Jan 11, 2008  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Gay voters in Iowa and New Hampshire want their next president to bring change, but cannot agree who’s best for the job.

Beth Barnhill, a 52-year-old lesbian living in Des Moines, said Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is best positioned to transform the nation.

“I think we’re desperately in need of change,” she said. “Dramatic change.”

But Mark Anthony Dingbaum, a 22-year-old gay man living in Iowa City, said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) could better enact the changes that Democratic voters want.

“I realize Washington is not going to change overnight and I can’t imagine supporting a candidate who doesn’t know the terrain and how to navigate that,” he said. “So, for me, Hillary was the clear choice.”

Such divisions echo the results of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

Obama won the Jan. 3 caucuses, taking 37.6 percent of the Democratic vote. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina took 29.8 percent of the vote there, while Clinton took 29.5 percent.

On Tuesday, Clinton won the nation’s first primary, taking 39 percent of the Democratic votes cast in New Hampshire. In that race, Obama took 37 percent of the vote and Edwards took 17 percent.

Peter Rosenstein, a Washington political activist who is on Clinton’s gay steering committee, said the turnaround shows voters are prioritizing substance over style.

“I think that Barack Obama’s message — he is a beautiful speaker, he is a charismatic speaker, and no one can take that from him — but by the third or fourth time you’ve heard that speech, you think to yourself, ‘Alright, what’s behind it?’” Rosenstein said. “I think Hillary managed in New Hampshire to pierce that speech.”

Dingbaum agreed. He said Obama’s supporters, when challenged, were unable to explain to him why they prefer the younger senator.

“A number of people I talked to about Obama couldn’t answer questions about his policies, his experience, his plans for the future,” he said. “They could only talk about hope.”

But Jim Pickett, a longtime Obama supporter and advocacy director at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, said there’s much more to Obama and his campaign.

“I don’t buy the argument that Obama is simply style, as if he’s pretty window dressing who happens to give a good speech,” he said. “I reject the notion, outright, that Sen. Obama has only style and nothing beneath that. That’s not true.”

‘Virtual tie’

In a race that remains neck-and-neck between Obama and Clinton, voters beyond Iowa and New Hampshire will decide the Democratic outcome.

Dan Pinello, a gay City University of New York government professor, said the New Hampshire vote was too close to give either candidate a clear advantage.

“There was only two or three points difference,” he said. “So you’re looking, as a practical matter, at a virtual tie in terms of what Clinton and Obama got there.”

Pinello said a frontrunner should emerge after Feb. 5, when California, New York and 20 other states hold their Democratic primary or caucus.

“That’s going to be half of the nation, more or less, having a national primary,” he said. “It’s very likely that come Feb. 6, the Democratic nominee will be clear.”

Other impending votes include the Nevada caucus on Jan. 19 and the South Carolina primary on Jan. 26, but Pinello said those samplings are relatively inconsequential.

“South Carolina is only interesting in the sense that it could gave an indication of what might happen in the South,” he said. “And Nevada is not indicative of anything, really. Who cares what way Las Vegas goes?”

Pinello said the South Carolina and Nevada votes likely would serve only to confirm that Edwards should exit the race.

“Clearly, the Democratic race is between Clinton and Obama,” he said. “You cannot come in second or third in two races and make any legitimate claim that you still have a shot at the nomination.”

‘A great boost’

Even as Edwards struggled to remain viable, Clinton and Obama were picking up momentum.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain won handily in New Hampshire over the favored Mitt Romney, former governor of neighboring Massachusetts. But former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took Iowa by a large margin over the much better funded Romney. Many experts view Michigan as Romney’s last stand, though he has vowed to remain in the race.

Barnhill said the Iowa victory proved that Obama can woo independent and conservative voters, something that will serve him well on Feb. 5.

“I think this was a great boost for him,” she said. “That what’s widely regarded as a rather conservative and mostly white state — that this state supported Obama would ...