Gays ponder Bush victory President takes one quarter of gay vote, stunning some activists
By LOU CHIBBARO JR. / Washington Blade Friday, November 05, 2004
Gay rights leaders pored over the numbers behind President Bush’s victory over Senator John Kerry in Tuesday’s election to assess whether gay marriage provided the president with the hot-button social issue he needed to propel him to a second term in the White House.
Following Kerry’s speech conceding defeat on Wednesday, political observers with both parties joined news media commentators in an unprecedented discussion linking a gay rights issue to the outcome of a U.S. presidential election.
Citing exit polls that showed “moral values” the most important issue for a plurality of voters — ahead of the economy, jobs, terrorism and the Iraq war — some concluded that the gay marriage debate helped Bush deflect voter concerns on those other issues.
Bush won the popular vote 51.1 percent to 48 percent, capturing about 3.5 million more votes than Kerry. Projections have Bush winning 274 electoral votes compared to Kerry’s 252.
When President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appeared Wednesday afternoon at the Reagan Federal Building to make their victory speeches, both men were joined by their families. Among the Cheney clan on stage was the vice president’s lesbian daughter Mary, and her partner Heather Poe.
Mary Cheney appeared in excellent spirits during the rally, clapping along with the audience and for the president. Poe, while smiling, did not join in applauding the president or vice president during the course of their speeches.
Because neither woman has consented to interviews, gay observers often resort to reading into their brief public appearances to gauge their mood and their views on the campaign.
After Senator Kerry directly referenced Mary Cheney — though not by name — in the final presidential debate, the Cheney family and the Bush campaign reacted aggressively, suggesting Kerry would say anything and offend familial privacy to be elected.
The exit poll results, conducted by a consortium of news media outlets, showed that “moral values” was cited by the greatest number of voters (22 percent) as the most important issue in the presidential election, drawing commentary from pundits on both ends of the ideological spectrum.
“It’s unfortunate, but it’s just one of those situations where the community’s interests were not met by the outcome of the election,” said Jeff Trammell, the Kerry campaign’s national outreach director to the gay community.
“The lesson to our community is that we have an awful lot of work to do,” said Trammell, who is gay.
Other gay activists joined Trammell in concluding that the Bush campaign strategy, devised by White House political director Karl Rove, of using gay marriage as a “wedge issue” to bring out more evangelical, Christian voters who lean toward the president appears to have worked.
National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman disputed this assessment, pointing to election return data showing that more votes were cast for the presidential candidates than were cast for ballot initiatives seeking to ban same-sex marriage in most of the 11 states where the initiatives were on the ballot.
Foreman noted that 199,435 more votes were cast in Ohio in the presidential race than in that state’s highly publicized initiative to ban gay marriage.
“This shows that it was the presidential race that pulled people to the polls, not the initiative,” Foreman said. This appears to refute the so-called Rove “wedge issue” strategy, Foreman said.
Politicians fanned the fire Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said he believes the marriage issue prompted more conservative voters to turn out for Bush. Frank blamed the decision by gay-supportive elected officials in California, New York, New Mexico and other places to issue marriage licenses to gay couples without the official legal authorization to do so, saying it played into the hands of Republican strategists like Rove.
He said it hurt Kerry in the election.
“That created an appearance that this was getting out of control,” Frank said.
Frank said he favored efforts in Massachusetts and other states to file lawsuits to overturn laws banning same-sex marriage but said it was counterproductive to issue marriage licenses in areas where courts had yet to rule on the matter.
“It’s clear that the conservatives won a big victory on Tuesday,” Frank said. He said he was fearful that Bush was now in a position to push through enough Supreme Court appointments to place in jeopardy the Lawrence vs. Texas decision, which overturned state sodomy laws, as well as the Roe vs. Wade decision that provided the right for women to obtain an abortion.
Bush wins quarter of gay vote Meanwhile, the nationwide exit poll conducted for a consortium of news media outlets showed that four percent of the electorate identified itself as gay male, lesbian, or bisexual.
Of that total, Kerry won 77 percent of the gay vote compared to 23 percent for Bush, the exit poll showed. Independent presidential contender Ralph Nader received less than one percent, the poll showed.
Although the poll shows that Kerry won handily among gays, many gay activists said they were baffled over why 23 percent of the gay electorate — which translates into more than one million gays — would vote for a president who pushed for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
An exit poll conducted four years ago showed that Bush received a nearly identical percentage of the gay vote when he ran against Vice President Al Gore.
