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<div class="timestamp">May 2, 2012</div>
<h1>Romney Team May Have Stirred Storm Over Gay Aide</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_barbaro/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Michael Barbaro" class="meta-per">MICHAEL BARBARO</a>, <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/helene_cooper/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Helene Cooper" class="meta-per">HELENE COOPER</a> and <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/ashley_parker/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Ashley Parker" class="meta-per">ASHLEY PARKER</a></h6>
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<p>
It was the biggest moment yet for <a href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/candidates/mitt-romney?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Mitt Romney." class="meta-per">Mitt Romney</a>’s
foreign policy team: a conference call last Thursday, dialed into by
dozens of news outlets from around the globe, to dissect and denounce
President’s Obama record on national security. </p>
<p>
But Richard Grenell, the political strategist who helped organize the
call and was specifically hired to oversee such communications, was
conspicuously absent, or so everyone thought. </p>
<p>
It turned out he was at home in Los Angeles, listening in, but stone
silent and seething. A few minutes earlier, a senior Romney aide had
delivered an unexpected directive, according to several people involved
in the call. </p>
<p>
“Ric,” said Alex Wong, a policy aide, “the campaign has requested that
you not speak on this call.” Mr. Wong added, “It’s best to lay low for
now.” </p>
<p>
For Mr. Grenell, the message was clear: he had become radioactive. </p>
<p>
It was the climax of an unexpectedly messy and public dispute over the
role and reputation of Mr. Grenell, a foreign policy expert who is gay
and known for his support of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Unions, and Domestic Partnerships." class="meta-classifier">same-sex marriage</a>,
his testy relationship with the news media and his acerbic Twitter
postings on everything from Rachel Maddow’s femininity to how Callista
Gingrich “snaps on” her hair. </p>
<p>
>From Mr. Grenell’s hiring three weeks ago, which prompted an outcry from
some Christian conservatives, it became clear that the appointment of
the former Bush administration official with pristine Republican
credentials had become entangled in the unforgiving churn of
election-year politics, leading to his resignation on Tuesday and the
Republican candidate’s first public misstep since effectively clinching
the nomination. </p>
<p>
On one level, Mr. Grenell’s short-lived and rocky tenure as Mr. Romney’s
foreign policy spokesman is the story of how halting attempts by the
campaign to manage its relationship with the most conservative quarter
of the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Republican Party" class="meta-org">Republican Party</a> left an aide feeling badly marginalized and ostracized. </p>
<p>
But according to interviews with more than a dozen aides and advisers,
it is also about how a fast-growing campaign, operating under the sharp
glare of a general election, failed to spot the potential hazards of a
high-profile appointment. </p>
<p>
Aides to Mr. Romney insist they did everything they could to keep Mr.
Grenell from resigning, sending the campaign’s highest-level officials
to try to persuade him that they valued his expertise and that the
matter would soon die down. In the end, they said, he chafed at the
limitations of a disciplined presidential campaign. </p>
<p>
But those close to Mr. Grenell, known as Ric, insist that when he had
sought forceful support from those who had entrusted him with a major
role, the campaign seemed to be focused, instead, on quieting a
political storm that could detract from Mr. Romney’s message and his
appeal to a crucial constituency. </p>
<p>
“It’s not that the campaign cared whether Ric Grenell was gay,” one
Republican adviser said. “They believed this was a nonissue. But they
didn’t want to confront the religious right.” Like many interviewed,
this adviser insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Grenell, a 45-year-old with a sharp wit, had joined the Romney
campaign in April with sterling recommendations from Bush-era foreign
policy figures, and an impressive résumé. He had served as a United
States spokesman at the United Nations under four ambassadors during the
Bush administration. </p>
<p>
Rich Williamson, a senior diplomat under several Republican presidents,
and John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United
Nations, had both urged his appointment. </p>
<p>
In mid-April, Mr. Grenell sailed through an interview with Eric
Fehrnstrom, Mr. Romney’s senior adviser, and Gail Gitcho, his
communications director. </p>
<p>
But before he left the Romney headquarters in Boston, he felt compelled
to say that he is gay. “It could be an issue,” he volunteered. </p>
<p>
“It’s not an issue for us,” Mr. Fehrnstrom replied firmly. </p>
<p>
Aides called around to Mr. Grenell’s colleagues, seeking references, but
as the warm reviews flowed in, a campaign known for its
no-stone-unturned meticulousness overlooked his electronic footprints:
namely, dozens of cutting Twitter postings. One swipe at Newt Gingrich’s
weight, for example, went like this: “I wonder if newt has investments
in <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/lipitor_drug/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about Lipitor." class="meta-classifier">Lipitor</a>.” </p>
<p>
Mr. Grenell trumpeted his new position in a message to friends on April
19. He signed the note, “My next adventure.” He made preparations to
move from Los Angeles. </p>
<p>
Within days, stories about Mr. Grenell’s Twitter feed surfaced,
prompting him to delete more than 800 posts. Mr. Grenell apologized for
what he called “hurtful” comments, but the campaign privately dismissed
the issue. </p>
<p>
At the same time another, more troubling, protest that was harder to
ignore was taking shape among some Christian conservatives: Mr. Romney,
who opposes same-sex marriage, had betrayed them by hiring a gay man and
an outspoken supporter of the cause. </p>
<p>
The day after Mr. Grenell was hired, Bryan Fischer, a Romney critic with
the American Family Association, told nearly 1,400 followers on
Twitter: “If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family
community: drop dead.” The next day, the conservative Daily Caller
published an online column that summed up the anger of the Christian
right, linking Mr. Grenell’s hiring to the appointment of gay judges to
the New Jersey Supreme Court. </p>
<p>
As the critiques from conservatives intensified, Mr. Grenell pressed
senior aides to allow him to speak about national security issues,
arguing that the best way to soothe the ire over his appointment would
be to let him do his job: defend his boss and take swipes at President
Obama. </p>
<p>
But Mr. Romney’s advisers balked at the idea of his taking a public
role, saying that the best way to get beyond the controversy was for Mr.
