Aug 28, 2007News: HRC Pushed Democrats in Local Elections in New Hampshire
By Sarah Liebowitz
(USA) - In last year's elections, an US gay-rights group saw the potential for New Hampshire Democrats to win control of the State House. The group, the Human Rights Campaign, proceeded to spend almost $150,000 on New Hampshire state races, much of which went to the Senate Democratic Caucus. The group also provided physical help: An employee traveled to the state to assist with get-out-the-vote efforts and phone-banks. "What we knew in each of those states was that a change in the Legislature meant a change in the issues that our community cares so deeply about," said the group's president, Joe Solmonese, referring to New Hampshire, Iowa and Oregon, the three states the group focused on.
The Human Rights Campaign, as everyone knows by now, bet right. Democrats wrested control of the House and Senate from Republicans, giving the party simultaneous control of both legislative chambers and the corner office for the first time since the 19th century. And in their first year in power, Democrats ushered a civil unions bill into law, winning praise from gay-rights groups.
The focus on New Hampshire marked a change in strategy for the HRC. For years, the group focused on national races, donating money and assistance to candidates for Congress and the White House. But in 2006, the group added local politics to its repertoire. And in each of the three states, lawmakers proceeded to pass laws enhancing rights for gay and lesbian people. Oregon lawmakers approved domestic partnerships, while Iowa lawmakers granted gay and lesbian residents more protection against discrimination.
"We understood that in order to change things at the federal level, we had to play a role in changing things locally," Solmonese said. "Members of Congress typically look back to their districts to get a sense of where their constituency is on an issue."
While HRC officials hoped a Democratic-led Legislature would advance gay rights legislation, New Hampshire lawmakers made no promises, Solmonese said.
"How could you make any sort of promises?" said Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley, who helped engineer the Democratic takeover of the Senate. "You had no idea what the results would be." Buckley, who is gay, has known Human Rights Campaign staff for years.
In fact, Solmonese said, he didn't speak to New Hampshire candidates about civil unions before voting day. The exception was Senate President Sylvia Larsen, who met with Solmonese once when she was in Washington, D.C. The conversation included a discussion of the prospects for civil unions legislation, he said.
"I knew that for someone like Sylvia Larsen and others who could potentially be in the leadership, that their vision for New Hampshire included making sure that everyone in New Hampshire had an equitable part in the experience," Solmonese said.
Larsen, a Concord Democrat who became Senate president following November's elections, echoed Solmonese's description of the meeting. "There was not a big discussion about legislation that they wanted to see come out of it, but they felt that by helping Democratic efforts they were moving a majority that would be more understanding of the discrimination" facing same-sex couples, she said.
Buckley helped link the group with New Hampshire races, and the HRC eventually donated about $55,000 to the Senate Democratic Caucus in New Hampshire, Solmonese said. Buckley "was instrumental in really connecting our effort with those good, fair-minded candidates we were attempting to help in New Hampshire," he said.
The group was one of many organizations that donated to candidates and political parties in last year's elections. Groups such as the New Hampshire Automobile Dealers, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and New Hampshire Realtors are among those that contributed to state races.
After the civil unions bill passed, a common Republican critique of the issue centered on the lack of public discussion of the issue during the 2006 campaign. Opponents argued that Democrats didn't campaign on a platform favoring civil unions, and that as a result, voters never had sufficient opportunity to weigh in on the issue.
"When voters gave (Gov.) John Lynch the Democratic majority he asked for last fall, it wasn't because voters wanted to redefine marriage or make radical changes to social policy," GOP Chairman Fergus Cullen said after the Senate passed the civil unions bill.
But if Senate Democrats didn't set out to create civil unions, they unanimously backed the bill after it moved through the House.
"I actually thought it was a pretty long shot that civil unions would pass, even with our membership in the majority," Larsen said. Newly in the leadership, Senate Democrats "had our sights on other topics; it wasn't on our list," she said.
It's unclear whether Senate Democrats can continue to rely on the Human Rights Campaign for money and assistance in next year's elections, although Buckley said: "I think that I have had a relationship with the Human Rights Campaign for well over a decade, and I'd continue to have that relationship with their leadership and with their staff in the coming years."
The group wants to ensure that candidates who support gay rights retain their seats at the national level. At the state level, "it will be a look at where might we have an impact," Solmonese said.
In addition to supporting local races as a way to influence federal policy, Solmonese views statewide contests as a way to create a "pipeline of fair-minded people who might eventually come to Congress." And finally, he said, there's the potential to help gay and lesbian residents living in various states gain more rights.
In New Hampshire's case, Solmonese wasn't surprised by the speed with which lawmakers passed civil unions.
"In each of the states we were involved with, it happened pretty quickly," he said. "What was understood in these states was that it was part of a bigger vision for taking a state in the direction that America was going, which was a more fair-minded and inclusive place."
