David McKee, the Stiffs & Georges blogger, is straight and he first noticed the above in a flier for Kathy McClain, who is running against Mark Manendo for the Democratic nomination for State Senate in, as it turns out, my part of Vegas. They're both term-limited members of the Nevada Assembly who are seeking higher office. Trouble is, their voting records are virtually identical -- and identically very liberal, in fact -- so they have to beat one another up personally.
A mailer from McClain that arrived today contained the snippet above in which she gingerly points out that "Mark Manendo, age 42, has never been married and has lived with his mother for long periods of time." By contrast, she's in a "long-term marriage" with three kids and four grandbabies.
McKee referred to that bit as "lobbing a creaky old form of sexual innuendo." Other gay leaders I read it to also read it that way, that she was making a backhanded reference to the prospect that he's a gay Momma's Boy. Bob Forbuss, the former Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce chairman and prodigious Democratic fundraiser who is openly gay, told me, "It's definitely an inference, and it's really tacky."
So, really, Grandmother McClain? This is how you want to win? Really? Might I remind you that your district contains the ZIP code with the most number of gay couples registered in domestic partnerships in the entire state? That your district includes the only region ever elect an openly gay person to anything in Nevada, the man who could be your colleague, Sen. David Parks? [Each Nevada Senate district gets two representatives.]
The rest of the mailer is vicious but also largely fair game. Click on it below to read it:
Yeah, yeah. College education, job performance surveys and endorsements are all fine political arguments. I wonder how far she's going to get painting Manendo as "unemployed for significant periods" since so many of the residents around here are, too, and don't need Grandmother McClain telling them it's a character flaw.
But she also wants points for being a married heterosexual, too, in the GAYEST district in Nevada? Does she not get that this is precisely the undercurrent presently being floated against Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena Kagan, that she's a lifelong spinster who loves softball and has a short haircut and you know what that means! (Grandmother McClain, incidentally, has a really short haircut, too, see? Hmm!)
Surely McClain finds that kind of innuendo offensive against people like Kagan. So why would she do it herself?
People's life and relationship choices, so long as they're legal, are their own. That's what Grandmother McClain's own voting record reflects, actually. So how about her campaign literature does so, too?
