Wife of Utah GOP chair sends gay Republican candidate homophobic email

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) may have the Republican nomination all but sewn up, but that has not stopped openly gay Republican presidential candidate Fred Karger from continuing to tour the election circuit in search of supporters.  According to Karger's website, however, not everyone on his side of the aisle has been congenial.

After his recent visit to the state of Utah, Nanette Billings, the wife of Washington County, Utah's Republican Party chairman, sent Karger a nasty email calling him a “radical idiot” and asking “Do you know you cant procreate right [sic]?”  When Yahoo’s election blog “The Ticket” contacted Billings by phone, she told the reporter, “My feeling is the only reason he’s running for president is to find more [sexual] partners, to get more people on his bandwagon.”

Karger had traveled to Utah to meet with Mormon and Republican Party leaders, to lay groundwork to appear on the ballot in November and to ask them to stop funding initiatives against same sex marriage.  He told Yahoo that he found the leaders to be "welcoming" and "friendly."  He presented Billings's GOP chairman husband with a few pieces of campaign memorabilia, including a frisbee and a T-shirt.

Days later, he received the following email via his campaign website [sic throughout]:

"you are an idiot.  You met with my husband Willie Billings today about you being on the Utah ballot.  He brought your frisby, and tshirt home and it is now out in the trash.  I never want to hear from such a radical idiot again.  you think you are conseritave?  conseritave means you beleive in the values of founding fathers and God.  Do you know you cant procreate right?  Well thank goodness for that.  Nanette Billings"

In her interview with Yahoo's "The Ticket," Mrs. Billings said, "All I did was go on his site and say, ‘You’re pathetic.'  We’re a very conservative state in Utah, very family-oriented. So he’s picked a state just to cause ruckus. He’s not thinking of family, he’s thinking of himself. He’s not running for president to fix something in the country—he’s thinking of his own personal agenda, period. And I was just letting him know that I think he’s an idiot to think of running.”

Karger said he was shocked by the email, but that it reminded him why he went to Utah in the first place.  "This is what the Mormon church teaches to its members," Karger told "The Ticket," "This is not some isolated woman in Utah.”

(Photo from Fred Karger's Flickr Photostream via FredKarger.com)