Saturday, December 30th, 2006...5:23 pm
Jim’s the Fall
Yesterday’s Citizen had an interview with Jim Kolbe that was both a retrospective of his career and a list of his problems with the Republican party.
The article touches upon the federal investigation into a trip he took with some interns to the Grand Canyon. Kolbe points out that nothing was substantiated. I wasn’t sure what to think of the story myself. Tales of Kolbe hitting on one male page/aide/campaign worker or another have circulated for years, even before he was publicly out. But these stories always had a urban legend quality about them. They always seemed to have happened to “the cousin of this guy I know” or some equally marginal source. Frankly, it seemed that these stories only had any currency because some people think that all gay men are naturally on the prowl for young men.
The bulk of the interview is about Kolbe’s disappointment with the direction of the Republican party. In particular, the current obsession in some quarters with social issues like gay marriage. This may seem a bit odd, since he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act (a vote which resulted in his outing). His statements on this matter have earned some notice nationally, über-Blog Talking Points Memo has a feature about the interview.
His warnings about the direction of the Republican party will probably go unheeded. A quick perusal of the comments show some claiming that Kolbe lost touch with the voters of Southern Arizona on issues like immigration. They continue to say this even though the candidate that shared their views on the subject and campaigned heavily on it lost. I’m not quite sure how they read that…but that’s okay…they can keep it up and lose the next election too.
NB – I had the chance to vote against Kolbe nine times, and hapilly did so on eight of those occasions. I even voted for Gary Auerbach. The one time I voted for Kolbe was in 1990, when the Democrats nominated a freak named Chuck Phillips.
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