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Joe Solmonese

Joe Solmonese is the president of the Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself “the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization.” Prior, he was the CEO of EMILY’s List.

Sara Fritz and Josh Israel interviewed Solmonese on December 6, 2007.

Let’s talk first about the history of your organization in presidential politics. When did you start getting involved in presidential politics? Kind of trace the origins of this.

This organization is 25 years old. I’ve been here for two of those 25 years. The baseline of involvement in presidential politics probably from the beginning has been in the endorsement process. And as the largest gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender organization in the country, our endorsement of a presidential candidate carries some weight, certainly. Probably less so in the general election than if we were to make an endorsement in a primary. If we made an endorsement right now in the Democratic primary, that would be a very big deal.

In recent years, I know this election cycle and certainly the last one, the goal really has been to not just do sort of the organizational piece, which would be an organizational endorsement, but to really mobilize our membership to raise money for the candidate we endorse. Of course at the presidential level, it’s a complicated scenario, as I’m sure you know well.

Once a candidate becomes the general election candidate, you’re really talking about raising money for, in our case, the DNC. That of course is going into a very large pool of money with lots of different people. The gay people giving to John Kerry versus George Bush is not a particularly surprising or revolutionary thing. Us directing our membership there is less of an influence than if we were right now endorsing Barack Obama and getting people to give money to him instead of Hillary Clinton.

Who have you endorsed in the past?

We endorsed Kerry over Bush. I’m sure we endorsed [Al] Gore over Bush. They endorsed Kerry. I wasn’t here, so I don’t know the timing. They did endorse Kerry before he was sort of completely out of the woods in the Democratic primary process the last time. Certainly Gore over Bush and probably [Bill] Clinton for re-election in ’96. I don’t know what they would have done in ’92. I would imagine when it became Clinton versus [George H.W.] Bush they would have endorsed Clinton as well. For this place, there’s no gain. I can speak to this election cycle. There’s really no gain to be made in making a primary endorsement. The general election endorsement is pretty obvious.

Why is it [not] OK for a primary endorsement? It seems to me you could have a pretty good impact on it.

Let’s put it this way: Most of the Democratic field is in about the same place on our issues. Most of the Democratic field is probably going to do the same thing if they get elected president.

So you could kind of screw yourself.

Yes. Dennis Kucinich would do more for gay people than Hillary Clinton would, but Dennis Kucinich is not going to be president. So among the Clinton, Obama, [John] Edwards pack of candidates, they’re all pretty much going to do the same thing. Hillary Clinton is down today. She’s sort of down generally speaking. Anybody who came out today and made a big public endorsement of Hillary Clinton — a labor union, environmental group, gay and lesbian organization — that would be a major statement and I’m sure it would be remembered in some way.

In a dark moment in a legislative fight, on a piece of legislation, I’m sure that we would be owed something. That would be true with Barack Obama. I think the polls show that our community is more aligned with Hillary Clinton than anybody else. Organizationally, if we came out and endorsed Barack Obama, say last summer when he was not that far along, perhaps the same thing would be the case. You weigh that against the endorsement of Hillary Clinton today and Barack Obama becoming the Democratic nominee a month from now, then what do you have to do to repair that?

So you’re not really opposed to doing it in the primary? It’s not a policy; it’s just whatever makes sense?

Yeah. The real guide for us is, we would make an endorsement when there was a clear distinction to be made. What I don’t see right now is a clear distinction to be made.

You said, “It’s no surprise that we would endorse a Democrat.” Considering policy, it’s no surprise, but there are lots of gay Republicans in the world. Do you know how your organization breaks down in terms of party?

I think it’s heavily Democratic, not unlike the [GLBT] community. I wouldn’t be surprised if the community were 80 percent Democratic and 20 percent Republican. I wouldn’t be surprised if our organization was the same way if not more 90/10. When I say it’s no surprise, I used to work for an organization called EMILY’s List for 13 years. People used to say, “Why don’t you support Republican pro-choice women?” I used to say, “Because they can’t get out of the primary process.”

So that’s what I mean. It’s not that I’m saying Democrats are better. I’m saying that if you think about it, I think Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are good examples. When Mitt Romney came to Massachusetts to run against [Democrat] Ted Kennedy for the Senate, he had a rather pro-gay policy position. When he stepped up to run as president, he went in a decidedly different direction. So did Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani, prior to getting into the presidential race, supported domestic partnerships, supported overturning don’t ask, don’t tell [the ban on open service by gay and lesbian members of the U.S. Armed Forces] and supported hate crimes legislation. He now supports none of those things.

The question is, if you have to evaluate that today, on the record, on their statement on their positions, Rudy Giuliani does not qualify for our support. That’s what he’s decided he has to do to become the general election nominee. As the general election nominee, does he soften his stance up and say, “Now I’ve got to move to the middle. Maybe I think hate crime is OK, but we have hate crime legislation. Maybe I’m for some form of same-sex relationship recognition.” When they move in the direction they do, you have to evaluate them on the merits of what they say and what they do.

