The Rudy Guiliani campaign announced on Friday that openly gay Republican Party activist Carl Schmid has joined the Guiliani campaign as a co-chair of the campaign's DC leadership team.

Carl Schmid stated “As Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani cut taxes, cut crime, and got hundreds of thousands of people off the welfare rolls and back to work all while working with a heavily Democratic City Council. That’s the kind of strong leadership we need in the White House.”

Schmid, a 2004 delegate to the Republican National Convention, has played an active role in the DC Republican Party, which is not a significant part of local DC politics. When openly gay city council member David Catania left the Republican Party over the federal marriage amendment debate, he left the Party with only one remaining Republican DC city council member.

Schmid currently serves as the Director of Federal Affairs for the AIDS Institute, a national public policy organization.