Republican Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer appeared to attend LGBTQ dating app Grindr’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner Weekend party Friday, despite having voted against codifying gay marriage.
Grindr, which describes itself as “the world’s largest network for gay, bi, trans, and queer adults,” hosted the swanky party the night preceding the annual dinner at a multi-million-dollar mansion in Washington, POLITICO reported. A Friday photo, which appears on Getty Images’s website, shows Fischer standing next to Joe Hack, the LGBTQ app’s head of global government affairs who worked for the GOP senator for eight years, according to LegiStorm.
Business Insider Senior Politics Reporter Bryan Metzger reported through a series of X posts late Friday that Fischer and Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin were the only politicians he saw in attendance at the party, which POLITICO described as “glitzy.” The party took place in Georgetown, a longtime wealthy and prestigious Washington neighborhood.
Ex-CNN host Don Lemon was also spotted entering the party, Washingtonian reported.
Fischer, who has served in the Senate since 2013, won reelection to her third term in 2024 by a margin much narrower than expected. She defeated Independent candidate Dan Osborn by only seven percentage points in a race to which Democrats did not nominate a candidate. On the same ballot, President Donald Trump carried Nebraska by 20 points.
Fischer’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) was spotted Friday at a Washington party hosted by gay dating app Grindr for White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend.
Grindr executive Joe Hack, seen beside Fischer, previously served as her chief of staff for six years. pic.twitter.com/xjazfEnvm7
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 25, 2026
Should Sen. Deb Fischer have attended the Grindr party after voting against gay marriage?
Grindr hired Hack to head its new Washington-based policy wing in April 2025, according to Washingtonian. Hack served as Fischer’s chief of staff from 2015 to 2021, and spent the previous two years as her office’s communications director, according to LegiStorm.
“We’re planting a flag,” Hack told POLITICO in an interview published the day of the party. “We’ve been doing policy work here now for a year, and the issues we care about are important not just to us, but to our community.” He also claimed to the outlet the “interest level” in the LGBTQ app’s inaugural Washington party had “been insane,” and, without naming names, said “very high level people from both sides” were planning to attend it.
Fischer, in 2022 — the year after Hack departed her office and joined a lobbying firm — joined a majority of her Republican colleagues in voting against the Respect for Marriage Act.
The legislation, signed into law by then-President Joe Biden, repealed the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act and requires federal and state governments to recognize same-sex marriages performed in any state. The senator attributed her vote to her “concerns that this bill could infringe upon religious liberties – a fundamental constitutional right,” she said in a statement to NTV News at the time.
When the Supreme Court, ruling 5-4 in the June 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, Fischer said in a statement, “There are good people with strongly-held beliefs on both sides of this issue.” Hack had been serving as the senator’s chief of staff for five months at the time.
Before joining Fischer’s team, Hack served in various staff and intern positions for four other GOP lawmakers, including one-year stints as former Republican Virginia Rep. Randy Forbes’s press secretary and legislative assistant in 2011 and early 2012, respectively. Forbes, notably, is a staunch Christian conservative who opposed same-sex marriage during his congressional tenure.
Grindr states on its website its “mission is clear: become the Global Gayborhood in Your Pocket.” It records over 15 million active users each month.
“Grindr is not just a tech company or the largest gay company on the planet. It’s also a public-health company,” Hack told the Washingtonian in April.
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