Former White House adviser David
Axelrod claims in his new memoir released Tuesday that President
Barack Obama supported gay marriage before his first presidential
run.
In his first campaign for the White
House, the president endorsed civil unions for gay couples. In
endorsing marriage equality in an exclusive 2012 interview with ABC's
Robin Roberts, Obama said that he had “evolved” on the issue.
In Believer:
My Forty Years in Politics, Axelrod writes that Obama has
been in favor of same-sex marriage for as long as he's known him.
“As a candidate for State Senate in
1996 from liberal Hyde Park, he signed a questionnaire promising his
support for legalization,” Axelrod writes. “I had no doubt that
this was his heartfelt belief.”
Axelrod takes credit for convincing
Obama in 2008 to alter his public stance on the issue to be more
inline with those in “the black church.”
In 2012, advisers warned the president
that to deviate from this message could cost him North Carolina,
which adopted a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a
heterosexual union that same year. (Obama endorsed marriage equality
in May, a day after North Carolina's amendment gained voter
approval.)
“By year's end, however, Obama was no
longer interested in analysis,” Axelrod
writes. “'I just want you guys to know that if a smart
reporter asks me how I would vote on this if I were still in the
House legislature, I'm going to tell the truth. I would vote yes.'”