Power of the Netroots

I wrote last week about the Schwarzenegger campaign hiring Ben Lopez of the Traditional Values Coalition to do outreach to evangelicals. The TVC, led by the Rev. Lou Sheldon, is little more than a right-wing fundie hate group, in my opinion. Rick Jacobs' California Courage Campaign jumped on it as well, motivating people online to petition Arnold's campaign to dissasociate himself from the TVC.

Whaddya know, it worked:

Ben Lopez, the chief lobbyist and spokesman for the Traditional Values Coalition -- the Anaheim-based evangelical advocacy group led by the controversial Rev. Lou Sheldon -- has been fired from his new job as an outreach worker with the California Republican Party, sources said Tuesday.

Lopez's hiring had been hailed by conservatives, who have been concerned about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's moves to the political center, when it was made public late last week as the state Republican Party opened its convention.

But gay and lesbian groups criticized the decision by the state Republicans to add Lopez, a well-known evangelical advocate, to the party's payroll and called on Schwarzenegger to renounce Lopez and Sheldon as intolerant.

Mike Spence, who heads the conservative California Republican Assembly, said the decision to dump Lopez brings "frustration that the governor's organization is not about the whole team effort. We're supposed to be unified behind the governor's staff like (Democrat) Susan Kennedy, and yet they fired the only person who could do church outreach."

This is a major blow to the GOP's effort to turn out evangelicals for the governor in November. It splits the state party (as the above quote shows) and makes a conservative backlash more likely. Although in the end I think they'll come home to the governor, they may have a bigger problem with GOTV.

More than anything, this shows the power of the netroots/grassroots coalition to hold people accountable for their actions. I applaud both the tradition LGBT groups and the online community in the state for agitating for this result. It's a bigger story than you might think.