The margin of victory - effects of gay vote on the 2000 presidential election and gay issues

Gays voted overwhelmingly for Gore, but Bush's gay support may have hurt Democrats in the close election

Few would argue that Election Day 2000 was unprecedented. For gays and lesbians, the results offered some gains in local races. But despite a huge gay turnout for Democrats nationwide, Ed Flanagan lost his U.S. Senate bid, and Maine's gay rights measure failed. One positive sign: Vermont voters stood by the state's civil unions law, proving that progress, once made, is permanent.

On the eve of the presidential election, Al Gore capped two straight days of campaigning without sleep with a massive outdoor rally in South Beach, a heavily gay and lesbian enclave just outside Miami. Drenched in sweat, his voice hoarse from exhaustion, the vice president implored voters to reach one more Democratic coworker, neighbor, and family member and take them to the polls that Tuesday.

Gore's appeal made no direct reference to gay causes. But the symbolism of the appearance could not have been clearer. The Democratic Party was counting on its most loyal constituencies--Jews, African-Americans, labor union members, gays and lesbians--to push its ticket over the top in the closest presidential race in American history.

"The fact that Gore made South Beach his final stop was astounding," says Robert Bailey, who has studied the gay vote as associate professor of public policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "While, of course, he was appealing to a number of different groups, it really says a lot about the power of the gay vote to swing national elections, especially in the key battleground states."

Murray Edelman, editorial director of Voter News Service, the polling arm of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN, and the Associated Press, also finds the event noteworthy: "There's no question about it. In the closing days of the campaign, Gore's last chance was in motivating his base, and gays and lesbians were a substantial part of his base. They went to bat for him."

But the Log Cabin Republicans boast that the gay vote provided the margin of victory in Florida--for George W. Bush. Working in conjunction with the Bush campaign, Log Cabin chapters in Broward County and Tampa, key Florida battlegrounds, turned out gay Republicans and independents in droves for Bush. "We know for a fact that what we did in Florida made a huge difference for the Republicans," says Kevin Ivers, director of public affairs for Log Cabin. "Look how tight it was. We were the difference. The Bush campaign knew what we did for them in Florida because high-level officials told us after the election how much they appreciated our work. They told us what we did there would not be forgotten."

Indeed, the gay vote is the untold story of the 2000 presidential election. By all accounts, the Democrats' get-out-the-gay-vote strategy was a success, despite the claims of gay Republicans.

While the overall winner of the election remained in question by The Advocate's press time, exit polls indicated that 71% of gay voters cast ballots for Gore and his running mate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, slightly higher than the 66% Clinton and Gore received in 1996 and 1% less than what the Democrats received in 1992. Bush attracted about 25% of the gay vote, and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader 4%, slightly higher than his national share of 3%. Not surprisingly, gay support for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, who made opposition to gay rights central to his platform, did not register in the exit polls. All told, self-identified gays and lesbians represented 4% of the popular vote. The only groups able to deliver a more unified bloc to Gore were Jews and African-Americans, who voted Democratic in proportions of nearly 80% and 90%, respectively.

The gay vote was crucial not just for the candidates. With the ideological composition of the White House, Supreme Court, and Congress hanging in the balance, the outcome of the election is widely seen as crucial to the fate of the nation's gay political agenda. "This was the election in which the moderate center embraced gay issues," says Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay political group that endorsed Gore. "You can't run for national office anymore in this nation and not address gay issues, in the same way that by 1990 you couldn't avoid taking a stand on" abortion rights.

The Democratic National Committee raised at least $6 million, a record, in donations from gays and lesbians. Of even greater value to the party's standard-bearers, hundreds of gay activists fanned out across the country to campaign for Gore. Despite the importance of the gay vote to Gore's political fortunes, his appeals were often surprisingly muted, especially as the election drew near. Gore and Lieberman did little more than reiterate their support for the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the inclusion of sexual orientation in the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

"Several times in the debate, Gore made sort of surreptitious remarks aimed at letting gay people know he was on their side," says Bailey. "But he did it very carefully. Bush made his own appeal to the right wing by invoking the phrase `special rights,' which only the religious right would really understand the full implications of. By and large, both candidates downplayed the issue, especially in the debates."

When it came to the gay vote, Gore was banking on one key polling number in particular. When asked whether the country is on the right track, 72% of gay respondents agreed as opposed to 65% of all voters. Even though the Clinton-Gore administration has produced few concrete legislative victories "there is a lot of positive language coming from the White House about gays," Edelman says, "so it's not surprising gays would assume the country is headed in the right direction."

In the postelection fallout, gay Democrats expressed fury at Ralph Nader, contending that his campaign may have jeopardized what they consider eight years of progress. During the campaign Nader sought to cut into Gore support among gay voters by backing same-sex marriage and other gay rights measures. In campaign swings through states in which Nader was polling particularly well, representatives of the Human Rights Campaign sought to dampen enthusiasm for Nader by reminding voters that the consumer crusader was a late convert to gay causes.

"It was foolish at this juncture in history to play fast and loose with the Supreme Court," says Birch, widely considered to be a potential appointee to a Gore administration. "I spent a lot of my energy trying to win over Nader voters in the last few weeks of the election. I was disappointed Nader supporters never really held him to the fire on his historical lack of concern for gay rights. But we have to recognize the Green Party is probably here to stay, and we have to deal with their concerns forthrightly so they don't keep costing Democrats elections."

Naderites weren't the only ones crowing about possibly denying the White House to the Democrats. In a prepared statement, Log Cabin boasted of helping deliver more than 1 million votes to Bush. During the campaign the group ran radio spots in key states criticizing Gore's trustworthiness and pointing out Bush's inclusion of a gay speaker at the Republican national convention. Also, Log Cabin ran print ads in gay publications exposing Gore's associations with antigay zealot Fred Phelps more than a decade ago: Phelps is known for toting GOD HATES FAGS signs at memorial services for people who have died of AIDS complications. (In a September 1999 interview with The Advocate, Gore called Phelps's protests "breathtakingly cruel--and a clear demonstration of how malignant evil can be.") The print ads made no mention of Bush's gay rights record as governor of Texas, where he supported the state's sodomy law and a proposed ban on gay adoption and opposed hate-crimes legislation that would have included crimes based on sexual orientation.

Despite this record, Bush received 1%-2% more of the gay vote than Bob Dole in 1996 and at least 10% more than President Bush in 1992. The Texas governor apparently won the support of many gay voters who supported Reform Party candidate Ross Perot in those two previous elections.

"It looks as if Bush peeled off some of the gay vote for Perot," says Bailey. "The true battle for the heart of the Republican Party was between the congressional Republicans and the Republican governors like Bush, who are much more moderate on some issues. Because they tried to impeach the president and shut down the government, the [former House speaker Newt] Gingrich crew ended up looking like a bunch of fools. That left an opening for Bush to recapture the political center. The religious right agreed to stay on the sidelines. That helped with mainstream and independent suburban voters this time around, contributing to the closeness of the race."

Find more on the gay vote as well as out complete election coverage at www.advocate.com

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