Convention nightmare

The GOP’s (other) convention nightmare

An old struggle is set to split the party in the heat of a presidential campaign.

By Alex Isenstadt

Republicans, already girding for their most tumultuous convention in decades, now have another fight brewing: a divisive battle over gay marriage on the party’s official national platform.

It’s an issue that drives intense passion, and one that splits the mainstream and evangelical wings of the GOP. With the convention less than four months away, both sides are mobilizing in anticipation of a bitter clash over whether the party should embrace a more moderate approach to gay nuptials, in keeping with a public that is more open to it, or maintain the hard line the party’s base demands.

Some of the party’s biggest financiers, attempting to transform the GOP’s approach, have been helping to bankroll the American Unity Fund, a group that has launched a well-organized, behind-the-scenes effort to lobby convention delegates who will draw up the platform. It is asking them to adopt language that would accommodate same sex marriage.

The organization, which has offices in Washington, D.C., and a growing army of volunteers spread out across the country, has the backing of billionaire investors Paul Singer, Dan Loeb, Seth Klarman and Cliff Asness, who have been outspoken in calling for the GOP to moderate its rigid stance on social issues.

American Unity Fund’s efforts are the most assertive yet to alter the party’s posture on gay marriage. During the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in January, staffers with the group huddled with influential party officials over drinks at the posh Belmond hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. The organization is also planning to have a presence at the committee’s spring meeting this month in Hollywood Beach, Florida. Over the past week, the group has reached out to a number of RNC members by phone.

“We are working to ensure that each and every delegate is empowered to vote their conscience and truly craft an inclusive Republican Party platform,” said Jerri Ann Henry, who is spearheading the group’s convention campaign. “We need to be inclusive.”

Social conservatives, alarmed at what they view as an effort to topple a central tenet of their movement, are also gearing up. Last week, Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council president and a vocal opponent of same sex marriage, secured one of Louisiana’s two slots on the platform committee. Perkins, who also served on the committee in 2012, is expected to take the lead in litigating any efforts to change the party’s position.

Social conservatives, though, remain on guard. During a recent meeting with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, some evangelical leaders expressed concern about the pro-gay marriage push, according to one activist who was present.

“Conservative forces need to understand there is a serious challenge, and they need to take it seriously,” said Jim Bopp, an influential social conservative activist who helped to craft the GOP platform in 2012.

“We’re prepared for the fight,” said Ed Martin, the president of Eagle Forum, a leading evangelical group. “It’s hand-to-hand combat.”

Martin predicted there would be little desire to alter party’s stance on marriage — doing so he argued, would discourage evangelical voters from heading to the polls in November.

Even starting the conversation, he warned, would have consequences.

“If the Platform Committee is fighting over marriage,” Martin said, “we’re coming out of the convention without any momentum at all.”

The Republican Party’s most recent official platform, adopted during the 2012 convention, took an uncompromising stance. At that time, the platform committee expressed its support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman, and ripped what it called “the court-ordered redefinition of marriage” as “an assault on the foundations of our society.”

The American Unity Fund wants the 2016 platform to look very different from its predecessor. From its headquarters, where about 10 staffers work, Henry keeps a spreadsheet of where each state stands on its delegate selection process. All 56 states and territories send two members — one man and one woman — to the Platform Committee, and each state has its own process for determining who is chosen. For many states, determining who gets sent to Cleveland is a weeks-long process, beginning in local party meetings and concluding with a state convention.

The group is looking to lobby delegates across the country — including in liberal, gay marriage-friendly states like California, and in more conservative strongholds like Georgia and Texas, where it is convinced some party figures may be receptive to message. In North Carolina, the organization is seeking out individuals who have been turned off by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s support for a law that would require transgender people to officially change the gender specified on their birth certificate to use the public restroom of their choice.

In many states, the group has already put in weeks of work, identifying people who they think would be favorable to them and encouraging them to seek out Platform Committee slots. A central part of the pitch to delegates, Henry said, is that the party needs to moderate its approach — or face electoral consequences.

“It’s necessary if the party is to remain viable in the years to come,” she said.

Another part of the argument: that gay marriage is now settled law, following the Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

In many election years, the Platform Committee’s decisions are relatively straightforward and align with the views of the presumptive nominee. In 2012, for example, Romney’s team played a major role in determining the platform. Yet this time, with less clarity about who the standard-bearer will be, the committee’s direction is up in the air.

Some, though, have begun pressing potential nominees. Phyllis Schlafly and Ed Martin, who oversee Eagle Forum, recently met with Donald Trump to voice concern about how gay marriage is addressed in the platform and to underscore its importance to social conservatives. Schlafly, an iconic 91-year-old conservative activist who has endorsed Trump, played a key role in pushing an anti-gay marriage position while sitting on the Platform Committee in 2012.

As both sides lay the groundwork for the convention, the battle between the mainstream and evangelical wings of the Republican Party over social issues has played out in other arenas.

Beside the controversy of transgender rights in North Carolina, Georgia Republican Gov. Nathan Deal last week vetoed a bill that, critics said, would have allowed faith-based groups to deny services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons, in the process spurning social conservatives who pushed the bill through the state Legislature. The bill faced a firestorm of criticism from corporate interests, including Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, a generous Republican Party benefactor who donated to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign.

More battles may be on the horizon, including at the convention.

“I hope we win. The platform is really good,” Martin said. “But the Paul Singers of the world are spending millions.”