Marriage equality passes the New York Senate, July 2011 (Celebration Chapel/
Wikicommons)
As with every election season since time immemorial, the top priority of the New York Democratic Party is to capture majority control of the Senate. It's within reach, just a couple seats need to flip in 2012.
There is, however, this year a potentially awkward new dynamic that may play out in New York between Democratic loyalists and the LGBT community. Democrats looking to take out four specific Republican senators may find themselves at odds with one of their most dependable constituency and allies, the gays.
The ties that bind Democrats and LGBT groups are strong and go way back. Empire State Pride Agenda, Human Rights Campaign, and Marriage Equality New York are widely credited with playing a key role in the 2008 Democratic takeover of the Senate (which Democrats lost in 2010). The implicit bargain was, "Give us the majority, we'll give you marriage equality."
But unfortunately for everyone in the progressive coalition, that isn't how things worked out.
Marriage came later, and with the help of the Republican caucus—who didn't block the vote, though it was absolutely in their power to do so, and with the votes of four Republican senators.
Which immediately placed the LGBT community in the odd and nearly uncharted territory of being indebted to a few key Republicans.
New York has led on many nascent movements in the country's history, and this fall they may be providing another new template, namely: What does the LGBT movement look like when it truly goes bipartisan?
The 2011 legislative effort could well stand as a case study in success.
It remains to be seen if the 2012 elections will be a case study in diplomatically dealing with the potentially awkward consequences of bipartisan support for the LGBT movement.
Gays "supporting" Republicans is an incendiary topic, perhaps because there seems to be a great deal of anxiety among Democrats that LGBT victories will ultimately result in an attrition of that demographic (perhaps because we all know the LGBT community is monolithically male, rich and white, right?). The attrition worry seems overblown, perhaps fueled by the traditional media's outsized fascination with all things gay Republican. In truth, OpenSecrets reveals that for the 2010 national election cycle, Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud combined reported 112 donors representing about $188,000, to spread across every race nationwide. (It's also worth noting that heterosexual Republican Paul Singer makes up a huge portion of this these funds.) In a post-Citizen's United world, that is a drop of spit in the ocean. There isn't a lot of evidence they warrant as many appearances on CNN and other outlets as they are afforded. It's likely gay Republicans get so much attention because they are masterful, like Glenn Beck, at exploiting their iconoclastic branding with whacky antics and endless fail.
By contrast, Human Rights Campaign's national fund is considered a "heavy hitter" on OpenSecrets and spent nearly a million dollars in 2010, 97 percent of it in support of the Democratic candidates. And HRC represents only the largest electoral machine; there are countless others, like Victory Fund and state organizations like Empire State Pride Agenda, Equality Illinois and Equality California, who enjoy cozy relationships and endorse Democrats and have no Republican equivalent at the state levels.
It's easy enough to forget that these LGBT advocacy organizations are mostly incorporated as non-partisan issues advocacy groups, since there is criticism (or resignation, or delight, depending on your perspective) that HRC functions primarily as an arm of the Democratic National Committee.
So, I've been curious to see how this potentially incendiary dynamic of gays rewarding these Republicans would play out as the election draws closer. When queried on their 2012 electoral plans, major LGBT advocacy organizations assume the common talking point, "We'll stand with those who stood with us." And of course the best politics is built on mutually respectful relationships and delivered, not broken, promises.
A similar dynamic promises to play out in Washington state, where four Republican senators also crossed party lines last week to vote for marriage equality. It seems the lobbying for those votes went rather more swiftly and smoothly than the convoluted multi-year process in New York. Perhaps they got a whiff of the fundraising reports of the GOP marriage equality yes voters in New York? In a Jan. 18 article, titled "Money Flows to Republican Backers of Gay Marriage", the New York Times reported some truly eye-popping numbers for the GOP four. I was glad to see that supporting gay rights was framed as profitable, but I also braced myself for the inevitable screams of "filthy gay traitors!" from other coalition members.