I would imagine, from your point of view, this is mighty cynical. Talk about how you look at that when you see a person who was pro-gay just change his entire point of view. What do you think about that?

For me, I find it hard to imagine how you can navigate the waters of being a pro-gay Republican for this very reason. As the mayor of New York City, he may be a Republican in the same way as Michael Bloomberg, the same way Bill Weld was Republican governor of Massachusetts. Just step out into the national spotlight to understand [that] to win in Iowa, to win in South Carolina, you really are, as a Republican candidate, in need of the evangelical right. There’s just no other way.

You’re not offended by this?

It’s not that I’m offended. I’m sort of confounded as to how you could, with a straight face, do that sort of thing. It goes along with, if you want to be president of the United States as a Republican, you can’t be the same person you are as mayor of New York. Giuliani, to me, is sort of interesting. It will remain to be seen how this goes, but there was a time when Giuliani was rather outspoken about maintaining his pro-choice position and going to places like South Carolina and saying to evangelicals, “You may not agree with me on social positions, but if you’re going to go out and vote for the person you’re going to feel safest with when you put your kids to bed at night, I’m your guy.” The evangelical women were kind of saying, “I’ve got to figure this out and see what I think.” I think with [Mike] Huckabee and Romney and trailing in state after state around the country, that is something that . . .

It’s not an option.

Yeah. It was a strategic approach that, in the beginning, I was very interested in. I thought it would be interesting to see if it works, but it doesn’t appear to.

Was there a time when the endorsement of this group was not appreciated?

There were people, 10 or 15 years ago. There are people today who are good on our issue but don’t want our endorsement, not on the presidential level. On the presidential level, as I said, we’ve always, to my knowledge, endorsed the Democratic nominee and it’s been a welcome endorsement. At the House and Senate level, it continues to be the case that there are people who would prefer not to have our endorsement, sure.

That means they don’t want your money either.

That’s right.

What can a group like yours do for a presidential candidate?

I think what we can do are really two things: money and people. HRC has 700,000 members across the country. There are 15 million gay and lesbian [people]. The number is up to debate, but we have 700,000 members. We can put them to work in battleground states. We can put them to work in whatever state they live in and we can raise considerable resources. We have a $40 million annual budget. We really have the ability to put considerable financial resources into the election as well, and of course, as I said, in the general, that would likely be into the DNC.

In other words, you would tell them to send a check to the DNC.

Yes.

Is there a way that the candidate knows how much came from your membership?

We’ve done a better job of that more at the U.S. House and U.S. Senate races where we have genuinely bundled money. Come to Los Angeles and HRC is going to do a $50,000 event for [Democratic Senator from Ohio] Sherrod Brown. At the presidential level, it’s so big it’s sometimes hard to say. Again, you have members of our community all over the field. Unless we do it, unless we say, “Look, we’re going to do a DNC event downstairs in the reception area here and we’re going to raise $100,000,” it’s a little difficult to quantify what we do for the DNC. It’s very difficult. At that point, we’re probably not a good example, but if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president and the trial lawyers work with Hillary all the way up to it, it’s difficult to get in at that point when the fundraising focus has then been offset to the DNC.

How would you sort of evaluate your own political, your organization? I would assume you’re among some of the better ones in the Democratic pack.

I think things have turned dramatically in the last four years. Think about the fact that in 2004 there were 13 states across the country that had ballot referenda banning gay marriage. Whether it was Ohio or Michigan or Oregon or Missouri, those fights, in the eyes of many people, were seen as having brought out an even larger conservative vote against John Kerry. I think politically we were a bit of a liability coming out of those elections. There was a sense that those marriage fights had really lost the election for Kerry. Other people, certainly that was the conventional wisdom.

I believe that it was less about marriage and it was more about Bush’s team understanding something that other people didn’t, which is that there was an underlying post-9/11 fear that still lingered in this country. They did a very good job of understanding where people place their trust and their hopes and their security. It is in their faith. If you can find something that tears away at that or that puts that in jeopardy, gay people coming into your place of faith and wanting to get married symbolically sort of shakes that foundation. I think it was more about that than going out and doing something discriminatory against gay people. I think it was more, “I’ve got nothing against gay people, but I’ve got to go out and make a statement here about the preservation of an institution that I’m holding on to.” So whether it was gay people or whether it was an attack on religious institutions, however you want to frame it, it certainly drove a vote up that was a problem.

You’re suggesting that couldn’t happen now?

