The shift speaks to the area’s evolving demographic makeup — and how voters in places like St. Pete and Tampa increasingly demand that candidates for local office don’t just preach “tolerance,” but welcome everyone regardless of whom they love or their gender expression. The desire to show pride and quash intolerance has morphed into an active network that has helped shape the cities’ political conversations.
“When you look at the population and the activity level of the LGBT community, I think that’s pretty remarkable,” said Susan McGrath, head of both the Pinellas County Stonewall Democrats, a group that rates candidates on their LGBTQ-friendliness, and the county’s Democratic Executive Committee.
It certainly wasn’t that way a dozen years ago.
In 1991, Tampa became the first city in Florida to pass a human rights ordinance provision that extended protections to people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In the years that followed, groups like Equality Florida sprang out of activists’ desire to make more gains, and the pride celebration in St. Petersburg (which arose in the wake of the failed Tampa Pride) grew in importance.
“Equality [Florida] started here, essentially was headquartered here,” said Brian Longstreth, a co-founder of St. Pete Pride. “So there’s always been a fair amount of involvement from them. And then with St. Pete Pride in 2003, it just brought a lot more visibility to the LGBT community here. And when you had then-City Council member [and current mayor] Rick Kriseman openly supporting the LGBT community, I think they returned that in kind as supporting him in his different campaigns that he ran through over the years.”
Then the city’s voters elected three openly gay candidates to City Council — first Steve Kornell, then Amy Foster and Rice. Even red-leaning Largo now has an openly gay city commissioner in Michael Smith (who’s also one of this year’s St. Pete Pride Grand Marshals).
“Even more to that fact is that, by and large, people don’t really talk about that anymore,” McGrath said. “People are judged on the quality of the work they’re doing and the impact they’re able to make in a positive manner on our city. But, yes, St. Petersburg is a wonderful, welcoming, affirmative city and that is shown every time there’s an election.”
And it’s not just in politics.
“You can walk neighborhoods, Tropical Shores and other places, and you will see Pride flags hanging year-round,” said Barclay Harless, a banker who is running for St. Pete City Council’s District 2 seat. “So it’s an important community group. Frankly, being in business, there are a large amount of LGBTQ-owned businesses — small businesses and medium-sized businesses. And so being a business banker, I’ve encountered that over the last few years. The LGBT community is a large influence not just on elections, but on art, on business and other aspects. So it’s important. It’s an economic driver for the city.”
Earlier this month, Harless’s campaign announced a coalition of LGBTQ individuals’ endorsement of him to coincide with Pride Month, including Michael Smith and board members of Equality Florida. His opponent, Brandi Gabbard, was quoted as saying the two contenders’ positions on equality are probably similar.
Harless is straight, and the endorsement won’t be the only instance of LGBTQ leaders vouching for a candidate they consider an ally. In the crowded City Council District 6 race, for example, Rice said she is leaning toward supporting Gina Driscoll, who is straight, over James Jackson, an openly gay candidate in that 10-person contest.
“I think people really care more about the issues the candidate stands for than anything. I don’t think people look at sexual orientation or other kind of identity politics first. I think people care more about where they stand on the issues,” Rice said. “Luckily, I think we’re getting to a point where more and more candidates are certainly more evolved in LGBT issues. It doesn’t mean you always have to vote for the gay person in the race… And that’s kind of what we hope for, is to, oddly, get to a sense where it doesn’t matter as much.”
But embracing diversity means embracing all groups, Rice said.
“You can’t pick and choose what minority group you want to [embrace],” she said.
There’s no way of really knowing what impact LGBT endorsements will have or whether there’s a powerful “gay vote” capable of swaying, say, the upcoming St. Pete mayoral election, where Kriseman is in a seven-way race to keep his seat.
But if it’s hard to precisely quantify LGBT voters’ potential clout, it seems fairly obvious that candidates who don’t preach equality — or, worse, openly oppose it — fare poorly in cities where rainbow flags are part of the everyday landscape. And if LGBT voters do play a significant part in determining the outcome of the mayoral race, it would certainly not be the first time they did.
