" with women and photos of...

Sen. McCain says Gov. Crist has enough experience to be Vice President By Adam C. Smith | St. Petersburg Times 12:45 PM EDT, June 5, 2008 Article tools * EmailE-mail * Share o Digg o Del.icio.us o Facebook o Fark o Google o Newsvine o Reddit o Yahoo * PrintPrint * ReprintReprints * Post comment * Text size:increase text sizedecrease text size Click here to find out more! Charlie Crist may not yet have a full gubernatorial term under his belt, but Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that Crist has enough experience to be vice president. ``Oh, I am sure...

New York, N.Y. – In her new memoir, NOW IT'S MY TURN(Simon & Schuster/Threshold Editions, 2006), Mary Cheney writes that when she told her parents she was gay, the first words out of her father’s mouth “were exactly the ones that I wanted to hear: ‘You’re my daughter, and I love you, and I just want you to be happy.’” VANITY FAIR editor Todd Purdum reports that Mary Cheney tells her story in a voice very much like her father’s, and that she came out to her parents when she was a junior in high school, on a day when,...