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Ben West, center, and Paul Rummell celebrate their victory in Oregon's gay marriage case on May 19. The two plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Oregon's ban on same-sex marriage on Tuesday endorsed Republican Monica Wehby for the Senate.

(Stephanie Yao Long/The Oregonian)

When Ben West contacted Monica Wehby's Senate campaign by email, he wasn't sure if he'd even get a response.

But West, one of the plaintiffs in the legal case that brought gay marriage to Oregon, got much more than a thank-you-for-writing reply.

Instead, the Republican candidate and her aides aggressively courted West and his partner, Paul Rummell -- eventually winning an endorsement from the two that is featured in an ad that will begin running on television Wednesday.

Wehby met West for happy hour drinks in Northeast Portland, invited the couple and their 8-year-old adopted son over for a backyard get-together at her house and explained why they should support her over Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.

Their endorsement represents Wehby's most visible effort to argue that she can be independent from Republican Party orthodoxy, something that will be necessary for her to win in a state where Democrats hold all the statewide offices and both houses of the Legislature.

Merkley fired back against the endorsement Tuesday, with campaign spokeswoman Lindsay O'Brien sending out a statement charging that Wehby had an "election-eve change of heart in support of marriage equality."

The Democratic senator has been a prominent supporter of gay-rights issues and played a leading role in Senate passage of a bill that would prohibit workplace discrimination against gays. He has the backing of the state's major gay-rights group, Basic Rights Oregon.

As it happens, West and Rummell served as two of the plaintiffs along with Basic Rights' educational arm in one of the two lawsuits that led to the May 19 federal ruling striking down Oregon's ban on same-sex marriage.

West, a Republican, said he hadn't pay much attention to the political campaigns while the lawsuit was in progress. But after the May 20 primary, he sent an email to the Wehby campaign wanting to "know how somebody in my party would support the gay community," he said in an interview.

Wehby's political director, Ross Hemminger, contacted West a few days later and then set up a happy-hour meeting between Wehby and West at Mint, a restaurant not far from Legacy Emanuel Hospital where Wehby works.

West said the two bonded over medical topics -- he's a nursing student -- and he said he was impressed with her approach to to a wide variety of issues.

Wehby said she wanted to meet Rummell, which led to their visit to her home this summer. West said that, at one point, he took his son inside while Wehby and Rummell, a Democrat, spoke alone for about 45 minutes.

"We have a mixed marriage," joked West of the partisan differences between the two. (They're also not technically married at this point. They had a wedding ceremony in 2010 before same-sex couples could legally marry in the state. West said they plan to get formally married next Aug. 21 on the fifth anniversary of their ceremony).

In the end, West said, the two agreed that new blood was needed in the Senate and that Wehby had the best approach to improving the economy and dealing with health care. West said he filmed the ad for Wehby in late July and that she called them in August to offer anniversary greetings.

"That's just kind of how she's treated us -- like family," he said.

Wehby said in an interview that West and Rummell's support shows that she isn't the "cookie-cutter Republican" that Merkley tries to portray her as being.

"I'm a very independent-minded person," she said. "I think it shows I'm interested in representing all Oregonians, and not just one group or another."

Merkley campaign spokesman Jamal Raad said Wehby never firmly supported gay marriage during her Republican primary fight.

"She refused to support the ballot measure," Raad said, and never urged the legal case forward.

In fact, Wehby was careful during the primary to never explicitly endorse a gay marriage initiative being circulated by a group associated with Basic Rights Oregon. Instead, she expressed her sympathy for same-sex marriage, saying such things as, "I don't have a problem with gay marriage... I think it's not a government decision. I think it's a personal decision."

At a March candidate's forum in Grants Pass, Wehby said she expected the initiative to be on the ballot and added, "So I will support whatever the people of Oregon support."

Wehby said Tuesday that the important thing was that she was "in support of marriage equality." She also said that U.S. District Judge Michael McShane's ruling "was the correct decision."

Wehby argued that she didn't think the ad trumpeting her support for gay marriage would hurt her with Republican voters -- who polls show generally oppose allowing same-sex couples to marry.

"Republicans are really a big-tent party and we accept a lot of diversity in our party," she said, adding that, "Republicans are about small government and less interference in our personal lives."

-- Jeff Mapes