“In St. Petersburg you can see in prior elections, I think it has had some real impact,” said Darryl Paulson, a professor emeritus of political science at University of South Florida St. Petersburg. “The previous mayor [Bill Foster] who lost to Kriseman… that race in part was impacted. You can’t say that was the deciding thing, but you can’t say anything was the deciding thing in any election. But I think that issue in [Foster’s] campaign certainly had some impact. And you could make a strong case that Foster lost that campaign because of how he handled the gay-transgender community. And you’d have to say he didn’t handle it very well.”
Foster was a conservative Republican seeking reelection in a progressive city that instead went for Kriseman, a relatively progressive Democrat. Kriseman’s most formidable opponent in the current race, former mayor Rick Baker, is far more conservative than Kriseman and doesn’t have a fraction of his cred when it comes to the issue at hand. Like Foster, Baker refused to march in Pride parades or issue proclamations about Pride while he was mayor, and even during this, an election year, he remained noncommittal when asked by CL if he would march. But he told CL he would do things differently if elected, and would issue a proclamation acknowledging Pride each year. [At press time, Baker had not responded to an email asking for comment on the potential influence of gay voters on the election.]
In terms of concrete policy, LGBTQ-friendly policymakers support measures like human rights ordinances (HROs) that include provisions that prevent employers from firing you for being gay or trans. Prior to marriage equality, they’d set up domestic partner registries so city employees’ same-sex partners could receive the same benefits a spouse would. And, both in terms of finance and spirit, they support events that highlight diversity, like Pride.
As Longstreth noted earlier, Kriseman supported pro-LGBTQ measures before they were cool — as a member of St. Pete City Council, as a state lawmaker and as mayor.
In an interview during a recent campaign event, Kriseman said he doesn’t see the community as a voting bloc he needs to reach out to, but rather a group he needs to serve.
“Let me be clear on this: the LGBT community is important to our city,” said Kriseman, who counts officiating a same-sex wedding at City Hall days after marriage equality became law of the land among his “proudest moments.”
“I don’t look at the community from the standpoint of a candidate. I look at the community from the standpoint of the mayor and the impact the LGBT community has on this city, both from a diversity standpoint and from an economic standpoint. And so anything I do with the community isn’t based on the fact that I’m running for reelection. It’s because this section of our community, this group in our community, is important to the city. They’re an important part of what makes St. Pete St. Pete.”
The question is whether that will translate to votes in August or November, when there will be a likely runoff election.
“I think the Democrats certainly do have an advantage if you just look at it from a numerical basis with the gay-transgender vote, but it certainly is not an assured thing,” Paulson said. “This community has become far more politically active in the past decade and its vote cannot be taken for granted in terms of where it’s going to go. A lot of times the assumption is the Democrats have that vote wrapped up, so to speak. And that would be a bad assumption for any Democratic party candidate to make.”
After all, no group of voters is monolithic. There are gay Republicans and transgender conservatives out there. Even if they’re just not as visible or as common as their Dem-leaning counterparts, they may agree with someone like Baker on, say, the Pier or on which mayor, former or present, deserves blame in the city’s wastewater infrastructure crisis.
“They’re concerned about bread-and-butter issues,” Paulson said. “They’re concerned about housing prices. They’re concerned about taxes as well.”
Even if issues like taxes and infrastructure are universally important to residents, McGrath said, vocally pro-equality candidates are always going to draw more support.
“I know a lot of LGBT people in St. Petersburg,” McGrath said. “I can count the people that do not support Mayor Kriseman on one hand… Not that LGBT voters are single-issue voters. We’re not. But it transcends beyond supporting the LGBT community.”
Although no politician can expect votes from every single member of a given group, there’s huge demand for LGBTQ-friendly candidates, giving the overwhelming support for equality that exists among the general population, especially here.
“Equality issues are often a litmus test, not only for LGBT people but our allies,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida. “I think the impact of the LGBT community is even broader than our numeric presence, which is considerable in this part of the state.”
This article appears in Jun 22-29, 2017.