Feb 01, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Gay Democratic activists from the D.C. area were set to travel this weekend to states like New York, California and Minnesota to campaign in Super Tuesday contests for a presidential candidate or to advocate for gay issues.

As of press time, a gay election night party for Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama at Nellie’s Sports Bar on U Street, N.W., was the only specifically gay event set in the Washington area for watching Super Tuesday voting results.

Meanwhile, as most of the country was focused this week on Super Tuesday, many local gay activists were turning their attention to the “Potomac” primary on Feb. 12, when voters in D.C., Maryland and Virginia will choose both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.

In the District, as many as six gay Democrats and eight gay Republicans were in play to become delegates to their respective party conventions this summer depending on how their candidates fare in the D.C. primary.

For the Democrats, a proportional system tied to the percentage of votes Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Obama receive in the D.C. primary will determine whether gays or lesbians are chosen as Obama, Edwards or Clinton delegates. For the Republicans, the campaigns of former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and candidate Ron Paul each selected four D.C. gay GOP activists to run as delegate candidates linked to the D.C. primary.

Giuliani’s and Edwards’ names will remain on the D.C. ballot even though the two candidates dropped out of the race this week.

With Giuliani’s withdrawal, gay Paul supporter Berin Szoka said he is asking local gay Giuliani backers to vote for Paul in the D.C. primary, with the aim of getting at least some gay Republicans to the GOP convention in September. Under the D.C. Republican primary, winner takes all of the D.C. GOP delegates.

Local political observers thought Giuliani had the best chance of winning the D.C. primary. Now, with Giuliani out of the race, GOP activists believe the outcome could be a toss-up between candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney. Fewer than 3,000 Republican voters are expected to go to the polls in the heavily Democratic D.C.

The Washington-based Human Rights Campaign was set to hold Super Tuesday election night parties in New York and Connecticut.

HRC’s field director, Marty Rouse, said HRC and the Empire State Pride Agenda, New York’s statewide gay rights group, were holding joint events in several parts of the state in the week leading up to Super Tuesday. Rouse said the events were intended to rally support behind candidates running for the New York State Senate who back a same-sex marriage bill pending in the legislature. Activists say the election of just a few more gay-supportive state senators could clear the way for New York to become the nation’s second state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Rouse said HRC dispatched 12 of its staff members from Washington to team up with more than 200 volunteers in Florida during the past week to campaign against an anti-gay marriage amendment set to come before Florida voters in November. Rouse said the gay volunteers were stationed outside the polls in key districts throughout the state for this week’s Florida primary.

“We handed out pledge cards for people to join our campaign against the amendment,” Rouse said.

The anti-gay ballot measure calls for changing Florida’s constitution to ban domestic partnership rights as well as same-sex marriage.

In a little-noticed development, an official with the National Stonewall Democrats, a gay partisan group, said this week that the Maryland Democratic Party appears to have violated national party rules by failing to keep track of whether gays filed as candidates for delegates to the Democratic National Convention in each of Maryland’s congressional districts, where the delegate candidates will appear on the Feb. 13 Maryland primary ballot.

Rick Boylan, Stonewall Demo-crats’ GLBT delegate selection coordinator, said a party official in Annapolis told him the state party decided not to ask gays to self-identify for purposes of enabling voters to learn whether gay people are on primary ballots because state party leaders “didn’t feel comfortable asking that question.”

Under rules established by the Democratic National Committee, all state parties are asked to make outreach efforts to identify gay candidates running for delegates. The rules authorize state Democratic parties to set voluntary goals for selecting a certain number of GLBT delegates. The DNC’s gay and lesbian caucus has asked all states to strive for ...