Grenell to lower his profile until it blew over. A big worry: that
reporters would ask Mr. Grenell about his Twitter feed or sexuality,
turning him rather than Mr. Romney’s foreign policy into the story.
</p>
<p>
And with Mr. Grenell not scheduled to start work officially until May 1,
the advisers argued that there was no rush to push him into the
spotlight. </p>
<p>
Andrea Saul, a campaign spokeswoman, issued a statement of support for
Mr. Grenell on April 24. But it made no mention of the attacks on his
sexuality: “We hired Ric Grenell because he was the best qualified
person for the job and has extensive experience representing the U.S.
Mission to the U.N.” </p>
<p>
Yet foreign policy debates, the kind that Mr. Grenell was eager to wade
into, kept sprouting up on the campaign trail, and he kept pressing for a
chance to jump in. Each time, he was rebuffed. He was, friends said, a
spokesman with no voice. </p>
<p>
Romney advisers attribute at least some of Mr. Grenell’s frustration to
the inevitable complications of starting a new job within a large,
competitive and rigid organization filled with big egos. </p>
<p>
But the final straw, for Mr. Grenell, was the conference call on April
26. After being told not to speak, he felt deeply undermined, worrying
it would erode his credibility with journalists who had expected to hear
from him, friends said. One, R. Clarke Cooper, the executive director
of Log Cabin Republicans, called it a missed opportunity. </p>
<p>
“If one wanted to look at how it could have been done differently, they
could have gotten Ric off the bench and onto the field,” he said.
“There’s been a lot going on this week on foreign policy, with Syria,
Hillary Clinton in China, Obama in Afghanistan. There’s a lot happening
where Ric could have been present.” </p>
<p>
The day after the call, complaints from the religious right picked up
steam. In the National Review on April 27, Matthew J. Franck wrote:
“Whatever fine record he compiled in the Bush administration, Grenell is
more passionate about same-sex marriage than anything else.” </p>
<p>
“So here’s a thought experiment,” he continued. “Suppose Barack Obama
comes out — as Grenell wishes he would — in favor of same-sex marriage
in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. How fast
and how publicly will Richard Grenell decamp from Romney to Obama?”
</p>
<p>
Over the past weekend, Mr. Grenell sent word to Mr. Williamson and Mr.
Fehrnstrom that his position was untenable. He planned to resign.
</p>
<p>
At least six top aides and advisers called Mr. Grenell, asking him to
reconsider, among them Mr. Fehrnstrom, Mr. Bolton, Mr. Williamson and
the campaign’s manager, Matt Rhoades. </p>
<p>
Several of them said they were baffled. They felt the storm had largely
passed. “We were shocked,” one caller said. “We could not persuade him
to stay.” </p>
<p>
Several gay leaders said the campaign failed to grasp the message it had
sent when it told him to lie low. “Clearly, the Romney campaign
thought if they could put him in a box for a while it would go away,”
said Christopher Barron, a founder of GOProud, a gay Republican group in
Washington. “It is an unforced error on their part.” </p>
<p>
He added, “It doesn’t bode well for the Romney campaign going forward if
they couldn’t stand up to the most outrageous attacks about him being
gay.” </p>
<p>
Ms. Gitcho, of the campaign, disputed that characterization. Mr. Romney,
she said, “has condemned voices of intolerance within the party. We
tried to persuade Mr. Grenell to stay on, and we were disappointed that
he chose to resign.” </p>
<p>
Jim Talent, a former senator from Missouri who is a campaign adviser,
called the episode a loss for the Romney campaign. </p>
<p>
“People with the kind of expertise that Ric has don’t grow on tree,” he said. “It’s a real setback for us, I think.” </p>
<div class="authorIdentification">
<p>Jeff Zeleny and Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Washington.</p> </div>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>