The Kooky Campaign Ads That Put Fred Karger on the Map
How does a presidential candidate get noticed when he can’t get on the debate stage? For Fred Karger, the first openly gay major-party presidential candidate in U.S. history, the answer involved memorable TV ads, a little humor, and a knack for turning a small advertising budget into a much bigger news story. In this conversation with Matthew Breen, Karger revisits his 2012 Republican presidential campaign and shares the stories behind the commercials that helped introduce him to voters. He e...
28 Oct 2026
Fred Karger on His 2012 Presidential Run—and Refusing to Be Erased
What happens when an openly gay candidate walks into hostile territory with a presidential run in mind? Fred Karger has the stories. In 2010, Fred took his long-shot bid for the 2012 Republican nomination to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. Conference organizers pushed back, he scrambled for meeting space, and he had to persuade a room full of party insiders to take seriously a candidate they’d never heard of. Then came the press conference, a packed suite party, ...
20 Oct 2026
Fred Karger’s Underdog Campaign: Small Budget, Big Headlines
Margarita town halls. An anti-gay email that made national news. A presidential campaign with no headquarters. Fred Karger’s run through Iowa was anything but typical, and that was the point. Karger, the first openly gay Republican to run for president, joins Matthew Breen to talk about his 2012 campaign and how a long shot got noticed in a crowded field. New Hampshire was his priority, so why did he keep coming back to Iowa? He explains his crash course in the caucuses and how he turned ever...
14 Oct 2026
Testing the Waters: Fred Karger’s First Steps Toward the White House
In this episode of Fred Who?, Fred Karger sits down with Matthew Breen to discuss how he went from quietly considering a run for president to testing the waters for a historic 2012 campaign as the first openly gay presidential candidate. Fred shares how coming out publicly in 2006, his activism against Proposition 8, and his legal fight with the National Organization for Marriage helped push him toward national politics. He explains how subpoenas, legal defense fund campaigns, and early fundr...
7 Oct 2026
Before Marriage Equality: Fred Karger on the Battles That Changed America
In Episode 2 of this 10-part series, Fred Karger, the first openly gay U.S. presidential candidate, sits down withMatthew Breen for a powerful conversation about identity, resilience, politics, and the long road toward LGBTQ+ equality. From coming of age as a gay man in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s to finding his voice in politics, Fred reflects on the personal experiences and public battles that shaped his life. He shares stories of early campaign work, Hollywood detours, the fight against Cali...
27 Sept 2026
Fred Karger’s Historic 2012 Presidential Campaign: Utah, “Stop the Hate,” and the Final Stop
Fred Karger made history as the first openly gay candidate for president of the United States. In this first episode of a ten-part series documenting his groundbreaking 2012 campaign, Matthew Breen interviews Karger about the final stop of that historic run: Utah. Karger explains why Utah became both a symbolic and strategic battleground, not only in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, but in his long fight against the Mormon Church’s role in anti–same-sex marriage effort...
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