RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina native and entertainer Clay Aiken is set to officially announce his candidacy for Congress today. Aiken will face two challengers in a Democratic primary for North Carolina’s Second Congressional District. If he wins, he’ll face Republican incumbent Renee Ellmers, whose staff has already thrown out anti-gay rhetoric and insinuations.
"San Francisco values"? That's the best that Ellmers could come up with to avoid saying "don't vote for the fag"?Ellmers’ campaign staff are already on the attack. In a statement, the campaign linked Aiken to “San Francisco” and said Ellmers, not Aiken, would be “fighting for families.”
“It speaks volumes to the state of the N.C. Democratic Party that the primary is shaping up to be a choice between the failed Perdue Administration’s Keith Crisco, a lawyer who doesn’t even live in the district, an activist who’s (sic) own party rejected her in the last democrat primary – and Aiken, a performer whose political views more closely resemble those of San Francisco than Sanford, Ellmers spokeswoman Jessica Wood wrote in an email. ”
It does show how much progress has been made in the last couple of decades, at least. Ellmers knows that, even in rural North Carolina, she can't get away with the kind of open gay-bating rhetoric that Jesse Helms, for example, used to use to great effect among voters in the state.



