Courting the Gay Vote - presidential candidates for year 2000

Progressive, The, Sept, 1999 by John Nichols

When Vice President Al Gore showed up for a June meeting with young people at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center, he was confronted by a skeptical Javier Garcia.

"I want to know exactly why you're here," said Garcia, twenty, challenging Gore with unusual bluntness.

Taken aback, Gore responded in classic political jargon. "I'm here to learn and to pay honor to the place," he said and praised the center for "helping to change attitudes and abolish some irrational discrimination that is all too common."

In spite of Gore's game effort, Garcia said he was "suspicious" that the visit might have something to do with the Vice President's desire to get an early start on the 2000 Presidential campaign.

Garcia, a polite young man who presented the Vice President with a book of poems by homeless gay and lesbian youths, had reason for his skepticism. After all, Gore's challenger for the Democratic Presidential nomination, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Democrat of New Jersey, had appeared at the Center just one week earlier. Even as the Vice President offered his platitudes, his aides were dueling with Bradley's over which campaign had been the first to come up with the idea of making a Gay Pride Month visit to the Los Angeles center.

As Campaign 2000 gears up, electioneering and fundraising events targeted at the gay and lesbian community are headlining campaign schedules. In May, Gore met in Washington, D.C., with forty-five prominent lesbian and gay community activists, including executives and board members of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, AIDS Action, the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the National Black Lesbian and Gay Task Force, and the National Latina/Latino Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Organization.

Gore then whirled through a schedule of events set up to coincide with Gay Pride Month activities in San Francisco and Los Angeles. But when he got there, he found that Bradley had already covered much of the turf.

Gore has gone so far as to request a "gay reading list" from State Representative Carole Migden, Democrat of California. Meanwhile, Bradley aides have begun setting up one-on-one conversations with prominent gay and lesbian officials around the country--including U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, and veteran activist and Democratic fundraiser David Mixner--so the candidate can "get a feel for the community."

Despite their outreach, however, neither Gore nor Bradley has been willing to take the courageous positions that could inspire genuine enthusiasm among lesbian and gay voters. True, both Gore and Bradley have endorsed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and national hate-crimes legislation. But, so far, their campaigns have shied away from the bold stances--support for gay marriage, for federal domestic partnership protections, and for a dramatic redirection of health care and research funding priorities to reflect the concerns of gay men and lesbians. It is these stances that might win the confidences of young people like Garcia, who listened intently to Gore's rap at the Los Angeles center, but still ended up asking, "What can you say to make us believe you will help the gay community?"

That question gets to the heart of the issue. But it doesn't always get a satisfactory response. While Presidential candidates are going out of their way to solicit support from lesbians and gays in the run-up to the 2000 election, their enthusiasm for votes and campaign contributions is not always matched by a willingness to do right by the targeted voters. As a result, some activists simply turn off to politics, while others struggle to discern subtle distinctions between candidates who speak in the same stilted--some would even say coded--political language. Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political group, describes Gore's relationship with the community as "solid and deep" while she says Bradley "is not a stand-out" when it comes to advocacy for lesbian and gay rights. Yet, neither the Vice President nor his only serious rival for the Democratic nomination can claim to have adopted some positions that are clearly within the mainstream of current lesbian and gay rights advocacy.

As an example, both men supported the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, designed by the Christian right to bar lesbians and gays from marrying and to stir up anti-gay sentiment at the state and national levels. When asked during their June tours of California about an upcoming state vote on an anti-gay marriage ballot proposal, both candidates shied away from the issue. Gore produced nothing more than a pledge to study the California initiative before taking a stand.

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force political director Rebecca Isaacs calls Gore's position "incredibly unhelpful and disappointing." Similarly, when Gore proposed in May to direct more federal dollars to "faith-based" groups, lesbian and gay activists joined People for the American Way and the Interfaith Alliance in raising serious concerns about whether taxpayer dollars would end up funding religious organizations that promote anti-gay messages.