HRC Blog

Romney Campaign Flip-Flops on 2002 Pride Flier

January 9, 2012 by Dan Rafter, Online Campaigns Manager

The Romney campaign is distancing itself from a flier distributed during Boston Pride in 2002, despite a volunteer who says a Romney campaign staffer supplied him with the fliers.

The widely circulated flier declared “All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual preference.” View the flier. According to the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said: "I don't know where those pink flyers came from. I was the communications director on the 2002 campaign. I don't know who distributed them ... I never saw them and I was the communications director.”

The fliers read “Paid for by the Romney for Governor Committee and the Kerry Murphy Healey Committee” at the bottom.

The campaign tagline on the flier isn’t the only discrepancy with Fehrnstrom’s statement – a former volunteer with the 2002 Romney gubernatorial campaign says a full-time staffer gave him the fliers to distribute on Boston Common following the Pride parade. According to BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, former volunteer Josh Barro said: "On pride weekend, the campaign sent a contingent of about a half-dozen of us to the post-parade festival on Boston Common to hand out those flyers…The thing was organized by a full-time staffer.”

Paid for by the Human Rights Campaign (www.hrc.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee