Missouri Gay Marriage vote and prospects for November

I missed the story on the vote a few days ago, so sorry if this is posted elsewhere. I'm from missouri, but i don't necessarily agree with what the voters there have shown me, although i do agree that this is a question best decided on a state level. the vote in missouri does however have large implications for novemeber. first, the voter turnout was extremely high. second, despite being hugely outspent, supports of the ban won overwhelmingly with 70% of the vote. several other swing states will be holding similar referendums on gay marriage on november 2. on this evidence, it looks likely to drive conservative voter participation way up. so while i disagree with the ban on principal, but agree with that this is the proper forum for the question to be decided in, it lookslike a big plus for republicans in november.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/campaign/05gays.html

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The New York Times
August 5, 2004
Message of Voters in Missouri Against Gay Marriage Leaves Backers Discouraged
By MONICA DAVEY

ST. LOUIS, Aug. 4 - Missouri voters' overwhelming decision to bar gay marriage with a constitutional amendment has sent a resounding message around the country.

With at least nine other states expected to vote on similar amendments this fall, including four swing states in the presidential race, leaders on each side of the issue viewed Missouri's 70 percent approval of the amendment on Tuesday as a glimpse of what might lie ahead.

Supporters of amendments to ban gay marriage in states like Ohio pointed to Missouri's record election turnout - 41 percent in a primary election that in most years draws 15 percent to 25 percent -as a clear and exhilarating sign that the issue will lure their voters to the polls.

"What this has done is brought the people of faith to the table like I have never seen before," said Phil Burress, chairman of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, the group leading Ohio's effort to amend its Constitution. "This is what the Democrats biggest fear was - that something would energize the people of faith. And it has."

Opponents of the amendments said that they were distressed, even hurt, by the outcome in Missouri, but that they planned to study exactly what had happened in the brief months of campaigning there to learn which strategies had worked and which failed. The spending had been lopsided here, with supporters of gay marriage spending $450,000 to fight the measure with television advertising and polling, compared with $19,000 spent by opponents.

"Still, we were just a little bit out-organized," said Seth Kilbourn, national field director for the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington group that helped pay for the Missouri opposition. "We can't let that happen again."

Missouri is only the first in a wave of states that have chosen to hold elections on the question since Massachusetts' highest court ruled last year that gay marriage was not prohibited under that state's Constitution. State law in Missouri and in more than 30 other states already bars same-sex marriages. But organizers in states around the nation said they feared situations like the one in Massachusetts and decided that amendments to their state constitutions were the only sure way to ward off a similar fate.

In the days leading up to Missouri's voting, polls had shown that the ban on gay marriage would very likely pass, but with the support of about 60 percent of voters, so the size of the approval startled some people. The amendment passed in every county except the City of St. Louis, where it failed by about 3,500 votes out of about 60,000 cast.

Few had anticipated the scale of the turnout either. In state records kept since 1980, there had never been comparable participation in an August primary. Nearly 1.5 million people voted, a fact that Vicky Hartzler, spokeswoman for the Coalition to Protect Marriage in Missouri, attributed to grass-roots efforts, including notes in church bulletins, neighbors holding up signs along busy thoroughfares and preachers talking to their congregations.

"Even though we were outspent and we had a national political machine descend on our state to try and defeat this," Ms. Hartzler said, "people got out and worked and called neighbors and said a lot of prayers."

On Friday, leaders of Missouri's anti-gay-marriage effort will offer advice in a conference call to those pushing for amendments in other states, she said.

Her own best advice to the other states, Ms. Hartzler said, would not be about politics. "The No. 1 thing is prayer," she said, "and a passion for protecting the sanctity of marriage."

The group that led the opposition to a ban in Missouri, the Constitution Defense League, said it would also probably share observations with its counterparts elsewhere. Next month, voters in Louisiana will cast ballots on a similar amendment, and even Christopher Daigle, a leader of the opposition there, conceded on Wednesday that he would not be surprised if that state's results mirrored Missouri's.

"I guess we had hoped there would better news from there so that might be able to provide some momentum and encouragement for us down here," Mr. Daigle said.

In November, 8 other states - and perhaps as many as 11 - will vote on similar provisions, placing the question of banning gay marriage on the same ballots as the presidential race. The swing states of Arkansas, Michigan, Ohio and Oregon are among the 11.

Some opponents of the amendments accused Republicans of using gay marriage as a tool to draw out large numbers of conservative voters in November. "This is a deliberate effort to energize the right-wing base," said Ron Schlittler, the executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Republican officials in Michigan and Ohio disputed those claims and pointed out that Massachusetts' highest court - not Republican political consultants - had prompted the flurry of proposed amendments.