Wisc Marriage Ban Suit's McConkey Quit GOP After Palin Chosen as VP

Update: Here's Judith Davidoff's Cap Times link.

Judith Davidoff has a profile up at the Capital Times, "Citizen McConkey: How a straight, married, lapsed Republican came to wage a one-man battle against Wisconsin's gay marriage ban."

McConkey is the plaintiff in William C. McConkey v. J. B. Van Hollen, the Wisconsin Supreme court case that could doom the gay marriage ban voted into the state constitution in 2006.

Turns out McConkey is a life-time Republican, who lived in Alaska for a time and quit the GOP because Sarah Palin was chosen as nominee for the vice-president.

Writes Davidoff:

Because of his time in Alaska, McConkey was familiar with Sarah Palin, though he didn't know her personally. But he knew enough, he says, to consider her unqualified to be president. And so when former presidential candidate John McCain chose Palin as his running mate last year, it was the final straw for McConkey, who at that point severed his long ties with the Republican Party.

'I lost it,' he says. 'That just showed a disregard for the American people.'

It was not a decision he made lightly. The McConkey family's allegiance to the Republican Party dates back to the Civil War, when his relatives fought on the side of the Union.

See also:
- Wisconsin Gay Marriage Ban May Go Down
- Brief Looks to Doom Wisconsin Gay Marriage Ban
- Objection, Compound Referendum