A new report in Politico highlights the Log Cabin Republicans’ historic engagement and cooperation with the 2020 Trump campaign and quotes Log Cabin’s managing director Charles Moran:
The real breakthrough, gay Republican operatives say, came with the nomination of Donald Trump. Though evangelicals flocked to his candidacy, conservative gay rights activists also saw an opportunity. A cosmopolitan minded business person, Trump did not prioritize LGBTQ issues during his campaign and, in fact, made overt appeals to gay voters, though not by pledging support for laws to protect them.
“For the first time we got to walk into the race with a candidate we didn’t have to apologize for or explain away his reluctance to embrace the gay community. Probably Reagan was the last candidate where we were like ‘this candidate has gay friends,’” said Charles Moran, spokesperson for Log Cabin Republicans, a LGBTQ GOP group. He worked closely with the Trump campaign on increasing LGBTQ engagement, and Log Cabin Republicans plans to hold their annual event this year at Mar-a-Lago, with a member of the Trump family (perhaps the former president himself) likely to be the headliner.