Sen. John McCain is apparently trying harder than President Bush to play nice with all of the factions of his Republican party, including gay and lesbian conservatives.
In a posting last week on the online blog Gay Patriot, sources with the Log Cabin Republicans, an organized group of gay and lesbian conservatives, said McCain has been meeting with its leaders numerous times since the Arizona senator became the presumptive nominee, including a sit-down in recent weeks.
The most recent meeting, which didn’t appear on McCain’s published campaign schedule, seems to have been conducted on the down-low and out of the public eye. Both presidential candidates have spent time during the campaign holding meetings that don’t appear on the official campaign schedules. The posting on Gay Patriot said:
“This source disclosed that the Log Cabin meeting was not reflected on Senator McCain’s published schedule in advance of the meeting. A second source familiar with the Log Cabin-McCain meeting reports that Senator McCain has routine personal meetings that are not shown on the Senator’s public schedule."
The meeting shouldn’t surprise some insiders, considering the Log Cabin Republicans openly supported McCain in 2000 when he was battling early primaries with Bush.
The group funded attack ads against Bush in California and other key primary states during that election.