Jason Carter's candidacy, the Democrat worked to rally gay rights activists at an event in Atlanta.
The Atlanta state senator joined with Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin at the Atlanta event Thursday night before dozens of supporters. The AJC's Jeremy Redmon, who is embedded in the Carter campaign this week, was there to capture the story.
Carter has already picked up endorsements from the Human Rights Campaign and Georgia Equality, two influential gay rights groups. But the Georgia Voice, a prominent gay media outlet, decided not to endorse him or Gov. Nathan Deal in the contest. (Democrat Michelle Nunn also was dissed by the paper.)
It was a surprising decision. Deal supported Georgia's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and he has said that the debate is a moot point so long as the ban is in place. At a Saturday rally, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said one reason he backs Deal and GOP Senate candidate David Perdue is because they believed marriage is between a man and a woman.
Carter takes a different tack. The Democrat in August came out in support of marriage equality, saying in a statement that he also doesn't want government to dictate to churches what they should do. In a debate this month, he added that he didn't think "we should waste taxpayer dollars" on legal action that could be doomed.
Georgia Voice said in its editorial that Carter's campaign had ignored its "numerous requests for interviews over several months" but that the non-endorsement wasn't about sour grapes.
“It’s about not being able to ask him his thoughts and opinions on issues important to our community.”
Carter's visit was part of a two-day swing around metro Atlanta to fire up the base and featured mostly standard stump speech fare. Redmon reports that the Democrat poked fun of the negative TV ads his rivals targeted his way.
“They have one TV ad where they make my teeth sparkle," he said to laughter from a room full of volunteers. "How weird is that?”
As for the non-endorsement, Carter told Redmon that the snub was about an “issue they are having internally with respect to how they communicate with the campaign."
"As far as I know," he said, "there is no substantive issue there.”
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