Well, after the last couple of election cycles there aren’t that many states left where they could do it. You can’t do a marriage ban in Ohio because it’s been done. You could do something else. The good news is, they can’t really attack us on marriage anymore because they kind of won that. But they certainly could go out and figure out what’s the next thing like that we could do. They tried in 2006 to use adoption bans; gay people shouldn’t be able to adopt children. That didn’t work. I think they kind of found out, it’s not really about discriminating against gay people; it was this underlying issue.

The church doesn’t have any position on the adoption ban.

Right. And to be perfectly crass, I think there is a broader look out there across the horizon at a wedge group and a wedge issue. It is turning out to be immigration. We’re getting the pass. Fortunately, we’re getting a pass; unfortunately, if you look back at the history of this stuff, as long as I’ve been doing electoral politics, which is 20 years, somebody has been the wedge. Going back to Willie Horton and through the early ’90s, crime was the overwhelming issue the electorate faced. It manifested itself in an anti-affirmative action campaign somewhere, but it was all a subtle aim.

So you’re just as happy not to be the wedge this time.

I’m not happy that there is a wedge. I don’t suspect we’ll be it.

Frankly, you were the wedge the last time. It was because of Massachusetts that put you all in that situation. If that hadn’t happened . . .

Right. The community that becomes the wedge, you have to fit into a bigger puzzle. There’s something going on in this country right now that says that immigrants are the wedge. It fits into something bigger and you will become the wedge when you fit that equation.

You’re a good candidate for that case.

We are a good candidate for that on occasion, yeah.

Sadly enough, it’s usually some kind of drawing differences among people.

It’s saying, “We need for you to be afraid of somebody.” Generally the kind of people we make you afraid of are people that you don’t know and people that you can sort of simply place in the context of “other.” So whether that’s, fill in the blank. It could be anybody. It could be immigrants, people of color, GLBT people.

So you’re saying that you feel that your constituency, particularly your membership, is pretty heavily in favor of Hillary but they could move quickly?

I’ve seen polling that suggests that the gay community, within the Democratic primary process, is more heavily in favor of Hillary. But if it’s Barack Obama or John Edwards or anybody else, they will be very enthusiastically behind them. One of the good things the Democrats have going for them is that most constituency groups, organized labor, the GLBT community, the women’s choice community, the environmental community, would be absolutely delighted with whatever choice they get. The Republicans are very different.

Are you going to do anything independent like advertising or does that not work for you?

We will do that sort of thing, not directed at the presidential campaign, but it would be a sort of state-specific strategy. There would be a lot of criteria, state legislature, federal office. For instance, in a place like New Hampshire, we would be very involved in helping with legislative races in New Hampshire and helping in the Senate race there, or Minnesota or Ohio or Oregon. The work would sort of bubble up and have an impact at the top of the ticket.

Do you have a 527 or something like that?

We have a [501](c)(4) and a PAC.

A (c)(4) can do that?

Yeah, we’ve got the right mechanisms to make it work.

Have you done that in the past, that kind of stuff?

Yeah, we’ve done independent expenditures and issues advocacy. Of course, as I said, we’ve got a membership, so we can sort of mobilize our membership to do things in states around the country as well.

You would be a very good [person] to ask about the religious right. One gets the sense that the religious right is disintegrating under the Republican Party. I’m sure you’re a pretty good watcher of that. How do you describe that?

I think there’s the war and the war has really caused people within the evangelical right to be conflicted about these candidates, about Bush, about the Republican field, and the war. I think that’s one thing. Then I think the other thing that’s happening is there is slowly but surely a movement, people like Rick Warren who wrote The Purpose Driven Life. Hillary just spoke at his church recently. Barack Obama spoke at his church last year. There is a sort of slow-but-sure movement of evangelical leaders who are coming along and saying: “We ought to get out of the business of politicking. We ought to get back to the core teachings of Jesus. All of this ought to be about eradicating poverty and about love and about eradicating illness.”
The sort of harsh political tenors of preaching from the pulpit about who to go out and vote for, I think that combination of things has really caused a rift in the evangelical movement. Then of course you have this field, as we were saying. For a very long time, there was nobody to organize around. There seems to be now an interest in Huckabee. I think they liked Huckabee but Huckabee didn’t seem like he was going anywhere. If Huckabee were the nominee, there may be a sort of resurgence that we’ve got somebody that we like.

You could be back on the hot seat again.

Yeah. Giuliani or Romney would be, again, sort of a conflict, but you’ve still got Huckabee. It would be very interesting to see in the general election. I would imagine probably from the time Mike Huckabee is the nominee until Election Day he’ll never mention George Bush’s name. They are fractured.

You have your own religion-faith initiative. What is that about?

It kind of does two things. It helps us in this fight. It helps us to sort of take back the mantle of faith to make sure that we are well armed to debate these issues and debate what the Bible really says and all of that. It helps to kind of empower GLBT people in their communities of faith.

