HRC Already Has The Perfect Candidate, So Why Aren’t They Considering Her?
I remember Cathy Woolard for her tenacious courting of former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn during the military gay ban repeal fight in 1993. I nicknamed her “old iron ass†because she spent hours sitting in his office, waiting for the opportunity to speak to him. She walked the halls of the Senate with Nunn, always in pursuit, tenaciously relentless in never letting him forget that gays served in the military and deserved equality.
Last week, Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House Blend broke the story that Joe Solomonese was stepping down as President and CEO of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) after seven years leading the nation’s largest and wealthiest LGBT organization.
A widely mentioned possible candidate to replace Solmonese was Cathy Woolard (initially reported in Metro Weekly Chris Geidner). But HRC quickly confirmed she was not under active consideration for the post.
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The outstanding question for the HRC’s Board of Directors is what direction will it seek during the second decade of the millennia? Do they have the courage to change course, to break free from their past that is steeped in maddening secrecy? Can they become more forthcoming and transparent with a community that hungers for equality? The “Millennials†will not be satisfied with perfunctory answers and enticements such as wine and cheese parties supported by the best marketing of an American non-profit.
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My sources have confirmed Woolard is a current consultant to HRC and is presently not under active consideration for the leadership post. There is nothing suspicious or nefarious about Woolard consulting for HRC. She has not only been an HRC employee in the past, but has also been a consultant to them on numerous occasions over the years.
If it is true that Woolard is not under active consideration, then she should be and her name should go to the top of the list. I offer a strong endorsement of Woolard’s candidacy as a former colleague, a fellow public interest lobbyist, who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with her, pounding miles of Congressional pavement during our efforts to repeal the military gay ban in 1993. We later worked together on the original introduction of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in which she was instrumental in securing Coretta Scott King’s endorsement of the measure.
She is deadly smart, does not suffer fools gladly, she knows how to communicate with people, she is affable, fun, and like so many Americans, has lived most of her life in a state that has not supported LGBT rights. Cathy Woolard deeply understands the emotional scourge and sting of discrimination having experienced it herself.
A Woolard candidacy has a number of really good things going for it that should be strongly considered by the HRC Board of Directors: 1) She is a Southerner and is deeply familiar with the political landscape of the South and the difficult terrain of negotiating for LGBT rights, having worked with friend and foe alike on these issues; 2) She has worked for HRC in Washington, D.C. and understands “Inside the Beltway” politics, which will appeal to and reassure Washington insiders;  3) As a former elected official in the City of Atlanta, she understands the necessity for transparency and open governance—the Achilles heel of HRC, who has resisted transparency and the light of day, clinging to institutional secrecy and exclusivity.
Indeed, HRC actions during the latest round of gay politics in the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) repeal effort elevated criticisms of the organization to a pinnacle level of disapproval by voices from all parts of the community. Woolard knows that winning is important, but how you win and bringing as many supporters with you, is vital too.
Another plus that is of inestimable value, as a person from the South, Woolard has a strong network of African-American colleagues and friends, having worked with people of color throughout her career. As an elected official in Atlanta, she has worked with some of America’s top African-American politicians. And because of this experience and exposure to people of color,  there is no doubt Woolard would address the diversity issues at HRC, which remains a tarnished  legacy of its predominantly white leadership team and Board of Directors.
With Woolard at the helm, there is no doubt HRC’s leadership style, along with its political and communications strategies would change. She could be the right medicine at the right time.
So, just who is Cathy Woolard?
Cathy Woolard is a Southerner, Atlanta-born, lesbian activist who became the first openly-gay elected official in the state of Georgia in 1997. Not satisfied with domestic politics and activism, Woolard is also an international humanitarian who got hooked on international development early in her life as a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Micronesia for two years in 1980, after graduating from University of Georgia.
Bitten by the international bug as a Peace Corp Volunteer, Woolard has been an intrepid traveler all of her life, traveling to far-flung jaunts in India and New Zealand during recent years, to name just a few.
Cathy grew up in an Air Force family and became a gay activist initially as a member of the Atlanta committee for the 1987 March on Washington. Following the March, she was HRC’s Georgia field organizer and was promoted to a lobbyist position in 1992, moved to HRC’s Washington offices where she remained for seven years, advancing to the position of National Field Director in 1994.
During her organizer time in Atlanta, Woolard came of age as an activist, along with many others in the Georgia gay community who were galvanized by the 1991 firing of lesbian Cheryl Summerville, a cook in a Douglas, Georgia Cracker Barrel restaurant. In protest, Woolard was arrested along with other activists. A nation-wide boycott of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain ensued and Summerville later testified before Congress in 1994 during the first set of Senate ENDA hearings presided over by the late Senator Edward Kennedy.
