Rick Perry's Pollster Tony Fabrizio Outed By Gay Conservatives After Homophobic Ad

Rick Perry's ridiculous anti-gay ad has started a political whirlwind that has resulted in the outing of Tony Fabrizio, a top Republican pollster who's currently working for Perry, and in the past has worked for Gov. Rick Scott and, interestingly, gay rights groups.

The revelation, or at least accusations, that Fabrizio is gay came as a leader of gay Republican Group GOProud who tweeted, "I've just about had it with faggots who line their pockets with checks from anti-gay homophobes while throwing the rest of us under the bus."

First thing's first, here's the Perry ad in question in which the presidential candidate says, "You don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school."



Fabrizio, who lives in Miami Beach, is Perry's campaigns top pollster. According to the Huffington Post, he objected to the ad while it was being made, but that didn't stop the rest of Perry's campaign staff from going forward with it. He wrote an e-mail to Nelson Warfield, the GOP operative behind the ad and called it "nuts."

"Tony was against it from the get-go," Warfield wrote to HuffPo. "It was the source of some extended conversation in the campaign. To be very clear: That spot was mine from writing the poll question to test[ing] it to drafting the script to overseeing production."