Former Jeff Gannon publisher running for Vice Chair of Texas GOP

Raw Story has the goods on this...

The GOP operative and conservative website owner who hired a onetime prostitute to cover the White House has decided to run for the vice chairmanship of the Republican Party of Texas, RAW STORY has learned.

Jeff Gannon, a $200-an-hour gay male escort, resigned from Eberle’s Talon News last February after pictures and stories emerged which revealed that he once toiled as a gay male prostitute. Eberle shut down the news site shortly thereafter, although his satellite Website GOPUSA.com remains active.

It later emerged that Gannon had attended scores of White House press briefings, often providing the White House press secretary an easy out amid heated grilling from the press. It also surfaced that Gannon had used a pseudonym while posing as a reporter – his real name was James D. Guckert.

Bloggers also discovered that Eberle once interviewed Bush adviser Karl Rove, which could explain how he was able to a get a veteran male escort past the Secret Service. RAW STORY revealed that Gannon made more than 200 visits to the White House during his tenure as a Talon News correspondent
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Despite Eberle’s alleged extensive connections, the New York Times reported that "Texas Republicans said he was not well known in the party" and the Houston Chronicle had difficulties getting "[s]everal local Republican elected officials" to return phone calls when they profiled him after the Gannon scandal. Sherry Sylvester, a spokeswoman for the Texas Republican Party at the time, told the Chronicle, "I’m not going to comment because I don’t know him, and nobody here does."

In that same Chronicle story, Eberle hinted that he might run for public office "some day down the line."

One Texas Republican, Chris Elam blogged on Eberle’s chances to become Vice Chairman:

I guess if you were to place odds, Eberle would be the favorite based on how many man hours he has spent working for the GOP. I'm sure we'll start seeing his slick glossy mailers early in 2006. The race is a name ID position. So he better build it up, or risk some bigger name coming in and taking it away from him.

Elam interned for Congressman Tom DeLay while in high school and is also the Vice President for his father’s political resource firm, Campaign Resources, which lists DeLay as an erstwhile client.

Eberle has already launched a website touting his candidacy. Oddly enough, it was registered on Feb. 7, 2005, one day before Jeff Gannon resigned from Talon News. It’s unclear when the site went live.

The state party election will take place at the Texas Republican convention to be held at the San Antonio Convention Center June 2-3, 2006. So far, Eberle only has two declared opponents. Raw Story