I anticipated that sooner or later, the partisan battle over who owns "the gays'" money and activism to would bubble up, and probably not in a helpful way. I admit, though I did not anticipate it coming from first from the gay community.
Continue reading below the fold.
I suppose it makes perfect sense that the first shot came from the gay community since no one has a more visceral reaction of disgust to the Republican brand than gay people.
On Feb. 1, Andy Humm at New York City's Gay City News posted a piece that serves mostly as a platform to lambast the gay community as ungrateful. It was titled: "State Legislative Dems Left at Altar." The gist of the piece is "the gays" (as presented as a monolithhic community) are slathering all their attention and money on Republicans and ignoring the poor Democrats. The picture painted in broad strokes with little background is indeed alarming. Humm frames the story clearly only in terms of partisan accounting, critiquing the Times piece as thus:
The Times did not note that Democrats are getting stiffed. Democrat Senator Joe Addabbo, who represents conservative Howard Beach and switched his vote from no to yes, raised just 36,000 in the same period. Shirley Huntley of Jamaica, Queens, who also made a crucial switch to yes despite her strong religious misgivings about same-sex marriage, raised $7,500.
The irony is rich that Humm is calling out the
Times for leaving out part of the story, while his own example also leaves out a great deal of very relevant context. Take a closer look and note what was left out
Gay City News article.
What was not mentioned about Shirley Huntley is she's embroiled in a political corruption investigation by the state attorney general, in which an aide of hers has already been indicted for fraudulent use of taxpayer funds. It is not yet clear if in 2013 Huntley will be called to serve in Albany or someplace rather less glamourous. The possibility of a criminal fraud indictment over actions performed in office can tend to inhibit a candidate's fundraising ability, particularly as it relates to an organizations like HRC or ESPA placing their official endorsement on your candidacy.
On the topic of Democratic Sen. Joseph Addabbo, whose picture they chose to illustrate the story, Gay City News did not mention the LGBT community worked very hard to elect him in 2008 under the understanding he'd vote for marriage equality with the majority. Subsequently, when the vote was called in 2009, as the first senator to vote (alphabetically), he voted no, and the ensuing domino effect on both caucuses is largely seen as the main reason the vote failed at that time.
Later, he showed not a hint of remorse for his betrayal:
“I appreciated all the LGBT community volunteer hours and their financial support, but I can’t be bought,” said Addabbo. “So even though they gave me a ton of money, I can’t be bought. I voted the way my people wanted me to vote.”
There you have it on record from the horse's mouth. Addabbo himself saying he already got a "ton of money" from the gays. Now he expects more? Can anyone really blame the LGBT community for having mixed emotions about his turnaround 18 months later? One suspects his change of heart might have had less to do with his newfound affection for gays and perhaps more to do with a lucrative backroom bargain struck with Gov. Cuomo.
Moreover, it sympathetically describes Addabbo as being in a "tough district." It's unclear how that conclusion was drawn. In 2010, Addabbo won in a Republican wave year with 58 percent of the vote, (despite the fact that the LGBT community may well have abandoned him in disgust). Seeing as we don't know who Addabbo's opponent is, it's a little early to conclude a Democratic incumbent in New York City is facing a "tough" fight.
Of course, another big problem with Gay City News' framing that the Democrats have been "stiffed" is it completely ignores that, unlike the Republicans, Democrats have been fundraising on the promise of marriage equality for the better part of a decade. None of these Republican senators previously enjoyed the endorsement of an LGBT group or received any significant campaign contributions from the community, grassroots or organizations. The Democrats, however, have been on a "Pay It Forward" plan for many cycles and return for more empty-handed after each session.
A tone of hair-on-fire, righteous indignation permeates the Gay City News piece, not well-supported by a rational look at the specifics. The outpouring of wealth to the Republicans almost certainly represents a fluke equivalent to, well, Republicans voting for gays.