Woolard returned to Atlanta in 1996 to run for elected office and became the first openly-gay elected official in the State of Georgia in November 1997, when she was elected to the city council. She ran for re-election and became the first woman Speaker of the Atlanta City Council in 2002, one of the first openly-gay city council presidents of a major metropolitan city in the United States. Woolard chaired the council’s transportation committee and became an enthusiastic policy wonk on how to effectively transform Atlanta’s mass urban car and light rail systems hub during her tenure.
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Woolard is married to Karen Geney, her partner of more than 23 years and they live in Atlanta’s Glenwood Park neighborhood. During her City Council tenure Woolard became a plaintiff in a legal action filed by the Atlanta City government in 1999 against John Oxendine, the now former State’s Insurance Commissioner, for refusing to permit domestic partner benefits to employers who wished to offer them.
Following her failed Congressional primary challenge to former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in 2004, Woolard returned to consulting for progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood of Georgia, League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, and the Gill Foundation, as well as the HRC. While considered an up and coming politician in the Atlanta scene, she decided not to run for Mayor in 2008 and opted for a position with CARE, an Atlanta based non-profit that is a leader in international development as its Executive Vice-President for Global Advocacy and External Relations in 2008, returning to her first love of international development. Late last year, Woolard returned to her consultancy business after her sister died of cancer.
The outstanding question for the HRC’s Board of Directors is what direction will it seek during the second decade of the millennia? Do they have the courage to change course, to break free from their past that is steeped in maddening secrecy? Can they become more forthcoming and transparent with a community that hungers for equality? The “Millennials†will not be satisfied with perfunctory answers and enticements such as wine and cheese parties supported by the best marketing of an American non-profit.
The times have changed: LGBT blogs are ubiquitous, the news cycle never stops, the community is more diverse, younger and more progressive. We live in an age of instant globalization. Young LGBTQs will not be satisfied to wait for equality carried out by a leadership style of “take it or leave it” and “our way or the highway,” which has been the case with HRC more often than not.
Woolard knows this, but does the HRC Board of Directors? Stay tuned.
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Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.
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President Donald Trump is claiming that the top priority of Democrats is the “total obliteration” of the U.S. Supreme Court. His remarks came just hours after SCOTUS gave Republicans a 6-3 win along partisan lines, in the form of approving Texas’s redrawn mid-decade congressional maps that could help add five GOP-held seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. A lower court had ruled the redrawn Texas maps were likely racially biased.
Although there are different ways to measure, one study by Court Accountability this fall found that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor 90% of the time.
“Most of these wins for the president came from the court’s ‘shadow docket’ slate of opinions — where the court has typically, in the past, only ruled on administrative measures,” according to Truthout. “However, in recent years, the Supreme Court has been making announcements on cases, issuing injunctions or allowances of actions to remain in place, that have the same effect, essentially, as a final decision.”
READ MORE: White House Touts Trump’s ‘Track Record’ on Affordability
On Friday, the president declared that the “Democrats number one policy push is the complete and total OBLITERATION of our great United States Supreme Court.”
“They will do this on their very first day in office, through the simple Termination of the Filibuster, SHOULD THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS,” he wrote.
Trump has strongly advocated for Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster.
“The Radical Left Democrats are looking at 21 Justices, with immediate ascension,” he wrote, claiming that Democrats would more than double the current size of the court.
“This would be terrible for our Country. Fear not, however, Republicans will not let it, or any of their other catastrophic policies, happen. Our Country is now in very good hands. MAGA!!!”
Some court reform advocates have suggested the Supreme Court be expanded to 13 justices, one for each of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals.
READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes
Image via Reuters
As President Donald Trump calls Democrats’ push for affordability a “con job,” a “hoax,” and a “scam,” the White House continues to try to promote his focus on that very word — a focus many Americans say is, at best, insufficient.
“It’s a con job. I think affordability is the greatest con job,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Tuesday, as CNN reported. The news network noted that “for Trump, calling affordability a scam is doubly strange because it’s the very issue that helped propel him back to the White House.”
“Candidate Trump,” CNN added, “used remarkably similar language to what President Trump now dismisses as a hoax.”
For example, at an August North Carolina rally, Trump vowed, “We will target everything from car affordability to housing affordability to insurance costs to supply chain issues.”
READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes
“Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again,” Trump said in a late September rally in Pennsylvania.
A new Politico poll released on Thursday shows that many Americans blame President Trump for the affordability crisis they are experiencing on a daily basis.
“Almost half — 46 percent — say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can ever remember it being, a view held by 37 percent of 2024 Trump voters,” Politico noted. “Americans also say that the affordability crisis is Trump’s responsibility, with 46 percent saying it is his economy now and his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.”
While candidate Trump vowed to end inflation “on day one,” the White House now promises that President Trump will “continue to focus on delivering on his Day One priority of ending Joe Biden’s inflation crisis.”
On President Joe Biden’s last day in office, inflation was officially at 2.9%. For the month of January, it came in at 3%. Through September, the last month of the official Labor Department reports, inflation stood at 3%.
