By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Chelsea resident and 2004 Bush-Cheney Campaign Manager Ken Mehlman has Republican credentials that few can match. Now he's come out of the closet.
“It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” Mehlman told The Atlantic, explaining that he has spent the past few months sharing his gay identity with family, friends and co-workers. “The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago, but I didn’t.”
Long the subject of rumors about his sexuality, Mehlman raised eyebrows this spring when he bought a 2,200-square foot loft on the 17th floor of the Chelsea Mercantile building, the Huffington Post reported.
Some of his new neighbors have already taken to Twitter and blogs to complain.
“Ugh. I don’t want Former RNC chair Ken Mehlman to come out! I don’t want him living in Chelsea!” tweeted user thejoshuablog.
Speaking just down the block from Mehlman's building, Jim Lister, a 56-year-old gay man, took a more sympathetic stance.
“Anyone who comes out and they are a public person helps society at large,” said Lister, explaining that it gives strength to others coming out of the closest and teaches a lesson to people who don't think anyone familiar to them is gay and simply "don't get it."
Mehlman's leadership roles as Republican National Committee chairman, 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign manager and political director during President Bush's first term came at a time when many people saw the GOP as pursuing anti-gay policies.
"People who speak out the most are the people we should be most suspicious of who they really are," Steven Spiro, shop manager of Rainbows and Triangles on Eighth Avenue, said while pointing to a DVD titled "Outrage: A Searing Expose of the Secret Lives of Closed Gay Politicians."
"There is some anger in me about them not coming out sooner," Lister said of gay public figures. "Especially if they have the ear of someone who can do something about it. Like the president."
Activist and documentarian Mike Rogers, who spent years questioning Mehlman’s sexuality, including in video interviews, called the GOP bigwig “one of the nation’s worst closeted individuals,” on his blog Wednesday.
For his part, Mehlman, who told The Atlantic that Bush is “no homophobe,” is now lending his support to the American Foundation for Equal Rights, an organization battling California’s Proposition 8 gay marriage ban.
"It's a good move for him," said David Karunaratne, 28, a Staten Island resident who works in Chelsea. He added that he appreciated that someone like Mehlman could come out without it being a big deal — which he said would not be possible in his native country of Sri Lanka.
Despite his new advocacy efforts, Mehlman's staying true to his GOP roots, explaining to the Atlantic that his political views are complex.
"What I do regret, and think a lot about, is that one of the things I talked a lot about in politics was how I tried to expand the party into neighborhoods where the message wasn't always heard,” Mehlman said to the Atlantic. “I didn't do this in the gay community at all."
