This may be the most important political article you read this election year. Even homosexual journalists like this reporter for the “gay” magazine The Advocate are weary of the secretive nature of the Gill Action Fund and its plan to use out-of-state homosexual donors’ money strategically to knock out pro-family state legislators across the country. If this were a “Christian Right” group stealthily using Christian millionaires’ money to displace liberal, pro-homosexual politicians, the mainstream media would be all over it.

We’ll have much more to say about the Gill Action Fund and this article, but note that the man Gill chose to run his operation is Patrick Guerriero, former executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group working to make the GOP more homosexuality-friendly. Log Cabin operatives like to call themselves “conservative,” but their national ex-leader has been busy for the last three years running a stealth campaign to take out mostly pro-family, conservative Republican state legislators in places like Iowa, Pennsylvania and New York. More evidence that the GOP’s “Big Tent” policy of simultaneously trying to appease both its grassroots base of millions upon millions of pro-family Republicans — and a tiny special interest group of homosexual activist Republicans whose loyalty is first to their own “gay agenda” — is an exercise in futility. — Peter LaBarbera

___________________________

Here are the first three paragraph’s of the Advocate piece “The Gay Goodfellas” (emphasis added):

The Gay Goodfellas

Inside the Gill Action Fund, the most effective pro-gay political weapon you never heard of

By Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate, June 19, 2008

Patrick Guerriero and Bill Smith of the Gill Action Fund [photo of founder Tim Gill at left] have a problem. Guerriero, former leader of the Log Cabin Republicans and onetime candidate for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, and Smith, a political consultant and former employee of Karl Rove, want LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered] people to understand their strategy for winning equal rights — a targeted approach to developing what they call “fair-minded majorities” in state legislatures across the country. During the 2006 election, the first cycle in which the organization set its sights on state legislative races, control of 13 state chambers switched hands. Ten were Democratic takeovers — chambers that are now more likely to make gay-friendly decisions.

Smith and Guerriero want to get that story out, yes, but they don’t want Gill Action to be a centerpiece of the article, nor do they want any of its internal or external machinations to be revealed. No focusing on Gill Action’s founder, Tim Gill, a self-made millionaire who by all accounts is exceedingly modest and usually ducks the press at all costs. No naming any of the state legislators the organization helped to elect in 2006, lest those candidates find themselves in the cross hairs of the Christian right in the next election. They won’t disclose the states they worked in during the last election cycle, and in terms of 2008, they’re willing to discuss only two states in which they will be active: Florida, where Gill Action will be playing defense against a constitutional marriage amendment; and Massachusetts, where they will be helping to reelect Democratic and Republican legislators who had voted to protect the state’s same-sex marriage law. And although I can talk to one of their donors, I can’t name that person in print. Any breach of confidentiality there might scare off future donors or, perhaps worse, let the opposition know where Gill will strike next.

Essentially, Guerriero and Smith want to turn their face to the sunlight ever so briefly, then retreat to the shadowy world of politics to work in virtual anonymity — developing a hit list of the community’s worst enemies, identifying our best friends, and doing whatever has to be done to get the next hate-crimes bill passed or constitutional amendment killed at the state level.

Click here to read the entire Advocate article: “The Gay Goodfellas: Inside the Gill Action Fund, the most effective pro-gay political weapon you never heard of.”

We are intrigued by the fact that the same movement that once cried out for “privacy” and “to be left alone” feels free to publicly declare people’s homosexuality for them (Anderson Cooper, No. 2, and Jodie Foster, No. 43). On the other hand, if OUT is right, it might explain Cooper’s bias in his reporting on the homosexual issue: in a recent interview that the CNN host did with pro and con advocates on a ”gay parenting” story, he blatantly favored the “gay” side in his questioning.

Regardless of whether Cooper practices homosexuality, as a professional he should be completely even-handed in his treatment of this controversial moral question. So, by the way, should the New York Times — Gay Mafia (No. 7) or no Gay Mafia. — Peter LaBarbera

