Mehlman 'most powerful Republican to identify as gay'

That's the analysis of The Atlantic politics editor Marc Ambinder, who took Ken Mehlman's announcement that he is, after all, gay. Mehlman was President George W. Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a chairman of the Republican National Committee, and outwardly was not friendly to gay rights causes. He also had resisted outing efforts, despite a number of attempts by activists and media. Ambinder writes that "privately, in off-the-record conversations with this reporter over the years, Mehlman voiced support for civil unions and told of how, in private discussions with senior Republican officials, he beat back efforts to attack same-sex marriage." Mehlman, now an open supporter of gay marriage, told Ambinder for the record:

Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.

"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago."

There's meta-reflection today within the Eastern political media of how they all knew and handled the "open secret" of Mehlman's sexual identity, but as Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post notes: "It couldn't have been reported because there was no proof that Mehlman was in fact gay. And sometimes something that 'everyone knows' turns out not to be true."