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Fred Karger, an openly gay Republican from California, has not drawn enough attention from his party yet to be included in major Republican debates. But he is getting attention for his effort to discredit the current frontrunner (according to polls) for the Republican nomination: Mitt Romney. He alleges that Romney falsely claimed to be a resident of Massachusetts so he could vote there. On Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show, Karger said:''[Romney] clearly moved to California and tried to take temporary residence in his son's basement [in Massachusetts]."Karger said he's running for President because:
"I'm making history.... I filed as the first openly gay candidate in history to run for President of the United States. I want to send a message out there to kids who happen to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer, 'You can do anything want to do, you can even run for president."When Maddow asked if his opposition to Romney was in retaliation for the Mormon Church's involvement in the passage of the anti-gay-marriage referendum Propsition 8, he said:
"No, no. Not at all. I mean, I have leaned on Gov. Romney. I took out a series of ads all over the country when he was on his book tour last year.Karger's campaign site says, like most other Republican candidates, that he is an admirer of Ronald Reagan's optimism and his ability to talk America "out of the last recession."
''We even held a demonstration at the Mormon book store in San Diego, just a little over a year ago when he was doing a book signing there -- asking him, as the most prominent Mormon in the country, to use his influence to get the Mormon Church off of this gay marriage fight that they've been on. Let them go off and help the earthquake victims, and hurricane victims and do the good things that that faith does. But, you know, they have led the fight in 31 states to take away marriage from a small group of people.... I'm just hopeful he'll use his influence to get the Church president and the leadership to stop the gay bashing."
Yet many of his other policy views are at odds with his rivals. He's for marriage equality, employment protections and militiary service for gays; for reproductive choice; for legalization of marijuana; for lowering the voting age; for energy conservation and exploring renewable resources. He's against companies outsourcing jobs overseas, and against continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also for being in Libya and calls charter schools a huge boost to education.
Karger led boycott efforts in 2008 to expose businesses and individuals in California that donated cash to Proposition 8.
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