It is probably fair to say a great deal of the bulk of the money that was collected was never in play for Democratic candidates anyway. The GOP senators can thank aforementioned Republican donor Paul Singer, a circle of Mike Bloomberg's friends and former Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman, not exactly dollars that would otherwise find their way into Democratic coffers. The influx is plus cash, not a draining from existing donor base. It probably came from a largely silent group of Republicans, who may not even be gay, who believe their party is better served by moderating on social issues and wish to reward those who display such behavior.
And of course, there was a tremendous influx from out-of-state cash, illustrated by this anecdote from the New York Times:
Michael McKeon, a 48-year-old California insurance executive who describes his political stance as “just to the left of being far left,” said he had never supported a Republican in his life before hearing Mr. Grisanti’s speech on the Senate floor during the same-sex marriage debate.
“His speech was absolutely compelling, moving,” Mr. McKeon said by telephone from Los Angeles, where he has lived for 30 years after growing up in Lewiston, N.Y. After the same-sex-marriage bill passed, Mr. McKeon returned to Lewiston to marry his partner; while in the state, he met Mr. Grisanti, shook his hand and handed one of his aides a check for $200.
Or consider the case of Roy McDonald, the big winner, whose $447,000 in earnings were more than 27 times his 2009 levels. It probably isn't a coincidence he was also the most famous. McDonald became an instant
national gay hero when he barked out to crowded roomful reporters:
"You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this."
They made a movie about this guy and it was called
Bullworth, and people loved Warren Beatty in it.
In fact, with the election 10 months away, it seems a little early to be handicapping anyone's race or deciding where resources are best appropriate to ensure the best outcome for both the Democrats and the LGBT community. We don't even have district maps. Few, if any, challengers have emerged, a point Executive Director of ESPA Ross Levi makes in the piece:
The Pride Agenda has not made its major donations for the 2012 elections yet.
“It’s about timing,” Levi said. “We’re waiting to see which races will be competitive and where to best make our investment,” noting that the district lines are not even set yet. He also said that beyond donations, the Pride Agenda “can motivate thousands of people to go to the polls” for their endorsed candidates.
There isn't much evidence that Democrats are actually doing
worse this cycle than usual, just that this small handful of Republicans are doing quite well. And prime fundraising season to pass the hat in the LGBT community is yet to come: June, gay pride month. At that time, battle lines will be much clearer, and the race will still be six months off.
And if Democrats have enough to get reelected, what is the problem?
Another incumbent Democrat whom the paper describes as always getting "a tough Republican challenge," Andrea Stewart-Cousins shows her fundraising is coming along just fine. She had $100,886.24 cash on hand in January 2010. As of last month, she has $131,123.73.
Daniel O'Donnell (NY Assembly)
Blowing this discrepancy into some big battle really doesn't serve anyone well. One of the most atrocious whiners given wide platform in the
Gay City News is unfortunately
Daniel O'Donnell.
Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, an out gay Upper West Side Democrat who led the charge on marriage equality in his chamber, saw the Times story about the gay money going to Republicans and said, “None of it has come to me. Part of this business involves raising money. [Assembly Speaker] Shelly Silver has led the battle and I led the campaign. We put this out front and center when people in the governor’s office didn’t think we could do it.”
Gay donors, O’Donnell said, tell him, “‘We don’t want to take you for granted,’ but that is what has happened. When the larger gay community doesn’t recognize who fought the battle for so long, it makes the next battle harder.” [...]
“At my first fundraiser after we won same-sex marriage, only my friends came,” he recalled. “I go to the dinners for the Victory Fund, which does great work and where people buy tables for $10,000. But I didn’t get a single check from any of those donors.”
O'Donnell's remarks can only be described as impolitic, particularly calling the Victory Fund out by name. Perhaps after a long gestation O'Donnell is suffering from a little post-natal depression? Perhaps O'Donnell shares a tendency with his more famous sister, Rosie, to shoot his mouth off without thinking?
