Barron Out As GOProud Board Chair, Former CPAC Director De Pasquale Steps In
GOProud co-founder Chris Barron will be stepping down as board of directors chair at the end of the year, according to a news release issued today following a Dec. 13 board meeting of the gay conservative organization. The meeting was held following the resignation of Andrew Breitbart from the advisory council of GOProud over this past weekend after a series of actions that Breitbart called outing by the organization’s co-founders attacking presidential candidate Rick Perry’s pollster.
Lisa De Pasquale, the former director of Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), will be stepping in as the interim chair of the board of directors, although she says in a release that the day-to-day operations of the organization will be unchanged. She already had been serving on GOProud’s advisory council. According to the release, Barron will remain on the board. Executive director Jimmy LaSalvia tells Metro Weekly that he remains the executive director and will remain a board member.
[READ Metro Weekly’s report on this past week’s GOProud developments, including an interview with Andrew Breitbart, here.]
In the release, Barron says, “My role in the day to day management of GOProud will continue as the organization’s Chief Strategist and I will remain on the Board as Chairman Emeritus. It is with great excitement that I announce that conservative coalition builder and former CPAC Director Lisa De Pasquale has been elected interim Chairman of the GOProud Board of Directors. Lisa brings a lifetime of experience within the conservative movement and is the perfect person to oversee the expansion and restructuring of GOProud’s Board, as well as to help in refining GOProud’s mission and to aid in building a bigger, better and stronger organization.”
For her part, De Pasquale says in the release, “I am truly honored to be elected interim chairman of the GOProud board. The next several months will be important for their growth. Along with the GOProud staff, the Board will help refine the organization’s mission, develop a strategy for making Obama a one-term president, do substantive activities across the country, and build coalitions with conservative organizations, lawmakers and activists.”
According to the release, the group plans to restructure, including by asking several of its advisory council members to join the board.
De Pasquale also noted, “The day to day management of the organization will remain the same. The board has 100 percent faith in the leadership of Chris Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia.”
The news release’s opening description of the group states that it is “an organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights.” Previous releases have described the group as “the only national organization representing gay conservatives and their allies.”
[Photo: Lisa De Pasquale speaks at CPAC in 2011. (Photo by Gage Skidmore.)]
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