Kevin Hassett is the Director of the White House’s National Economic Council, a senior advisor to the President on economic issues, and rumored to be a top Trump pick to run the Federal Reserve.
On Friday, he spoke with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, who decried Democrats’ ability to “rally around” the affordability crisis.
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“I just think, all of a sudden, the Democrats have found a way to get affordability to stick to their brand,” Bartiromo lamented. “And, Kevin, President Trump came into office with this priority of getting inflation down.”
“How is it possible that the Democrats have been able to rally around this word, ‘affordability,’ and make people think that that’s what they’re focused on and not what the Republicans are focused on, going into an election year?” she asked.
“You know,” Hassett replied, “it’s just what happens sometimes when, you know, one political party has a lot of the media echoing what they’re saying.”
Promising that “there’s lots and lots of things that we could do to reduce the problem of affordability,” Hassett declared that “the affordability problem is 100% created by the Biden administration, with their runaway regulation and their runaway inflation.”
He then touted Trump’s “track record” on the issue, referencing a topic from the first Trump administration.
“The thing I want to remind you is that the President has a proven track record on affordability in healthcare, and it’s this,” he insisted. “If you go back and look at our first term, when we came in and we started to negotiate with the drug companies and make sure that the FDA was approving generic drugs, we had two years in a row where the consumer price index for drugs went negative.”
“We had declining drug prices,” Hassett said. “The only two years that that happened, going all the way back to World War II, we did it then. We’ll do it again.”
BARTIROMO: How is it possible that the Democrats have been able to rally around ‘affordability’ and make people think that’s what they’re focused on and not what Republicans are focused on?
HASSETT: It’s just what happens sometimes when one political party has the media echoing… pic.twitter.com/eJGm5BVgPo
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 5, 2025
READ MORE: Trump Urges Judge Aileen Cannon to Keep Jack Smith Report Secret
Image via Reuters
The White House reportedly will be submitting plans for President Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom to a federal planning commission later this month, after the East Wing of the White House has already been demolished and as the president replaces the project’s top architect.
“The 90,000-square-foot ballroom will dwarf the White House itself, at nearly double the size, and President Donald Trump has said it will accommodate 999 people,” the Associated Press reported on Thursday.
Critics blasted the latest news.
“Let me get this straight,” wrote U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), in response to the news. “Trump has a plan for a new ballroom, but barely has a concept of a plan to lower the cost of health care?”
READ MORE: Inside Trump’s ‘Golden Age’: Troubling New Trends Emerge
“Millions are losing health care, but hey, a ballroom! Unbelievable,” declared U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA).
“It seems like the Trump White House is working harder on constructing a new White House Ballroom than averting huge spikes in monthly premiums for 20 million Americans next year,” observed Brendan Duke of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
Those sentiments align with a new study from Navigator Research about how some Americans in six Senate battleground states feel about President Donald Trump’s focus.
“The wealthy are seen as benefitting from a rigged system,” Navigator reported on its findings, “and politicians are seen as not getting it. Many view President Trump as particularly out of touch, with his ballroom project as key evidence.”
“Trump is seen as out of touch with working class people, with several citing his ballroom project as a proofpoint,” Navigator added.
READ MORE: Trump Urges Judge Aileen Cannon to Keep Jack Smith Report Secret
The study noted that focus group participants “are struggling mightily to afford the basics – like dog food or energy bills – and see no real sign of the situation improving.”
Navigator also cited comments from focus group participants who shared a variety of concerns, including about the cost of living — and the president’s ballroom.
“I see the president building a ballroom when there’s people that can’t feed their families,” said a Michigan woman, described as a “weak Democrat.”
A woman in New Hampshire, also a weak Democrat, shared, “I blame Trump. He’s greedy, he wants to make money for him and his rich friends. They are throwing Americans aside, cutting, SNAP,” she said of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “Everything’s gone to the wayside so that the rich can get richer.”
“I’m scared,” said a New Hampshire woman, an independent. “I’m scared. I’m scared of us losing our healthcare, of him not getting the care that he needs, and me not being able to provide for my family, even though I went to school and got a career to do so.”
A New Hampshire woman described as a weak Democrat said, “I think the economy’s going to tank because when we all lose healthcare starting in January, or most of us like me, I’m going to lose it in January, what is that going to do to the economy? People can’t afford to buy anything now. It’s going to just kill it.”
“How about a ballroom?” asked a Maine woman who was described as an independent. “A billion dollars. How much was it? $5 billion, $3 billion or something? Do we really need a ballroom, ladies? Are we going to go to a f – – dance?…They’re all out for themselves. ‘Let’s do the ballroom. Let’s do stuff that don’t need to be done and screw the American people.’”
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Image via Reuters
Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes
Inside Trump’s ‘Golden Age’: Troubling New Trends Emerge
White House Touts Trump’s ‘Track Record’ on Affordability
Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court
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