Darkside Rainbow

I really don’t know how I missed this story from late August, reporting on the deaths of three men in the home of Republican political consultant Ralph Gonzalez - apparently a murder-suicide.

Well…no, I know how. I have a bad habit of skimming for only gay news and sometimes missing the mainstream media headlines, and while this story appeared under gay-related headlines for a while, just about every column that mentioned such a connection between the dead men pulled or edited their stories before I even saw them. Even mainstream news coverage has been a bit lackluster, though, - but bloggers, on the other hand, have been quite interested in the case. Pam’s House Blend actually digs into the story with ferocious teeth:

Untangling the latest GOP gay scandal with Mike Signorile - Pam’s House Blend

Some of the facts:

* the bodies of Republican political consultant Ralph Gonzalez, 39, president of The Strategum Group, his roommate David Abrami and “a friend,” Jason Robert Drake, were found in the house of Ralph Gonzalez.

* Gonzalez served with the Republican Party of Florida’s House Campaign Division and executive director of the Georgia Republican Party and counted the Alabama Republican Legislative Committee as a client, producing an anti-gay flier accusing a Dem candidate of supporting marriage equality.

* A newspaper, Florida Today, initially reported that there were signs of a struggle, printing “Lovers’ fight may have sparked three deaths” as its headline. The paper later scrubbed any references to a love triangle.

* BradBlog has shown the ties between Gonzalez and Florida’s vote-tampering congressman, Tom Feeney. From Pat Go Bye Bye:

Gonzalez, who was out to his friends, had ties to Ralph Reed when he took over the Georgia Republican Party and used unethical tactics to beat Senator Max Cleland. He was also the campaign chair for the ethically-challenged Tom Feeney’s congressional campaign as well as his state rep campaign after which Feeney became house speaker and got involved in a software-buying scandal involving Yang Enterprise. Feeney is best known for his vote-rigging scheme (which has ties to an unexplained death of a Florida state investigator in Valdosta GA), Jack Abramoff, and a variety of unethical smear tactics against Democratic candidates.

* Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry has ties to Gonzalez and Drake, the latter was determined to be the shooter in the murder-suicide.

* McHenry’s office initially denied knowing Drake but confirmed later that McHenry did know him, but didn’t specify the nature of the relationship.

* Drake was also allegedly tied to a gay escort service in Virginia; the prostitution angle — and who it extends to — is very murky at this point, with few sources on the record.

You can read more about her exploration of the subject by clicking the link above; she’s got pages of listed facts regarding the case and Gonzalez’s ties. It’s really quite interesting; some of it may be a bit of a stretch and honestly, I’d be willing to believe that the murder-suicide had nothing to do with any kind of sexual relationship between the men (it’s a case of everything having more than one possible and plausible explanation, and not always deciding that the one you want to believe is fact), but the evidence supporting the theory is rather compelling.

I feel rather bad that a dead man’s private life is being used as political fodder to help expose Republican hypocrisy about homosexuality - but if they weren’t such hypocrites it wouldn’t be an issue at all, now would it?

I wonder who’s next.

gop consultant ralph gonzalez, david abrami, jason robert drake, florida murder-suicide, outed gay republicans