Bachmann beaten by gay candidate

One of the most strident anti-gay candidates in the race to become the Republican presidential candidate for the US election has polled lower than the only openly gay candidate in the field in the Republican primary in New Hampshire.

Fred Karger (pictured), a former campaign consultant for US presidents Ronald Regan and George Bush Snr, supports same-sex marriage and the commercial legalisation of marijuana.

He outpolled Michele Bachmann, whose husband runs a controversial ‘ex-gay’ program and who has called homosexuality a “sexual identity disorder”, by 138 votes.

Karger came eighth in the field, with the frontrunner former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Bachmann announced she was suspending her presidential campaign on January 4.

In related news, Republican Party members in Dixville Notch, a New Hampshire village of only 12 people who have accurately picked who the Republicans will choose as their presidential candidate prior to every election since 1968, picked Democratic incumbent Barack Obama as a write-in candidate over all the Republican candidates running for president.