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Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made a dramatic rebound in New Hampshire Tuesday but she and Sen. Barack Obama remain in a close race for the Democratic nomination. (Photo by Elise Amendola/AP)
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: JOSHUA LYNSEN COMMENTS
 
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be, I hope, good news for him going forward.”
Rosenstein said Clinton’s campaign, meanwhile, will benefit from the “shot in the arm” it got in New Hampshire.
“It was clearly one of the most dramatic turnarounds in U.S. politics,” he said. “I think it’s a validation of Hillary trying to run on the issues.”
Some voters, however, said Clinton wasn’t talking about the issues in ways they wanted to hear.
Shannon McMurrin, a 24-year-old bisexual woman living with her lesbian partner in Waterloo, Iowa, said she caucused for Obama over Clinton in part because he wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
“Obama is very publicly in support of us,” she said. “He’s all for repealing DOMA and kind of leaving it to the states but opening it up to civil marriage, or civil unions, or whatever we can get.”
But Rosenstein said Clinton, who supports repealing one part of the act, has a more pragmatic approach that hobbles efforts to constitutionally define marriage.
“The reality is that we used DOMA to stop the momentum on a constitutional amendment,” he said. “It was used to say, ‘You don’t need that. The federal government already has DOMA.’”
McMurrin noted that she only backed Obama after it became apparent that her preferred candidate, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), was not viable.
Ajamu Sankofa, a Washington D.C. resident, advocating for AIDS awareness in New Hampshire Tuesday. (Photo by Patsy Lynch) |
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“He was the only candidate from the very beginning that said he was for civil marriage,” she said. “And that means a lot to me.”
Former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska, who did not actively campaign in Iowa, also backs marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
Dingbaum, a marriage equality advocate who caucused for Clinton, said he also would have preferred to support a candidate who matched his stance.
“Unfortunately, unless you’re going to caucus for Kucinich, it doesn’t look like you have an option wit
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