1. David Geffen
2. Anderson Cooper
3. Ellen DeGeneres
4. Tim Gill
5. Barney Frank
6. Rosie O’Donnell
7. The New York Times Gay Mafia: Richard Berke, Ben Brantley, Frank Bruni, Stuart Elliott, Adam Nagourney, Stefano Tonchi, and Eric Wilson
8. Marc Jacobs
9. Andrew Tobias
10. Brian Graden
11. Jann Wenner
12. Andrew Sullivan
13. Suze Orman
14. Joe Solmonese
15. Fred Hochberg
16. Christine Quinn
17. Perez Hilton
18. Scott Rudin
19. John Aravosis
20. Sheila Kuehl
21. James B. Stewart
22. Nick Denton
23. Tom Ford
24. Nate Berkus
25. Adam Moss
26. Jim Nelson
27. Lorri L. Jean
28. Adam Rose
29. Annie Leibovitz
30. Simon Halls and Stephen Huvane
31. Bryan Lourd
32. Bryan Singer
33. Jonathan Burnham
34. Brian Swardstrom
35. Robert Greenblatt
36. Chi Chi LaRue
37. Dan Mathews
38. Neil Meron and Craig Zadan
39. Ingrid Sischy
40. Marc Cherry
41. Carolyn Strauss
42. Irshad Manji
43. Jodie Foster
44. Christine Vachon
45. André Leon Talley
46. Hilary Rosen
47. Matthew Marks
48. Benny Medina
49. Mitchell Gold
50. David Kuhn

We don’t imagine that The Atlantic Monthly’s editors would be quite so upbeat about this story if it were about secret donations from evangelical moneymen targeting pro-homosexual state legislators. But now is not the time for sour grapes. Instead, we need concerted action to stop this sneaky plot from succeeding in the form of new “sexual orientation” laws.

One more thing: isn’t it telling that Patrick Guerriero, the former head of the national Log Cabin Republicans — a group dedicated to advancing homosexual interests in the GOP — took a job to help achieve Democratic takeovers of state capitols? More proof that the Log Cabin activists are homosexuals first, and Republicans second. After all, this is the same “Republican” group that refused to endorse President Bush for re-election because he supported a Federal Marriage Amendment (horrors!). And yet there are still plenty of “moderate” Republicans who insist that the key to the party’s success is tilting more toward the Log Cabins and away from the GOP’s conservative, religious base. – Peter LaBarbera

——————————

The following is excerpted from They Won’t Know What Hit Them, by Joshua Green, published March 2007 in Atlantic Monthly:

The software mogul Tim Gill has a mission:
Stop the Rick Santorums of tomorrow before they get started.
How a network of gay political donors is stealthily
fighting sexual discrimination and reshaping American politics.

…Danny Carroll, the Republican speaker pro tempore of Iowa’s House of Representatives, …was among the dozens of targets of a group of rich gay philanthropists who quietly joined forces last year, under the leadership of a reclusive Colorado technology mogul, to counter the tide of antigay politics in America that has generated, among other things, a succession of state ballot initiatives banning gay marriage.

Like many other state legislatures last year, Iowa’s was narrowly divided. …If Democrats took control of the House and Senate, however narrowly, the initiative would die, and with it the likelihood of further legislation limiting civil rights for gays and lesbians…

Over the summer, Carroll’s opponent started receiving checks from across the country—significant sums for a statehouse race, though none so large as to arouse suspicion (the gifts topped out at $1,000). Because they came from individuals and not from organizations, nothing identified the money as being “gay,” or even coordinated. Only a very astute political operative would have spotted the unusual number of out-of-state donors and pondered their interest in an obscure midwestern race. And only someone truly versed in the world of gay causes would have noticed a $1,000 contribution from Denver, Colorado, and been aware that its source, Tim Gill, is the country’s biggest gay donor, and the nexus of an aggressive new force in national politics…

Tim Gill is best known as the founder of the publishing-software giant Quark Inc., and for a long time was one of the few openly gay members of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans…In 2000, he sold his interest in Quark for a reported half-billion dollars in order to focus full-time on his philanthropy.

Gill’s principal interest is gay equality. His foundations have given about $115 million to charities. His serious involvement in politics is a more recent development, though geared toward the same goal. In 2000, he gave $300,000 in political donations, which grew to $800,000 in 2002, $5 million in 2004, and a staggering $15 million last year, almost all of it to state and local campaigns…

“My goal is to see that all Americans are treated equally regardless of sexuality,” he told me when we met.

…Gill decided to find out how he could become more effective and enlisted as his political counselor an acerbic lawyer and former tobacco lobbyist named Ted Trimpa, who is Colorado’s answer to Karl Rove. Trimpa believes that the gay-rights community directs too much of its money to thoroughly admirable national candidates who don’t need it, while neglecting less compelling races that would have a far greater impact on gay rights—a tendency he calls “glamour giving.” Trimpa cited the example of [a prominent, Democratic presidential candidate]: an attractive candidate, solid on gay rights, and viscerally exciting to donors. It feels good to write him a check. An analysis of [the candidate's] 2004 Senate race, which he won by nearly fifty points, had determined that gays contributed more than $500,000. “The temptation is always to swoon for the popular candidate,” Trimpa told me, “but a fraction of that money, directed at the right state and local races, could have flipped a few chambers. ‘Just because he’s cute’ isn’t a strategy.”

