Dr. Janice M. Nelson, the unsuccessful 1998 and 2000 Democratic challenger to incumbent Republican congressman David Dreier in California's 26th district said Wednesday she was aware that Dreier had been living with his male chief of staff during her 2000 campaign.
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Nelson, who is a professor of pathology and a medical director, stated that her campaign was aware Rep. Dreier had lived with his chief of staff Brad Smith but opted not to make an issue of it during her campaign.
"All I wanted to do was work on healthcare and local issues," Nelson said.
Nelson said she decided to come forward after she read on RAW STORY that Hustler was set to report that the local papers in Dreier's district had deliberately kept reporters from asking the congressman about his sexuality and his positions on gay rights.
Michael Rogers, the gay activist who outed David Dreier on his site, blogACTIVE, Thursday afternoon, wrote last week that he “was especially interested in talking with Brad Smith about his living arrangements with the Congressman here in DC.” He now says he wondered what Smith thought of the congressman's public appearances with women he claimed to be dating.
Nelson said Dreier would rarely be seen publicly with Smith.
"Brad was like an invisible presence," she said. "They really have the routine down slick."
Another individual has also come forward saying that she set up a liaison between the congressman and another man. She stated that he feigned interest in her and later revealed his true interest was men, and that she subsequently arranged a meeting between him and another man.
Nelson also expressed frustration with the three local MediaNews newspapers which, she said, basically refused to cover her 2000 campaign. At the time, she said, most media attention was focused on Republican Adam Schiff's bid to unseat Jim Rogan, which was viewed as a more competitive and nationally watched race.
Even so, the three papers covering Dreier's district spent little to no time covering her race, and editorialized heavily in favor of Dreier.
Hustler Magazine has also accused MediaNews of deliberately keeping their reporters from asking Rep. Dreier about his sexuality or his positions on issues relating to gay rights, saying that reporters would be fired if they asked. A MediaNews editor denied the charge.
On Oct. 13, 2001, Editorial Page Director Steve Scauzillo for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune newspaper group, which includes the three newspapers the Hustler alleges have kept reporters from asking Dreier over his sexuality under threat of losing their jobs, wrote a guest editorial in which he waxed elegiac about his affection for the congressman.
Scauzillo, who implied that he had a close personal relationship with Dreier, said he was upset that he was "lost Dave" after redistricting in the state, with whom he once "swapped childhood stories" on an "eight-seater plane."
"We even endured the near miss of a jetliner on the return flight to Ontario International Airport," he added.
Nelson says that the editorial page reverence for Dreier extended into the newsroom.
"They really almost canonized Dreier over a bill," Nelson continued, in which the congressman got the state $75 million for an environmental cleanup project which many, including the Army Corps of Engineers, saw as flawed.
"I think that there's editorial collusion," she added.
MediaNews Group is run by conservative media mogul Dean Singleton, who, in 1996, donated $500 to Colorado Senator Wayne Allard [R], among other myriad donations he's made through the years. Allard was a cosponsor of the Senate version of the Federal Marriage Amendment, an amendment which would have constitutionally banned gay marriage.
Meanwhile, none of the three MediaNews papers covering Dreier's district have reported on the growing body of claims that Dreier lived with his chief of staff and, on at least one occasion, set up a liaison with another man.
DEVELOPING.... Additional charges made that RAW STORY is in the process of corroborating...
Originally published on Wednesday September 15, 2004.