Patrick Guerriero, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, the national gay group that chose not to endorse Bush, said he was not surprised over the size of the gay vote for Bush.
“I predicted that Bush could get as much as 30 percent of the gay vote in the middle of a war on terrorism,” Guerriero said.
Gay Republican activist Carl Schmid of D.C. said he, too, wasn’t surprised over the gay GOP vote.
“Obviously, gay people vote on issues other than gay issues,” said Schmid. “Everyone knows who is better on gay issues. But there are other issues that people think are important.”
Repairing the rift Guerriero said Log Cabin would immediately seek to build bridges between the Bush White House and gays, but he said gay activists would have to also build bridges to the segments of the American electorate that put Bush in office.
“Whether we like it or not, the gay community has a lot of work to do,” Guerriero said. “It has not changed the hearts and minds of Americans in the South and in other key states,” he said.
“Rove’s strategy was very successful, as reprehensible as we may feel it is,” he said.
Schmid cautioned that gay leaders should refrain from attacking Republicans on gay-related issues, saying national and local gay political groups must devise a strategy for educating voters in “the heartland” on gay issues.
“People blame Republicans, but they are reflecting America,” he said. “It’s not that they are all anti-gay. We raised the marriage issue. We raised the bar, and people reacted to that,” he said.
White House cold shoulder Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay political group, which endorsed Kerry, said gay groups sought to work with the Bush administration during the past four years. She said it was the president, not gays, that widened the gay-GOP rift.
“The Human Rights Campaign reached out to a first-term President Bush in the hope that he would truly be a compassionate conservative and be a uniter, as he claimed to be,” Jacques said.
“And that was not to be the case. We have very little expectations that he will change his stripes, although we will always try. We are always willing to work with anyone to move forward fair-minded policies.”
In a seeming contradiction, the exit poll sponsored by the news media outlets, which consisted of a sample of 13,331 voters, showed that voters expressed considerable support for the rights of same-sex couples.
Of those questioned, 26 percent said they support the right of same-sex couples to “legally marry;” 35 percent said they favor “civil union,” indicating a total of 61 percent of those voting in the presidential election favor some form of legal recognition for gay couples.
Thirty-six percent said they wanted “no legal recognition” for same-sex couples.
The poll showed that 21 percent of those saying they voted for Bush favored the right of same-sex couples to legally marry, with 51 percent of Bush voters expressing support for civil unions. Sixty-nine percent of Bush voters favored no legal recognition for same-sex couples.
Among Kerry voters, 77 percent expressed support for gays to legally marry, 48 percent said they favor civil unions, and 30 percent said they favor no legal recognition of same-sex couples.
Black support for Bush stays flat Sean Cahill, NGLTF’s director of research, said the exit poll findings also showed that the African-American vote for Bush increased by only two points, from 9 percent in the 2000 presidential election, to 11 percent this year, according to the exit poll.
Cahill called the increase statistically insignificant and said it indicates efforts by social conservative leaders to use the gay marriage issue to increase support for Bush among African-American voters failed.
The exit poll shows that Kerry won the African-American vote by a margin of 89 percent to 11 percent.
However, the exit poll shows that while Kerry also won the Latino vote, Latinos voted for Bush in greater numbers this year than four years ago, indicating that the gay marriage issue or “moral values” could have played a role in that shift, according to some commentators.
Bush received 42 percent of the Latino vote on Tuesday, compared to 55 percent for Kerry. Four years ago, Bush received 35 percent of the Latino vote.
The increase comes at a time when the Bush administration has angered Latino leaders over immigration policies. Some observers, such as CNN commentator Jeff Greenfield, speculated that “morals” issues prompted many Latinos, especially those in New Mexico, which Kerry had hoped to win, vote for Bush.
“This election shows that the gay community must reassess its strategy,” said gay Republican activist James Driscoll of Virginia, who blames the marriage issue for contributing to Kerry’s defeat and for creating a rift between many gay Republicans and the Bush administration.
Driscoll said that, unlike other key constituency groups, gay leaders did not moderate their political demands, which resulted in an alienation from large numbers of voters.
“The African-American community didn’t ask for reparations for slavery,” Driscoll said. The religious right did not demand an end to all abortions, even though religious right advocates favor making all abortions illegal, he added.
“We have seriously marginalized ourselves on the gay marriage issue,” he said. “This will damage us on other issues, such as non-discrimination laws. I really feel the leadership of our community has to reevaluate this,” he said.
Lou Chibbaro Jr. can be reached at lchibbaro at washblade.com.