By Tim Russo

The bar was emptying of Democrats gathered for drinks in Columbus on a cold winter night.  Inside was Jennifer Garrison, fresh off her first year in office as the state representative for Ohio’s 93rd District in southeast Ohio. 

Blonde, thin, attractive (Marietta’s very own Sarah Palin), she got the attention of a short Indian American named Subodh Chandra running for Ohio Attorney General in the coming 2006 primary.  It’s a less rare sight these days, a small brown man with Indian roots seeking office.  But apparently rare enough.

Chandra approached Garrison, having recently given a rip-roaring, well received speech to a crowd in Garrison’s mostly rural district, while Garrison watched.  That night in the bar, Chandra asked Garrison for her endorsement in his primary against future Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann.

Garrison looked Chandra up and down, then said, “No one I know would ever vote for someone who looks like you.”  Then she walked away.

Chandra is used to this treatment, but not from fellow Democrats, let alone elected Democrats.  As Jennifer Garrison takes another step up the ladder of career politics in 2009, this conversation no longer haunts only Subodh Chandra. 

It haunts the Ohio Democratic Party.

Ohio’s current Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, is running for the Democratic Party nomination to the US Senate seat being vacated by George Voinovich in 2010.  Brunner wants Franklin County Commissioner Marilyn Brown to be her replacement.  But out of nowhere, in July, 2009, came another candidate challenging Brown in the primary – Jennifer Garrison.

Subodh Chandra would never have needed to ask Garrison for her endorsement in 2006 had Garrison’s 93rd Ohio House District not been lathered up with anti-gay hatred in 2004.  A constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage was on the ballot designed to gin up Republican turnout for President George W. Bush’s re-election.  Many believe this amendment alone re-elected Bush, tipping Ohio’s electoral votes Republican on the back of homophobic fear. 

That fall, Garrison was on the ballot against Ohio House speaker Republican Nancy Hollister.  Hollister voted in 2003 against yet another layer of gay hate, Ohio’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a bill to ban recognition of out-of-state gay marriages.  Hollister voted against DOMA on the grounds that it was duplicative – Ohio already had this law on the books.  DOMA passed.

Democrat Garrison pounced.

Garrison’s 2004 campaign printed a piece saying, “If you believe marriage is between one man and one woman, there’s something you should know about Nancy Hollister…. DOMA was enacted precisely to protect Ohioans from having to accept ‘marriages’ or ‘unions’ entered into in other states. Despite the value of DOMA, Nancy Hollister voted against it. Jennifer Garrison believes marriage is between one man and one woman and will fight to protect our values.” 

Democrat Garrison beat Republican Hollister, an incumbent and sitting speaker, by a whisker, and Ohio newspapers all over the state lamented Garrison’s use of gay rights as a wedge issue to steal a victory.

Garrison was just getting started. 

Once safely in power, Garrison used her seat in the Ohio House to act so Republican she made Hollister look like the Democrat.  Garrison stayed on the culture warpath, helping kill anti-bullying protection for gays in schools in 2006, according to a report in the Gay People’s Chronicle by Eric Resnick.  Resnick was present in the committee when the motion to include LGBT language in the anti-bullying bill was proposed.  Democrat Garrison voted with the Republicans to kill the LGBT specific amendment, despite Republicans controlling enough of the committee to kill it on their own.

Garrison opposes abortion in all cases except the life of the mother – rape and incest victims need not apply. Garrison also voted against a raise in the minimum wage, and supported unfettered gun rights to the point she received an “A” rating from the NRA.   None of this prevented Democratic House Speaker Armond Budish from making Garrison his majority leader when Democrats took over the Ohio House in 2008.

Garrison was on a short list to replace Lee Fisher on Ted Strickland’s re-election ticket, after Fisher joined Brunner in the US Senate primary in 2010.  But Garrison’s anti-gay record was apparently a bit much for Strickland to have next to his name on the ballot, and Strickland said so at a fundraiser with LGBT activists according to a May 14 report in the Cincinnati alternative weekly City Beat. 

However, there is that little issue of Jennifer Brunner running against Ted’s own lieutenant governor, Lee Fisher, for US Senate, and Brunner’s support for her replacement, Marilyn Brown.  If Brunner and Brown win their respective primaries, that would make two statewide Democrats who owe nothing to Ted Strickland, or Strickland’s golden boy chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, Chris Redfern.

Garrison’s quickly-announced candidacy smacked of inside baseball from the start, but really looked stitched up after 35 state legislators endorsed her for secretary of state on August 19.  Conspicuously absent from the endorsement list are any legislators from Cuyahoga or Franklin Counties, the two largest blocs of votes in any Democratic primary in Ohio. 

Also missing from the endorsement list is Mansfield Ohio House Democrat Jay Goyal, the first Indian American elected to the Ohio House.

Budish also refused to commit to endorsing either Garrison or Brown, leaving the question open.  Governor Ted Strickland, asked if he knew about Garrison’s remark to Chandra, claims in a Youtube video taken on August 21, “I don’t believe she said that”. 

