Interview with Steve Hildebrand; Steve, Did you tell Progressives to Shut the F Up?

Rob: Alright. –

you've played a role as the political director of the Democratic Senatorial campaign committee – and are you still doing that now?

Steve: no that was several years back.

Rob: several years ago but there was mention in an article recently that there is speculation that you might replace Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee - anything to that?

Steve: there was idle speculation to that, but it's not in my game plan.

Rob: not in your game plan – okay.

Steve: I think we need a very strong chair - I think we need to build the DNC into the kind of machine that the Obama campaign had - I think that's all very possible and I think there'll be some good candidates to fill that slot and I think there'll be a lot of folks like myself who want to be there to advise and help build a very, very strong party for the future.

Rob: Doyou have any idea who would replace Dean.

Steve: I don't – you know obviously president Obama will have a big say in who that choice is and the state chairs - the State Democratic chairs along with the DMC executive committee are meeting Friday and Saturday and there will be some discussion about that and exactly the process to go through to pick the new chairs, so we are a little ways down the road.

Rob: Your bio on wikipedia reports that you are openly gay

Steve: I sure am.

Rob: and I wonder do you have any idea where Obama - what position Obama is going to take on LGBT issues and that he will be facing in the military and otherwise.

Steve: well he has been a strong advocate for the LGBT community - you know, he - he's one of the few politicians in this country, who regularly in major speeches, whether it was his 2004 convention speech - his announcement speech for the presidency, a key speech down in Atlanta - at MLK's church – on MLK day or the convention speech of this year or the election night victory speech - he regularly includes the LGBT community in his remarks and has a very strong opinion that the more he can use his platform to make more people accepting and move the LGBT community into the mainstream in a very serious way - the more successful we are going to be as a community – He has a very strong record in support on gay issues - he was endorsed by the human rights campaign fund.

He was endorsed by the Philadelphia gay news right there in Philly and endorsed by a lot of the gay press around the country for the Presidency. So, you know, the community rallied behind him, he got a huge percentage of the gay vote in this country, and I think he'll do very well at moving forward with some pretty important issues to our community.

Rob:  You were the deputy national campaign director running the national field operations , right?

Hildebrand: Correct.

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