Ad: Some GOPers back gay marriage

The pro-gay rights Human Rights Campaign and the group Freedom to Marry will run an ad featuring Republican San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders speaking in support of gay marriage on cable stations in the Tampa market during the Republican National Convention next week, in a bid to underscore the movement among some of the party’s leaders and major donors on the issue.

“As a Republican, I believe in conservative values” like limited government, Sanders says in the ad, which was obtained by POLITICO and will run with $30,000 behind it in Tampa on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. But he adds, “Our party is changing on this issue.”


Sanders cites Dick Cheney, Laura Bush, Ted Olson and Cindy McCain as among the Republican names who have moved on the topic.

The spot will air at a time when there was some debate over civil unions at the GOP platform committee in Tampa. Democrats, at their convention in Charlotte, N.C. the following week, are set to include gay marriage in their platform.

Polling has showed that independent and younger voters have moved on this issue, although the GOP’s conservative base remains strictly against same-sex marriage, as the major demonstrations involving Chick-fil-A restaurants showed.

Still, it’s some of the GOP’s biggest-name donors, including Mitt Romney mega-bundler Paul Singer, who are funding most of the pro-gay marriage side of four ballot initiatives in the states on this issue in the fall. HRC president Chad Griffin was among those who got Olson, a well-known conservative, involved in arguing the case challenging California’s Proposition 8.

HRC recently sent another $1 million to support the four different state-based efforts in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington.

But the goal of the ad is to reach delegates and thought leaders during the convention. While many of them won’t be tuned to televisions during convention programming, it is still likely the ad will be seen and get coverage.