Although President Obama was feeling the love in Tampa last week at his campaign appearance at Hillsborough Community College, he faces a host of problems in his bid to be re-elected this November.
At the top of the list is the country’s continuing anemic economic performance. In election polls, the one statistic where the president constantly falls short in comparison to Mitt Romney is in handling of the economy, considered the issue of the campaign.
But while there might not be much Obama can do there, he does have some weapons up his sleeve, and he’s been deploying them in recent weeks. Earlier this month he hit the political equivalent of a home run with his declaration that the Department of Homeland Security would no longer deport up to 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. before they were 16 and have graduated from high school. Republicans howled that the executive order was unconstitutional, but there was surprisingly little resistance to the actual policy.
And on May 9, Obama electrified many in the LGBT community when he announced his support for same-sex marriage, though his support was only rhetorical and carried no specific policy recommendations.
Nevertheless it was a big fucking deal, as Vice President Joe Biden might say.
“I was elated,” says Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida. “Not only was the president of the United States taking this stand, he was showing people who were teetering on the issue a path forward toward fairness.”
Political pundits such as Jon Meacham and Mark Halperin on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program recently derided the idea that Obama showed courage in coming out for same-sex marriage, just three days after Vice President Biden voiced his support on Meet The Press. Meacham cited a story in Politico that Obama’s team was annoyed with the veep for pushing up the timetable on the president’s announcement — supposedly intended to be made in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this September.
But much of the gay community applauds Obama for making the announcement nearly six months before the election.
“For a president who’s in a difficult election cycle, to me personally that was a sign of courage,” says Susan McGrath of the Pinellas County Stonewall Democrats.
McGrath specifically refers to the swing state of North Carolina, where his announcement might prove harmful. Obama barely won there in ’08, and Dems are hungry to win it again this year, which is one reason Charlotte is hosting the convention. But the night before the president made his news, the North Carolina electorate overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage, becoming the 32nd straight state to do so.
That comes despite the fact that polls continue to show increased support for the measure.
For example, a poll taken by Public Policy Polling earlier this month showed Floridians still believe same-sex marriage should be illegal, but only by a 3-point margin (45-42). That’s a major change from just last October, when Florida voters were last polled on the matter by the organization. At that time it was a 48-37 percent margin against same-sex marriage.
Three years earlier, Floridians voted by a 62-38 percent margin for Amendment Two, which bans same-sex marriage in the Sunshine State.
There are four more states voting on the issue this November (Washington, Minnesota, Maine and Maryland), with some activists believing the prospects are good in Washington and Maine.
GOP political consultant and Bay News 9 analyst Chris Ingram believes “The Bradley effect” may be in play.
That’s a reference to the phenomenon of black candidates faring better in polls than at the voting booths, with the prime example being former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. Running to become California’s first black governor in 1982, Bradley led in polls going into the race but ended up losing to his white GOP opponent, George Deukmejian.
“I think that’s absolutely going on,” Ingram says.
John Stemberger with the Florida Family Planning Council agrees. The organization was behind Florida’s 2008 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He contends that any gay rights measures “underpoll,” and attributes that to the gay rights movement creating a “hostile atmosphere for anyone who disagrees with them.”
Then again, few in the gay community believe the electorate should decide the civil rights of a minority.
“If we had to vote on all the civil rights issues, we probably would not have made the progress we have made so far, so it should not be up for a vote,” says Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin Beckner.
Another openly gay elected official in the Bay area, St. Pete City Councilman Steve Kornell, agrees.
“The whole purpose of certain parts of the Constitution is to protect minorities,” he says.
Most political analysts say it’s hard to detect whether the move by the president, which by itself changes nothing on the ground, helps or hurts his chances of being re-elected this fall.
Nadine Smith with Equality Florida thinks it will be a winner for him. “It has given people permission to not be as prejudiced as they thought they were supposed to be.”
Smith also says young voters see this as the civil rights issue of their generation, and thus will activate that part of his base which fueled the huge turnout in 2008.
Mark Anderson, a financial consultant in Tampa, says he thinks the move cuts both ways. “In conservative states, that may drive them away. On the other hand, some people who are sympathetic to the cause who have been apathetic and not tending to vote, may vote because of this in some blue states.”