Who, in the mainstream denominations, are under a great deal of pressure.

We’ve got a religion and faith council of about 20 people across the country who are religious leaders who are our spokespeople out there across the country on our issues. When a right-wing evangelical minister comes forward in Kansas City or Detroit and CNN calls and says, “We need somebody from HRC,” we’ll say, “Oh, we’ve got a Presbyterian minister in Kansas City; we’ve got a rabbi in Detroit. That’s our spokesperson; he will speak for us.”

So you’ve got somebody who can make a good appearance.

They speak the language. It is jarring to people to see that a religious leader is speaking on behalf of the gay community instead of against the gay community. We had 250 of them lobby Capitol Hill during the federal marriage amendment and it really was a very interesting thing. It surprised people. You’re here to lobby for the gay people or against the gay people? If you’re a staffer at a Capitol Hill office and five people walk in wearing religious vestments saying, “We’re here to talk about the federal marriage amendment,” it’s a very interesting visual.

Is there a reason why Hillary is a preference?

I’m suspecting not unlike the Democratic national primary field generally, it’s got a lot to do with name recognition and knowing her and who she is and her work, more than anything else. She’s sort of ahead nationally. She’s not ahead in New Hampshire and Iowa the way she was, but I would suspect it’s got a lot to do with name recognition.

I just recently was doing some work in which Arthur Finkelstein [an openly-gay Republican political consultant] was mentioned. He made a gay-bashing commercial. What do you think of that?

That was a long time ago, right?

What do you think about a gay guy who does that?

Unfortunately, it seems like every day that goes by or every month now, we find another conservative Republican who has lived his life in the closet and has, as a result, on repeated occasions, been a hypocrite. Arthur Finkelstein is somebody to whom this did not happen, but unfortunately when that’s the course your life takes, you are sort of forced out in a very unfortunate way.

There is an age group here. I don’t know how old he is, but you look at someone like Larry Craig who is probably 60, and here I am in my 40s. I feel like when I was in my 20s — now people who are in their 20s, regardless of your political affiliation or your ideology, you can be out and open about who you are. Then at the very least, you’re not being a hypocrite. It goes back to your Giuliani question. I can’t imagine being so closeted and so denying of who I was. It’s not about being a Republican, but about working for someone and advancing the cause of someone in which what you were called upon to do was discriminate against yourself. I try to be sensitive to a time when, in fact, that was probably the case for a lot of people.

Some people may still be living in that time.

Yes.

With the first African-American, possibly, president; first female, possibly, president; first Latino, possibly, president; first Mormon, possibly, president, where do you think we are as far as people’s openness to the idea of a GLBT president?

I think we have a long way to go in terms of people’s openness, but I think it is not solely the result of they wouldn’t support someone. People have a real problem with a Mormon president as much as a gay president. If you think about: “Why not more gay senators? Why not more gay governors?” it’s because we don’t have the pipeline. “Why is it that we have the first credible almost-Democratic nominee as a woman presidential candidate?” Hillary Clinton is a little bit of an anomaly, but if Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan, were born in the United States, she would be a credible candidate for president. [Arizona Governor] Janet Napolitano would be a credible candidate for president. [Governor] Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas would be a credible candidate for president.

You now have a critical mass of women who are in chief executive positions around the country, same thing with Latinos, same thing with African-Americans. You do not have that with GLBT people yet. You have lots of gay people in state legislatures, but you only have two openly gay members of the House and no [openly] gay members of the Senate. You have to build critical mass all up and down the ticket before someone pops up as a presidential candidate.

I’m amazed that after the Massachusetts decision [in favor of same-sex marriage], which I thought was an almost deathblow to your movement because things were progressing rather nicely until that happened, it seems not as big an issue as it was four years ago.

I think at any point you’ve got to sort of light that spark of social change.

So you’re still building. This is still building. How big of a setback was it?

I think there was a blow back, when you talk about all these fights in all these states, the marriage bans, but then you say to yourself, “Was there ever going to be a time that we were ready to start?” or “Should we have started more slowly? Would the movement have rallied around civil unions?” What you get now is, you push the ball way out there on marriage and all of these people, all of these elected officials, all of these politicians, now what they say is: “I can only be for civil unions. The best I can do is civil unions.” Well, 10 years ago, civil unions were a radical idea. Howard Dean practically drummed them out of office when he was voting for civil unions in Vermont. That was maybe 10 years ago.

I notice that now some politicians are talking about how government should get out of the marriage business.

Civil unions, I think, by pushing the envelope way out on marriage, have become the conservative trade-down position.

It was maybe not as bad a setback as it appeared at the time.

I think that was 2003 when that happened. So it’s been four years. Did you really drop a big bomb in Massachusetts and have a big blowback? Are we coming back from that? Yeah. How we come back and where we end up as a country, generally, I think, is at a much better place.