GOP hit
Immig & lesbian save pols who fight rights
THE CAPITOL POLICE officers wounded while defending members of Congress during a shooting at a baseball field were hailed as heroes by the Republican lawmakers whose lives they helped save.
One is a gregarious gym-goer and hard worker who adores his mother — and also happens to be an immigrant.
The other is a former college athlete and an African-American lesbian in a same-sex marriage.
In the wake of Wednesday’s shooting, many pointed out the irony that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and several of his GOP colleagues at the ballfield have actively opposed gay marriage and several maintain a hardnosed stance on immigration.
Officer David Bailey, 32, was born in Brazil. He earned a physical education degree in 2007 from North Carolina Central University in Durham.
Crystal Griner, also 32, was a college basketball star at Hood College. She married her wife, Tiffany Dyar in Baltimore in 2015.
The officers were applauded for their valor in taking down John Hodgkinson, 66, as he opened fire with an assault rifle on a GOP congressional baseball practice in Virginia.
“Crystal Griner risked her life to save @SteveScalise. She was comforted in the hospital by her wife. Scalise is against same sex marriage,” LZ Granderson tweeted after the shooting.
Others scoffed at Vice President Pence for calling the cops courageous.
“So that means you’re totally cool with defending their marriage and their rights now, yeah?” wrote Rebecca Lehmann.
Griner, who was shot in the ankle, and Bailey, who sustained minor injuries, were working as Scalise’s security detail at the time.
The attack left the pair, Scalise, and two others injured, but authorities and lawmakers who were at the park say the officers’ valor prevented what could have been a massacre. Scalise, shot in the hip by the GOP-hating gunman, improved from critical to serious condition on Saturday, doctors said.
Law-enforcement officials didn’t say who fired the fatal shot, but witness Jeff Flake, a Republican senator from Arizona, said Griner took down the shooter.
Flake later visited both officers in the local hospital where they were being treated, and said he “thanked them for saving my life.”
Rep. Roger Williams (R-Tex.), who has opposed proamnesty programs like DACA and the DREAM Act as well as gay marriage, called the pair “what’s right with America.”
Bailey threw out the first pitch at the annual congressional baseball game on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Griner’s neighbors commended her heroics.
“It was a heroic and selfless thing she did. She did a tremendous job,” Corey Polsner, 35, who lives up the street from the couple, told the Daily News.