Together, Gill and Trimpa decided to eschew national races in favor of state and local ones, which could be influenced in large batches and for much less money. Most antigay measures, they discovered, originate in state legislatures. Operating at that level gave them a chance to “punish the wicked,” as Gill puts it—to snuff out rising politicians who were building their careers on antigay policies, before they could achieve national influence. Their chief cautionary example of such a villain is Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who once compared homosexuality to “man on dog” sex (and was finally defeated last year, at a cost of more than $20 million)…

Gill’s idea was to identify vulnerable candidates like Danny Carroll and move quickly to eliminate them without the burden of first having to win the consent of some risk-averse large organization or board of directors. Another element of this strategy is stealth. Revealing targets only after an election makes it impossible for them to fight back…

In the 2006 elections, on a level where a few thousand dollars can decide a close race, Gill’s universe of donors injected more than $3 million, providing in some cases more than 20 percent of a candidate’s or organization’s budget. On Election Day, fifty of the seventy targeted candidates were defeated, Danny Carroll among them; and out of the thirteen states where Gill and his allies invested, four — Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Washington — saw control of at least one legislative chamber switch to the Democratic Party… Gill’s stealth campaign was both effective and precedent-setting. For the first time, in a broad and organized way, gays had taken the initiative in a sweeping multistate strategy and had mostly prevailed.

…Tim Gill, the 53-year-old founder of the desktop software firm Quark, became a force in Colorado politics two years ago when he and three other wealthy residents spent $2 million to help install a Democratic majority in both houses of the state legislature for the first time in decades.

This year, Gill has dropped almost $5 million so far on state election campaigns – more than any other individual in Colorado.

…”I have never seen in Colorado politics in the 30-some odd years where I’ve been active . . . any individual involved to the degree that Tim Gill is,” said political consultant Katy Atkinson, a registered Republican who works with both sides of the aisle on ballot measures.

“Should he choose to, he can shape any part of Colorado public policy he wants to.”

Gill also is a player on the national stage, funneling more than $2 million into mostly Democratic causes, including the Democracy Alliance, a new group made up of dozens of the country’s wealthiest donors who are lavishing money on think tanks and organizations to counter similar groups established years ago by conservatives.

All of this is on top of Gill’s considerable philanthropy. Gill and his 12-year-old Gill Foundation have spent more than $80 million on gay and lesbian causes and on other organizations friendly to their gay workers, including the Pikes Peak Library Foundation, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and Public Broadcasting of Colorado.

And all of this is just the beginning, according to Gill’s political adviser Ted Trimpa.

“Tim is in it for the long haul,” said Trimpa, a partner at the high-profile law firm Brownstein Hyatt & Farber. “What we’re talking about is strategic philanthropy and strategic politics.”…

‘Unquestionable’ national impact
Much of Gill’s support has gone to 527 groups, which take their name from Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code…

Gill is the top political donor in Colorado and much of the West to national 527 groups, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group that tracks political contributions. He ranks 16th among all individual 527 donors nationwide, said organization communications director Massie Ritsch.

“If you’re No. 16 on the 527 list, you’re in the elite,” Ritsch said. “If I need to put together a dinner party of the biggest left-leaning donors in the country, I’d invite him.”

These 527 donations give Gill a behind- the-scene hand in influencing campaigns far from Colorado. For example, the Lantern Project, a Gill beneficiary, is funding ads against U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.

Steve Farber, the Denver lawyer and political insider who is trying to bring the 2008 Democratic National Convention to Denver, describes Gill as “a very loyal Democrat both locally and nationally.”

“I think his impact nationally is unquestionable,” Farber said.

Gill’s political adversaries say they are well aware of his impact.

“I see him as being the most focused force on a political agenda,” said state Rep. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, a vocal opponent of Referendum I. “He’s trying to mainstream the homosexual community into our culture.”

“I am concerned that he has been very effective and will continue to be very effective,” he added. “That’s the way the system works. He has that right because he has the resources.”…

A focus on local politics
At a three-day Gill-sponsored conference in Miami last March, Gill pushed for a major shift in political strategy in the gay rights movement.

The Gill Action Fund “political outgiving” meeting brought together almost 200 of the biggest advocates and supporters of the gay rights movement. Gill’s message to them was simple: All politics is local.

Until then, wealthy gay donors often focused on “glamour giving” – donations to presidential or congressional campaigns with an eye toward hobnobbing with the rich and famous…

He created the Gill Foundation in 1994 with an endowment of more than $200 million…

Continue reading in Rocky Mountain News…