Just after Sen. John McCain’s visit to Davenport, GOP State senator and 1st Congressional District candidate Dave Hartsuch accused his party’s presidential nominee of exhibiting “gay pride” for barring him from speaking at the event.

From a Hartsuch campaign press release entitled “McCain ’08 Shows Gay Pride By Snubbing Hartsuch”:

According to a representative of the McCain ’08 campaign, the national campaign office would not approve Senator Hartsuch to speak because of comments which he had made two years earlier in defense of traditional marriage.

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Senator McCain voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have defined marriage as only between one man and one woman. At that time, Senator McCain called such prohibitions “Un-Republican”, and “inconsistent with the core values of the party.” In 2002, Senator McCain supported Richter Elser, an openly gay GOP candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives by sending a fund-raising letter to Elser supporters. According to advocate.com, McCain wrote, “Our party’s strength, like our country’s strength, comes from inclusion, not exclusion.” Today, social conservatives were excluded.

This is not the first time local Republican candidates have been frustrated by the McCain campaign ahead of a scheduled event.  Last month, GOP State House candidate Kathy Potts complained to the Iowa Independent that she had been excluded from a McCain visit to Cedar Rapids.