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Super Tuesday was supposed to determine the winner of the Democratic primary, but Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton remain in a tight race. Experts say the large Democratic turnout could be a boon for gays. (Photos by AP)
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Gay supporters of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton stepped up their efforts during the past week to encourage gay voters to turn out at the polls for the Feb. 12 presidential primaries in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.
With the two presidential contenders emerging from this week’s Super Tuesday primaries in a tie, and each one considered to have an equal chance of winning the Democratic nomination, next Tuesday’s D.C.-area “Potomac primaries” have taken on a far greater significance.
Gay Republicans were playing a less visible role in the Republican primaries set for D.C, Maryland and Virginia on Tuesday. But GOP presidential contender John McCain, the senator from Arizona who emerged from Super Tuesday as his party’s frontrunner, was expected to garner support from some gay GOP voters in the Potomac primaries who had been supporting former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who dropped out of the race.
In the D.C. primary, gay Democratic activists Kierra Johnson and Jerry Clark have been slated as Obama delegate candidates and could win delegate seats pledged to Obama if he makes a strong showing in the primary.
Gay Democratic activists Chantale Yok-Min Wong, Peter Rosenstein and Mario Acosta-Velez have been slated as Clinton delegate candidates and would also win seats to the Democratic convention if Clinton receives enough votes in the primary under the city’s proportional delegate allocation system.
Four gay Republicans are running as Giuliani delegate candidates and another four gay GOP activists are running as delegates committed to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul in D.C.’s Republican primary. Giuliani remains on the D.C. ballot.
In Maryland, gay Democratic activists H. Alexander Robinson and Maggie McIntosh are running as Clinton delegate candidates in Baltimore and they, too, could win seats to the convention if Clinton does well in the Baltimore district where the two are running.
Delegate candidates in Virginia won’t be nominated until the spring under that state’s delegate selection rules, although the number of delegates allocated to the presidential candidates will be tied to the proportion of votes they receive in the Feb. 12 primary.
• D.C.: Voting hours 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.; eligibility — must be registered as a Democrat, Republican or Statehood-Green Party member.
• Maryland: Voting hours, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.; eligibility — must be registered with a political party.
• Virginia: Voting hours, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.; eligibility — any registered voter may vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary, but not both. |
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: LOU CHIBBARO J COMMENTS
 
While expressing disappointment that gay issues took a backseat in the public debate surrounding the Super Tuesday presidential primaries this week, gay rights advocates and political experts said the outcome of the mega-primary and caucus day appears to be a harbinger of good things to come for gays in the November election.
In the Democratic primaries, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois — who each have expressed strong support for gay rights — finished in a virtual tie in the race for delegates needed to capture their party’s nomination.
Clinton, meanwhile, beat Obama among gay voters in the Democratic primaries in the nation’s two largest states on Tuesday by a margin of 59 percent to 36 percent in New York and 62 percent to 32 percent in California, according to exit polls conducted for national news media outlets.
She beat Obama in the New York primary by a margin of 57 percent to 40 percent in the overall vote and won the overall California primary vote by a margin of 52 percent to 42 percent.
The media outlets that sponsored the exit polling chose not to identify the gay vote in any other state or in the Republican primaries in New York or California.
In a development that created a stir among political observers and party leaders, Clinton and Obama drew an unprecedented number of Democratic voters to the polls, in some states twice as many as Republicans who turned out to vote in the GOP primaries.
“It’s remarkable,” said Dan Pinello, professor of government at the City University of New York. “This is extremely helpful to the Democrats in November and good news for gays,” he said, because it increases the chance of a gay-supportive Democrat winning the presidency in November.
Pinello and other election analysts have said a large turnout of voters of a particular party in the primaries is a strong indicator of a highly energized electorate within that party, which usually gives the party a big advantage in the November general election.
In Tuesday’s Republican primaries, Arizona Sen. John McCain’s victories in key states, including New York and California, have elevated him to the status of the expected GOP nominee, according to most political observers.
Gay Republican leaders, who acknowledge that McCain’s positions on gay rights are not as strong as they would like, point out that his expected nomination eliminates from the presidential race any candidate in support of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
McCain’s two main challengers in the Super Tuesday voting, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, support the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Gay activists say the amendment would enshrine anti-gay discrimination in the U.S. Constitution.
McCain has angered social conservatives, including the anti-gay Family Research Council, by voting twice against the Federal Marriage Amendment when it came up in the Senate.
“One of the most striking things to come out of the Republican primaries this year is that social conservatives are not playing a major role in deciding the Republican nominee,” said Patrick Sammon, president of Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay GOP group. “That’s great news for GLBT people.”
Jon Hoadley, executive director of National Stonewall Democrats, which advocates for gay Democrats, said the fact that Democratic voters appear equally divided between Clinton and Obama, and the nomination may not be decided until the Democratic convention in August, would likely result in benefits for both gays and the party.
“It’s great for the Democrats because we are building grassroots support from huge numbers of new voters,” Hoadley said. “It’s great for the LGBT community because in a race where literally every vote counts, our votes become more and more important.”
Gay supporters of Clinton and Obama, similar to spokespersons for the two candidates’ campaigns, argued that their candidate came out ahead of the other in the Super Tuesday primaries.
Clinton supporters pointed to her decisive victories in the nation’s two largest states, California and New York, and claimed Clinton halted what some had said was an Obama surge that would result in a decisive victory on Super Tuesday.
In addition to New York and California, Clinton won the popular vote in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
Obama supporters noted that he won far more states than Clinton, even though those states were smaller. Some of them, such as Missouri, Kansas, Georgia, Connecticut and Delaware, are key states needed for winning the November general election, his supporters said, and his victories there show he could defeat the Republican nominee ...
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