Activist Gingrich urges UMM audience to vote

MACHIAS – Candace Gingrich has a national profile but a very local message: Young people need to vote.

The younger sister of former U.S. House Speaker and famously conservative Newt Gingrich, Candace Gingrich is touring the country on her own terms.

The lesbian activist is three weeks into a 10-state tour of university campuses, extolling young people to vote in the Nov. 2 election.

Tuesday, she spoke at the University of Maine at Machias. Wednesday, she went to both Colby College in Waterville and Bates College in Lewiston. Thursday, she speaks at University of Maine at Presque Isle.

“You have this wonderful ability to affect what happens on Nov. 2,” she told the Machias crowd of 70 on Tuesday, noting that the UMM audience was her largest so far, eight campuses into her tour.

“Think about your vote as power, as your duty and your voice.”

At least a dozen people did, taking advantage of on-site guidance of first-time voters through registration forms for absentee ballots.

Candace Gingrich spent her own college years at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. At 38, she is 23 years younger than Newt Gingrich, who is actually her half-brother.

In 1995, the same year that Newt Gingrich was elected U.S. speaker of the House, Candace Gingrich was publicly outed in the media as a lesbian. She fast embraced activism.

Gingrich’s appearance in Machias was hastily scheduled, announced just last week. She is traveling in her capacity as the youth outreach manager of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C., group that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.

She makes her own phone calls to arrange for campus visits. She evaluates a college she may approach based on whether it appears to be gay-friendly on its Web site.

In Machias, the groundwork to organize and publicize Gingrich’s talk at the Performing Arts Center fell to faculty member Lois-Ann Kunz.

Touring and energizing young voters was Gingrich’s own idea. She is a polished public speaker who laughed and smiled her way through the evening.

However, in asking how many in the Machias audience were already registered to vote, she realized she didn’t need to win over this crowd.

Still, Gingrich called for action and passed around a “Pledge to Vote” signup sheet. Pledging publicly to vote means you are more likely than ever to actually vote, she said.

She wore the T-shirt bearing the current slogan of the Human Rights Campaign, “George W. Bush: You’re Fired!”

She wouldn’t call Democrat John Kerry the perfect candidate – no one is, she said – but she doesn’t have time for Bush.

Bush’s GOP platform is strongly anti-gay, she said.

She urged her audience to join her in her call for a country with a tolerance for sexual differences.

“I look forward to raising hell with all of you on Nov. 2,” she said.