There was initial concern that he could lose some votes in the black community, particularly here in the South where social conservatism is prevalent.
The Rev. James Favorite of Beulah Baptist Institutional Church in Tampa also serves with Pastors on Patrol, a street ministry. That group came out against same-sex marriage, but said they still support the president.
Jarvis El-Amin is a community activist in Tampa. He says that unlike other constituencies, the black community hasn’t grown disappointed with Obama, and definitely won’t desert him on this issue.
“If you say something against the first black president, the price you’re going to pay is so much grief,” he says. “The honeymoon is over for me, so we should hold him accountable like we hold other presidents,” El-Amin says, but believes that’s he an anomaly.
One tangible plus for Obama was that his support of same-sex marriage released some big money from a demographic that was already keeping him afloat, now that the Wall Street crowd has soured on him.
A CNN analysis of President Obama’s biggest fundraisers (known as bundlers) earlier this month showed that at least 33 — or about one in every 16 bundlers — were openly gay. Together, they raised at least $8 million for the campaign between January and the end of March.
Sally Phillips, president of the Florida GLBT Democratic Caucus, says Obama’s announcement “galvanized our community.” The Hillsborough Democrat says Obama’s declaration was a rebuke to those in the community who were saying he hadn’t done enough.
“Well, you know what? He has,” she says. “He’s stuck his neck out for us, and now what we have to do is have his back.”
Susan McGrath with Stonewall Democrats concurs, saying she has some concerns that there are voters who won’t back him on equality issues. “That just means we have to just get out and work harder, we need to be able to speak to voters who are maybe involved in everyday life and they see value about what he’s doing, but they haven’t been able to get engaged in the campaign.”
The gay community also salutes Obama for being able to end Bill Clinton’s egregious “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military. Clinton also signed DOMA — the Defense of Marriage Act — when he ran for re-election in 1996. Last year President Obama announced that his administration would no longer defend that law in court.
Politically active members of the gay community say there are plenty of other laws that they champion while waiting for gay marriage to become the law of the land, such as passing ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) in Congress.
Christian Berle is deputy executive director of the national Log Cabin Republicans organization. He notes that there are over 4 million LGBT members across 29 states (including Florida) where it’s legal for an employer to discriminate based on an employee’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
“This prohibits individuals from showing up at work as who they are, which is hard-working individuals.” Berle says his group has been lobbying in both the House and Senate for the proposal.
In local politics, the biggest new thing has been the advent of domestic partnership registries for both same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples. The trend began after Tampa City Councilwoman Yolie Capin, inspired by Orlando’s City Council passage of such an ordinance in December, proposed a Tampa measure in February, and the Council passed it with zero rancor in March.
Gulfport, St. Petersburg and Clearwater recently followed suit, and Pinellas County could be next. (Read about some newly-registered couples in this week’s Pride Guide supplement.)
Closer to home, Jim Pease of the Tampa Bay Log Cabin chapter says he is working to get Hillsborough County commissioners to pass such an ordinance.
When asked about the county’s reputation as not the most gay-friendly local government, Pease said, “I’m not going to waste my time for something that I don’t think that we can at least have a shot at.”
So where do gay Republicans stand with Mitt Romney? The Log Cabin Republicans continue to resist endorsing the GOP’s presumptive nominee. Christian Berle says his organization is definitely not impressed with the former Massachusetts governor’s stance on same-sex marriage. Romney supports a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
“We strongly disagree with Governor Romney when it comes to marriage freedom,” Berle said by telephone from Washington, adding that “we raise it with the campaign and party consistently.”
Of course, Romney is even against civil unions, for which George W. Bush announced his support eight years ago.
The Log Cabin Republican official said Romney’s stance on such matters “is going to turn off many Americans and lose a lot of their votes.”
An AP-Gfk poll released last Friday showed that Americans trust Obama over Romney on social issues, 52-36 percent. But will that be the edge in an economy that has had 40 months of over 8 percent unemployment? We’ll get back to you in mid-November on that.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2012.