Fred Davis, a Republican ad producer based in the Hollywood Hills who worked for the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, created a political action committee to finance an advertising campaign to help Mr. James compete with his better-financed competitors. Mr. Davis was looking to raise $4 million from Republicans across the nation; he has since scaled back that goal a bit (he had raised $700,000 as of Friday).

And Mr. James has retained John Weaver, a Republican political consultant who has long advised Mr. McCain, as his senior political adviser. Mr. Weaver has increasingly warned that Republicans are marginalizing themselves by moving to the right on issues like abortion, gay rights and immigration.

“He is from central casting about what a future Republican candidate can look like in an urban or blue state and win,” Mr. Weaver said. “It’s important for the party. We have not done well nationally since we stopped winning in California.”

Mr. James’s draw for these men is not only that he is a fiscal conservative who supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage, or that he is a colorful show horse in a field of gray. (At a debate the other night, he kept standing up when it was his turn to speak, even as everyone else settled politely into their chairs.)

It is also who he is — or rather, what he is.

“Here I am talking to this intelligent Republican guy that no one has ever heard of, who didn’t have any personal money, and I’m thinking, no way,” Mr. Davis said, recounting his first meeting with Mr. James. “A couple of days later, in researching the guy, there was some mention that he was gay.”