But it is believed among Ohio House circles that the conversation between Subodh Chandra and Jennifer Garrison, and similar instances like it, are the reasons why not one Cuyahoga County or Franklin County Ohio House Democrat has endorsed Garrison’s bid for Secretary of State.  

Michael Daniels, publisher of Outlook, Ohio’s only monthly gay magazine, and a leader in Ohio’s LGBT community, says,  “If you’re anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-worker, pro-gun…making an off-handed comment about a person of color isn’t a big jump.”  

Daniels quickly created a Facebook group to oppose Garrison’s candidacy, which currently has over 300 members.  Daniels also appeared on WOSU public television in Columbus August 7, strongly opposing Garrison’s candidacy, saying, “It’ll be very interesting to see if the governor and the state chairman, Chris Redfern, can go back to those progressive constituencies with a straight face and ask for money, while at the same time backing a candidate who votes against all of those issues.” 

Marilyn Brown’s campaign sent a Youtube of that portion of the August 7 WOSU commentary around to bloggers.  For weeks afterward, the Brown campaign breathlessly emailed bloggers and reporters the Youtube, and various other opposition research about Garrison, until blogger Howie Klein picked it up and put all of it, including the Youtube, into a post on the national blog, Huffington Post, entitled “Help Stop Ohio’s Sarah Palin”.   It seemed that the Brown campaign was all in. 

Haunted by his own experiences as a gay man who used to be in a closet, Brian Rothenberg sat in his office on August 24 awaiting a visit from Jennifer Garrison.  The backlash against Garrison in the gay community was building to fever pitch.  Across town, Rothenberg’s previous boss, ODP chairman Chris Redfern, waited patiently to see the Youtube of Rothenberg’s interview with Garrison. 

Rothenberg left ODP to run Progress Ohio, a heavily funded online progressive non-profit. But if Rothenberg was nervous to sit across from a legislator who got to power on a tide of bigotry aimed at gay people just like him, it only shows in the uncomfortable photograph of Rothenberg and Garrison with their arms around each other.

Rothenberg whistled past the conflict of a gay man interviewing a gay-baiter to spin for Garrison as if he was Garrison’s campaign manager. Rothenberg described Garrison’s extreme position on abortion as “moderate”. Rothenberg never asked Garrison about the anti-bullying legislation in 2006, nor her position on DOMA in 2004, nor the literature or rhetoric she used to win her seat in 2004 on the back of fomenting anti-gay bigotry.  The gay man in a position of power sat across from a repeated tormentor of gays, smiled, laughed, joked, and the Youtube was posted. 

Chris Redfern must have smiled, too.

Because two days later, Redfern posted to his Twitter feed in a tone of relief: “Great dialogue tonight with leaders and activists in the LGBT community tonight in Columbus. Focus on 2010 increases daily.”

During this same period, the anonymously posted Youtube of Daniels’ rant disappeared, and Marilyn Brown’s campaign manager Cliff Shechter, who has worked as a consultant for ODP chair Redfern, left Brown’s campaign. 

Two prominent Ohio bloggers noticed the reeking hypocrisy of a softball interview by a gay man giving political cover to a gay-baiter; this reporter, and a front page anonymous blogger at Buckeye State Blog.  Rothenberg went into damage control the only way he knows how – more spin. 

On August 30, the Columbus Dispatch’s Joe Hallett wrote in his Sunday column how terrible it was that bloggers noted Rothenberg’s gayness as relevant to his Progress Ohio interview with Garrison.  Hallett called Garrison’s repeatedly documented homophobia as “perceived reluctance to support gay rights”.  Rothenberg complained to Hallett about a fictional “public discussion” of his sexuality that never actually happened, lumping it all into “hate speech” and “vitriol”.  The gay became the gay-baiter, all for Jennifer Garrison.

The pushback looked to be working within ODP, until Brown announced a slew of endorsements from all over the state on September 3, including Cuyahoga County State House Democrats Kenny Yuko, Matt Patten, and Mike Foley, who himself narrowly beat a gay-baiting hate campaign in his own primary in 2006.  Also endorsing Brown are eleven Franklin County Democrats, including State Representative Ted Celeste, Franklin County commissioner John O’Grady, and a big chunk of Columbus city council.  Throw in Stonewall Democrats of Central Ohio, and Brown is cooking with gas.

Daniels really doesn’t want to endorse a Republican in fall 2010, but if Brown loses to Garrison, all bets are off.  The likely Republican nominee for Secretary of State will be former House Speaker John Husted.  Husted fought a gay adoption ban, and voted the same way on DOMA as Hollister in 2003, the vote which Garrison used against Hollister to get into the House.   With some regret, but no hesitation, Daniels says of his magazine, and the gay community at large, “In a Garrison vs. Husted race, we will endorse Husted.”

And Ohio’s Sarah Palin continues her march up the ladder of power.