There are more effective fundraising pleas than "Yeah, what about me, why doesn't anyone love me?" But O'Donnell will have a hard time arguing for more funding based on need. O'Donnell's January 2012 campaign financing report reveals that he's amassed $36,048.84, more than twice his take at the same period in the last cycle (Jan. 2010, $15,491.09). This includes a $1,000 contribution from Empire State Pride Agenda made in Nov. 2011.
Moreover, O'Donnell's race promises to be anything but tough. O'Donnell took his first seat 10 years ago with more than 80 percent of the vote. He took 77 percent in 2010, but only because about 8,000 people didn't vote that ballot line; he ran unopposed. In fact, he hasn't faced an opposition candidate since 2006. Exactly how much money does a four-term Democratic incumbent assemblyman in New York City need to hold his seat against (thus far) no declared candidates? What does he intend to do with all that money? No one pays for TV spots for an assembly seat, although he did charge the campaign $626.76 for "travel" and "accommodations" for a "White House event" in March 2011.
O'Donnell seems to have forgotten he too has been on the "Pay it forward" plan. He has built a political career on taking the fight for LGBT equality to Albany, and the LGBT community of New York has helped him every step of the way. And it seems to be quite a nice gig for him. In fact, it was reported by the New York Times he had captured the interest of Gov. Paterson to replace Sen. Hillary Clinton's vacated U.S. Senate seat in 2009. Was O'Donnell expecting a bonus check for finally delivering what he's been promising to bring home for the better part of a decade? Hearing O'Donnell complain "What about me?" is surely a grating message to the countless New York grassroots activist volunteers who toiled thanklessly and without pay at canvasses and phonebanks across the state, working for him over the years and for marriage equality. Was leading New York City's gay pride march and a spot in OUT magazine's "Hot 100" issue not enough attention for the assemblyman?
O'Donnell may be blowing off steam, but he isn't talking like a grown-up politician who understands how real politik is played; he sounds like a jealous wife.
As stewards of the mission to advance LGBT equality, the advocacy groups are absolutely doing the right thing. Brian Ellner, a senior strategist for HRC, is quoted in the New York Times as saying:
“It was essential to send a clear signal around the country that we will support those who support equality, irrespective of party. We were able to win marriage in New York with a bipartisan coalition of fair-minded elected officials. We need to replicate that if we are to keep winning.”
Evan Wolfson, president of the non-partisan Freedom to Marry, told
Gay City News:
“There is no question that the bulk of the leadership and votes in support of equality for gay people, including in marriage, has come from Democrats. That should be acknowledged and furthered. It is also true that to win, we need, and increasingly — as our victory in New York showed — are getting Republican legislators as well as donors and advocates.”
Ellner and Wolfson are right. The future of LGBT equality is to expand support where possible, and with the Democrats largely sewn up, that means the GOP. These GOP senators losing would strategically be a political disaster for the larger movement.
The single biggest impediment to LGBT equality is that it is a single-party issue. How can any movement ever hope to get passed the 50 percent + 1 threshold if an entire party that controls anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of the seats is completely unavailable to lobby?
National Organization for Marriage's
campaign
Whether any of us likes it or not, the fall 2012 electoral race will be by sold by the religious right as a referendum on future of marriage equality and LGBT equality. A battle royale will be fought as the nation watches, waiting to decide who won. And in the national conversation, it won't be the battle between state Democrats and Republicans in New York that gets deconstructed, but the one between the LGBT community and the religious right. And the outcome promises to define the conventional wisdom going forward. The saber-rattling began immediately with the odious, but thus far effective, National Organization for Marriage pledging $2 million dollars to defeat all the Republicans. President Brian Brown says:
NOM has defeated every pro-gay marriage Republican we've ever targeted, and we're quite confident we will do so in New York.
After Prop 8 and Maine, there isn't a better foil for the gay community to fundraise off of than Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher. Their declaration of war was manna from Heaven for their most vulnerable targets.
