Group for gay conservatives launches

Mark Ciavola came out of the closet while in Massachusetts, his home state.

The conservative political closet that is.

Now living in Las Vegas, Ciavola recently launched Right Pride, a Nevada affiliate of a new national gay conservative group -- GOProud -- which aims to give gays and lesbians a place at the Republican table on issues where even right wing and gay rights activists can agree.

For example?

■ Smaller government and less federal intrusion in people's private lives.

■ Taxes, including cutting corporate and capital gains taxes while killing the death tax.

■ Health care, including making insurance policies portable to create more competition, and maybe more options for gay couples in legal marriages or domestic partnerships.

What about such stock liberal gay rights issues as same-sex marriage, which is not allowed by the constitutions of about 30 states, including Nevada? Gay conservatives such as Ciavola, Right Pride and GOProud are content, as a middle ground, to work for equal taxes and other rights for domestic partnerships, which have been legally recognized in Nevada since a law was passed in 2009.

"Some people on the far right look at us and say how can you be gay and Republican," said Ciavola, who has a domestic partner. "But when there are so many different ideologies among conservatives, it's important to identify where people come together."

Ciavola said it wasn't easy being a Republican in the liberal bastion of Massachusetts, which shocked the political establishment by electing the GOP's Scott Brown to fill the late Edward Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat.

"In Boston, it was harder to come out as a Republican than as gay," Ciavola said.

He told his family and friends about his sexual orientation in 1996 but didn't talk about his political leanings until the 2000 presidential race in which Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat and former Vice President Al Gore in a contest the U.S. Supreme Court helped decide.

"The topics of politics dominated most conversations," Ciavola recalled of the race that divided the nation. "I had friends disown me. I had a dinner date get up and walk out of the restaurant. And I've been called a 'traitor' and 'self-hating fag' by gay liberals more times than I can count."

Ciavola didn't become politically active in Boston because "finding a fellow gay Republican was like looking for a needle in a haystack." Also, the former AT&T sales manager had no time.

Jump forward to 2010. Ciavola, who moved to Las Vegas five years ago, is now a political science student at the College of Southern Nevada and has more time and motivation to organize Right Pride, which he launched in September and which has become more active during the past six weeks.

So far, Ciavola has held only two Right Pride meetings, which have attracted about three dozen participants. He and his fellow gay conservatives also have been attending Republican events, including First Fridays, during which Las Vegas conservatives gather once a month.

Right Pride also has started meeting candidates who have filed to run for local offices, including those seeking the Assembly District 13 seat in Las Vegas. The group is planning a candidate "meet and greet" event in April, Ciavola said, and may end up endorsing candidates this election year.

Right Pride is only one of two state affiliates so far of GOProud. The other is in Florida.

Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud in Washington, D.C., said he helped form the political organization last April as an answer to the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay group that engaged in the "culture wars" within the Republican Party and the nation in the 1990s.

LaSalvia, who used to work for the Log Cabin Republicans as a grass-roots director, said the organization became too narrowly defined and lacked strong leadership.

"We felt a vacuum there," LaSalvia said. "We're in a different time now, but it's still a critical time. We saw our country was in transition and certainly the Republican Party was in transition. And those gay people who aren't liberal, they needed representation."

In the 2004 presidential race, about 4 percent of the national electorate identified themselves as homosexuals with George W. Bush picking up 23 percent of their votes, CNN exit polls showed.

"We felt that group of voters was not represented in Washington and did not have a strong voice," LaSalvia said. "There's a broader agenda that the gay left doesn't pay attention to. There are conservative policy issues that affect the gay and lesbian communities."

LaSalvia, who has been working out of his home, plans to open a national office this year.

democrats for gibbons?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

It could be the slogan for Nevada's 2010 campaign for governor.

On Thursday the Nevada State Democratic Party sent an e-mail in praise of Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons, who since 2006 has been the Democrats' political punching bag.

The Democrats called a mining fee increase Gibbons signed off on to raise $25 million to help close the state budget shortfall a "common-sense solution" and credited him for putting "his conservative bona fides second to education and services for seniors."

Have the Democrats gone soft on Republicans? Hardly. The compliments to Gibbons were wrapped in a piece bashing former federal judge Brian Sandoval, Gibbons' opponent in the Republican primary.

A recent statewide survey by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research showed Sandoval beating Democratic candidate Rory Reid 51 to 29 percent in a theoretical general election contest. The same survey also showed Reid beating Gibbons 42 percent to 38 percent, which would require the embattled Gibbons to triumph in the primary over Sandoval. The latest Mason-Dixon poll of Republican voters shows Sandoval is up 37 percent to 30 percent over the incumbent governor.

Look for Democrats to start putting up Gibbons yard signs soon.

candidate filing highlights

With more than 450 candidates on ballots statewide following the filing deadline Friday it will require a scorecard to track them all.

Term limits have some politicians seeking different offices to stay in the game. One husband seeks to fill the shoes of his term-limited wife. There are also some old-timers looking to get back in the game.

Some highlights:

■ State Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas, threw his name in as a candidate for the Clark County Commission. In the middle of his four-year state Senate term, Parks must resign if elected to the commission.

■ With term limits kicking in for the first time, three term-limited members of the Assembly -- Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, along with Kathy McClain and Mark Manendo, both D-Las Vegas -- filed for seats in the state Senate. McClain and Manendo will face each other in the Democratic primary for the state Senate District 7 seat in Clark County.

■ Term-limited state Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, filed to run for the Assembly District 14 seat. In the Democratic primary, she will face Victor Koivisto, husband of current Assemblywoman Ellen Koivisto, who is prevented from seeking another term. Carlton and Victor Koivisto also face a primary challenge from former Assemblywoman Karen Hayes King. King, 75, served four terms in the Assembly. The Democrat's last session was in 1981.

Contact Laura Myers at lmyers @reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919. Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901. Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman @reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.