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By: RYAN LEE
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When Kris Pierce came to Atlanta in early June, he believed his job was to lead
the opposition to a constitutional ban on gay marriage that is before Georgia
voters on Nov. 2.
He did not arrive from Indianapolis to referee infighting among gay rights
groups in Atlanta arguing over past disagreements and with differing viewpoints
on how to defeat the proposed amendment, which is what took place when he started
his new post, Pierce said Tuesday during a telephone interview.
Georgia Equality fired Pierce on July 22, less than two months after the organization
hired him to lead the campaign, for not being a “good fit,” according
to Sharon Semmens, the organization’s board chair and interim executive
director.
Pierce said this week that he agrees with the group’s directors that
he wasn’t the right person for the position, but added he is “disappointed” by
the dismissal.
“The roadblock to success really is the past relationships between all
of the different organizations trying to work on the coalition,” Pierce
said. “That was the hardest part of my job — those groups couldn’t
agree on any decisions.
“I refused to be a part of what I called the ‘healing process,’” Pierce
said. “That’s not in my job description, and I have no standing
in that community to deal with the histories of these organizations.”
Georgia Equality hired Pierce, who is heterosexual, on June 1 to serve as
campaign manager for the effort to defeat the amendment. Pierce was being paid
$4,250 per month — the equivalent of $51,000 annually — to lead
the campaign, which was recently named Georgians Against Discrimination.
But at 7:15 p.m. on July 22, Pierce was informed by Georgia Equality that
his contract would not continue beyond the initial 60-day probationary period.
“The campaign and Kris, we did not feel was a good fit,” Semmens
said. “In terms of us moving forward, we thought it was better for us,
and for all parties involved, to end the contract.”
Also on July 22, Georgia Equality officials informed Kayla Behbahani — a
26-year-old resident of South Dakota — that she wasn’t being hired
by the group. A five-person panel from Georgians Against Discrimination hired
Behbahani on July 9 to serve as press secretary with a salary of $2,500 per
month, an amount equal to $30,000 a year.
Behbahani said this week that she resigned her position as a television news
reporter to relocate to Atlanta for the campaign position. She was supposed
to join the campaign on July 23.
“I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, all they told me
was that they were re-tooling the campaign,” Behbahani said. “I
wish they would have told me a little bit more about what happened, but the
call was very vague.”
Semmens said Behbahani was a victim of “unfortunate timing,” but
described such personnel decisions as common within political campaigns.
“When you’re in the process of getting rid of, or changing staff,
things like this are bound to happen,” Semmens said.
But when Georgia Equality hired Pierce at the beginning of June, the group
also inked a contract with bizvox Marketing Communications, a gay Atlanta-based
public relations firm, Semmens said.
The six-month contract with bizvox totals $40,000 and calls for the agency
to write a campaign plan and identify voters, consulting, and media relations,
according to Cindy Abel, bizvox president. Abel served as executive director
of Georgia Equality from January 1997 to March 1998.
Semmens said the contract with bizvox made Behbahani’s hiring unnecessary.
The recent developments within the campaign are causing concern among some
gay rights activists.
“The campaign just seems incredibly disorganized, incredibly unfocused,” said
Steven Bailey, a board member of Trans=Action, a transgendered advocacy and
education group.
Bailey was a candidate for the campaign manager position before Pierce was
hired.
“The religious right is off and running in this race, and we’re
still trying to figure out which direction to go in,” he said.
Kathy Kelly, executive director of Marriage Equality Georgia, a recently formed
grassroots group that is a member of Georgians Against Discrimination, said
Georgia Equality’s handling of Behbahani’s hiring is a poor reflection
on the campaign.
“Georgians Against Discrimination made a good-faith job offer to Kayla
Behbahani based on a recommendation from a committee that hired for this position,” Kelly
said. “For Georgia Equality to not honor that job offer after Ms. Behbahani
left her previous employer and traveled to Atlanta to begin her work on the
campaign was extremely unprofessional and it concerns me a great deal that
they would treat another human being in this manner.”
Georgia Equality led opposition ...
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