If David Paterson Was More Popular, Would We Have Won Gay Marriage?
The New York State Senate voted on marriage equality legislation, and it lost. Badly. Not one Republican voted for the measure, and eight Democrats joined them in voting down gay marriage.
In the wake of the vote, openly gay State Sen. Tom Duane said that he felt betrayed by his fellow legislators -- many of whom, he thought, pledged to support marriage equality legislation. And New York's Governor, David Paterson, weighed in by saying that the vote was a setback, even though he still believed that equal rights would prevail down the road.
Gov. Paterson is one of the most tireless advocates for marriage equality in New York. Yet, despite his persistence, as well as the hard work of groups like the Empire State Pride Agenda and dozens of politicians supportive of LGBT rights, the vote that came down today was well short of where it needed to be. The final tally was 38 votes against gay marriage, and only 24 in favor of it.
A lot of folks are stewing over what went wrong today. Why did absolutely zero Republicans vote for marriage equality? Why did eight Democrats -- including six from the New York City area -- vote against gay marriage? Why did the bill come up for a vote at all if the possibility that it would lose so dramatically was there?
They're all good questions. But perhaps the hardest one to ask, because it involves scrutinizing a really good ally to the LGBT population of New York, is whether Gov. David Paterson's low popularity had a hand in losing marriage equality.
To his credit, of course, there likely wouldn't have been a vote at all today on marriage equality if it wasn't for the persistence of Gov. David Paterson. But the fact remains that Paterson's approval ratings are horrible, with somewhere around two-thirds of the entire state praying that the man doesn't run for re-election.
With numbers that bad, one has to wonder how much political pull the state's Executive Office has to help lobby for votes.
Or, to put it another way, if Gov. Paterson's approval ratings were at 60 percent instead of balancing around the upper 20s or low 30s, could the Governor have pressured any of the eight democrats, not to mention the 30 Republicans, that voted no on gay marriage? Probably. The bully pulpit tends to be a lot more effective when public opinion is behind the guy running it.
That's not to take anything away from Gov. Paterson's commitment to the issue of same-sex marriage. He's clearly there on this issue, and willing to put himself out there on it. When marriage equality becomes law in New York, which it will someday, people will remember Gov. Paterson's efforts and hard work.
But today, it's hard to forget that the state's biggest champion for LGBT equality has an approval rating that mirrors Dick Cheney's. And with numbers like that, you can't expect to persuade weak-kneed politicians who fail to act on the courage of their convictions, and instead rely on how they see the political winds blowing.
Michael Jones
is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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