All eyes will be on these races, and the results will form the new conventional wisdom to the questions:
- Can the Republican party transition from a position of impermeable lockstep opposition to all things gay to dappled support?
- Can anyone fail the GOP's anti-gay litmus test and live to tell?
- Are socially liberal "Rockefeller" Republicans truly extinct or can they spring back?
- Just how powerful is the religious right in the GOP?
- What happens when the GOP cuts the cord from their conservative Christian base?
The answers have implications for reproductive choice advocates and others as well. The election results will help define which side of the party the GOP continues to pander to—the regressives or the moderates?
The state's Conservative Party, described in May 2011 by The New York Times as marriage's biggest obstacle, suffered a crushing defeat when the bill passed against their strenuous lobbying, and only by delivering on his promise to extract revenge on anyone who "voted against traditional marriage" can party chairman Mike Long recover any hope of remaining politically relevant. All progressives should cheer his relegation to irrelevancy sooner, not later.
Long and NOM's threats are excessively grandiose. It isn't likely any senators will suffer much, if any, general election backlash. The key will be the primaries (an area where none of the Democrats are vulnerable). Democrats took little risk voting for marriage equality as they have been campaigning—and winning—on the promise of delivering it for many cycles. And their base elected them knowing full well that was what they intended to do.
But all these Republicans have been promised primary battles, and they will get them. Ironically, primary laws are restrictive enough in New York state that by the time the vote transpired in July, it was too late to switch party registration to vote in the next (closed) primary. In other words, the LGBT constituents of these senators and their most committed allies probably can't vote for them in the primary, unless they are already registered as Republicans (unlikely). So the only tool really is money for now. And in politics nothing wards off potential primary challengers like an incumbent with an impressive war chest.
NOM's main talking point for averting legislative disasters like New York, and now Washington, is to scare all electeds into believing if they vote for the gays, they will lose elections. It doesn't matter if it's true because it is widely believed to be true, even by some progressives and Democrats.
In the lobbying battle for New York's marriage equality, NOM tried to squeeze a lot of mileage out of convincing people that Republican Dede Scozzafava's loss in a 2009 special election for New York's 23th congressional district was a result of her voting for marriage equality in the state assembly earlier that year. Like most of NOM's messaging, it was a lie.
In truth, many things played into her loss, including Scozzafava running an absolutely textbook disastrous campaign. And in the end, voters selected the most progressive candidate in a three-way race. But the talking point resonates because it merely reinforces conventional wisdom.
And the primary consideration for movement-based activists who care about the issue, rather than partisan politics, is to prove that conventional wisdom wrong. New York stands poised to demonstrate to the country that voting for equal treatment under the law for all citizens is not only the right thing to do; it is also profitable and popular, regardless of party.
The challenge facing LGBT activists is balancing the needs of the movement with continued support and gratitude to the allies that stand with them for so long. Sensitivity and diplomacy to the awkward new dance that will be the next election is called for all around. O'Donnell's remarks were needlessly divisive and not at all helpful to building good will among the coalition, nor did scolding his allies in print probably serve his own fundraising goals well.
Political strategies can be formulated where the needs of the coalition are balanced with the needs of the movement. There are, of course, 28 other GOP seats that didn't vote for marriage equality (and a newly created open seat). Rather than squabbling about fundraising, it's better to concentrate on identifying which of these seats are the likeliest opportunity for Democratic pick-ups. This should be the top priority for the coalition to work together to win the Senate for the Democrats and ensure the whole coalition emerges victorious in November 2012. In this way, the coalition can focus on where their goals converge and less on where they depart.
Appended to make a point clear. I'm not suggesting Sens. Grisanti, Saland, McDonald and Alesi bought a lifetime of goodwill with their July vote. Any assurances they received that they will not suffer immediate electoral backlash for their vote expire on election night 2012, however the chips fall.