Meet the Anti-Gay Wingnut Who Will Run the 2016 Iowa Caucuses
Olivia Nuzzi
The next head of the Iowa Republican Party is likely to be a former pumpkin farmer who hates gay marriage.
In 10 days, the Iowa GOP will elect a new party Chairman. And Danny Carroll, the man that they’re likely to choose to supervise the 2016 Republican caucuses is an ardent social conservative who gave up pumpkin farming to devote himself full-time to the fight to save heterosexual marriage in the Hawkeye State.
Carroll, who just recently became co-chair of a state Republican Party long divided between social conservatives, libertarians, and the traditional pro-business GOP establishment, is the only candidate running to succeed A.J. Spiker, the outgoing chair who announced his resignation earlier this month. Spiker is leaving the Republican Party of Iowa to take a position with RANDPAC, the political action committee of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). But while Spiker’s tenure as state chair raised eyebrows because of his close relationship to the libertarian wing of the party, Carroll’s links with the most social conservative elements of the GOP have led him to buck the party less than four years ago.
In the 2010 election, Carroll refused to back Terry Branstad, Iowa’s current Republican governor, when the state’s former four-term chief executive was mounting a political comeback against an incumbent Democrat. Although Branstad supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Carroll thought that Iowa Republican icon wasn’t doing enough for the cause. In contrast, while Spiker’s tenure was controversial because of his clashes with Branstad, at least he always supported the five-term Republican governor and the rest of the GOP ticket on Election Day.
The irony is that Carroll himself, a former Speaker Pro Tempore of the Iowa House was once talked about as a Republican gubernatorial nominee. Prior to being defeated in 2006 for re-election, Carroll had been marked as a rising star in Iowa politics but ardent social conservative views made his race a nexus for national progressive donors and also didn’t play well in a district where students from Grinnell College, a top ranked liberal-arts college, turned out at a higher rate.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/19/meet-the-anti-gay-wingnut-who-will-run-the-2016-iowa-caucuses.html