Nightclubbing with Roy: Story has gone global
So, state Sen. Roy Ashburn may have attended Miss Gay Latina Sacramento 2010, a drag queen pageant, at a capital city gay bar last week. If he'd been a contestant I might have cared more, but, alas, by all accounts Ashburn was just an ordinary patron, one of about 400 at the club that night. Yet, this story has gone international: At one point last Thursday "Roy Ashburn" rose to the seventh most popular search topic on Google.
The story hasn't been about the recklessness of his just-after-closing-time DUI arrest a short distance from Faces, the now-famous club in question. It hasn't been about his use of a state vehicle for the non-state business of nightclubbing. It hasn't been about his subsequent absence from the business of governance, presumably for a period of monastic self-reflection on our dime. Rather, the buzz is that Ashburn's reported presence at Faces, and his early-morning departure in the company of an unidentified man, settles the long-debated matter of his personal orientation and therefore casts him as Public Hypocrite No. 1. As in: How can a gay man have consistently opposed gay-friendly legislation?
Here's a theory: He's a politician. Look around. Electeds of all partisan stripes routinely behave contrary to consistency and even-handedness when it suits their purposes, personal or partisan. The president says he wants transparency but objects to televised debate, unless and until he can figure out how to use it to his advantage. Republicans are aghast that Senate Democrats intend to use the process known as reconciliation to nail down heath care reform, but conveniently forget that reconciliation benefited Republican interests 14 of the 19 times the majority-vote bill-balancing procedure has been used since 1981. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass decries Republican pigheadedness in the face of a state budget meltdown and then hands out staff raises in her last week on the job. Hypocrisy: It's what's for dinner in legislative halls across the nation.
At least Ashburn can argue that he's merely doing the work his gay-wary constituents would have him do. Translation: You can't get elected in a conservative stronghold like California's 18th Senate District endorsing Harvey Milk Day. And Ashburn is clearly reading the political wind chimes correctly, having survived here for decades despite orbiting outside the Kevin McCarthy-Bill Thomas-Mark Abernathy galaxy of mainstream Republican-ness.
Is Ashburn in fact gay? We must finally conclude that that's a relevant question. It bears noting that, as The Californian previously reported, Ashburn has responded to reporters' direct questions on the subject with cryptic non-answers like "Why would that be anybody's business?" (2009) and "I'm surprised you're asking that" (2004). It further bears noting that Christopher Cabaldon, the openly gay mayor of West Sacramento, claimed Thursday that Ashburn is a familiar figure at gay clubs. In a Facebook posting a few months ago, Cabaldon wrote, "It wouldn't bother me so bad to see Roy Ashburn at (the gay club) Badlands with a boy if he didn't have such a bad voting record on gay rights."
But Ashburn wouldn't be voting on anything, at least not for long, if he'd been consistently gay friendly, or even gay ambivalent, as a Central Valley legislator. The question of his personal orientation should concern us for another reason, however. Might fear of exposure have ever compromised his vote? Ashburn broke with the Republican majority in February 2009 to cast a crucial vote breaking an agonizing budget deadlock, a move some labeled courageous and others betrayal. We know of at least one instance where a Sacramento newspaper threatened to "expose" Ashburn as gay. Far better for legislators to be who they are and remove all vulnerability to blackmail.
That's one of the questions we need Ashburn to answer once he emerges from exile: Have privacy concerns ever affected his decisions as a legislator?
Me, I'm saddened that Ashburn chose to drink and drive at all -- his reported BAC was a bleary-eyed .14 -- and his arrest comes fast on the heels of a tragic DUI fatal involving an allegedly drunken Kern County firefighter.
And, though it must seem almost quaint to care about this in view of the incident's broader story arc, it strikes me as troubling that Ashburn was bar-hopping in a state car. We pay them, per-diem them, staff them, insure them, and watch them accrue retirement benefits until the day of their newsworthy funerals, but their sense of entitlement goes beyond even that. The state is in a financial shambles, but we're still picking up part of their nightclubbing tab, too.
rprice@bakersfield.com
