Wow...gay millionaires and major political wins

[cally]

The rest of the article shows many successes. This is the type of targetted donations that will get noticed. I hope politicians re-thing whether their anti-Gay agenda is worth it politically.

There is a gay agenda -- winning elections
Gay millionaires and their allies poured unprecedented sums into the 2006 election -- and it worked.

By Kerry Eleveld

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Photo: Gill Foundation

Photo composite; inset: Tim Gill.

Nov. 29, 2006 | Five weeks before the 2004 election, Rep. Sue Kelly, N.Y.-19 , made what seemed to be a safe move for a six-term Republican congresswoman accustomed to winning reelection by comfortable margins. Like 226 other members of the U.S. House, she voted to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have altered the U.S. Constitution to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.

Sure enough, the residents of Kelly's Hudson Valley district returned the moderate Republican to Congress that November with 67 percent of the vote. Voting for a constitutional amendment she had once vowed to oppose seemed to have few negative consequences for her politically -- and so she did it again in July 2006. To the degree either vote was noticed, they mostly helped quiet talk of a future GOP primary challenge from the right.

But at least one constituent who did take notice of what Kelly had done also took offense. This September, openly gay businessman Adam Rose wrote a $500,000 check to Majority Action, a so-called 527 political advocacy group, for the express purpose of unseating Sue Kelly in the November election.

...
Rose is one of five wealthy people in the top 20 donors to federal 527s this election cycle whose contributions were either partially or entirely motivated by an effort to combat anti-gay legislation and defeat anti-gay incumbents. They turned the 2006 election into an object lesson in targeted giving that could fundamentally change the way politicians think about the consequences of taking anti-gay stances. And the money they gave to federal 527s, while considerable, was in several cases only a small portion of the millions they spent on politics in 2006, since much of their cash went to low-profile but vitally important state-level races.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/11/29/gay_millionaires/index.html

[David Zephyr]

1. Great article. Latinos also showed up at the polls...and angry.

How sweet November 7th turned out to be. Thanks for the article, cally.

[ninkasi]

2. I can't tell you how happy this makes me

I spent last week at my married daughter's home, to share Thanksgiving with her and her husband. On Wednesday, she drove to the airport to pick up her best friend of 25 years, and his partner. They had their adopted son, and it was the first time we had been able to see him. He is from the Ukraine, and small for his age, because of the meager meals the orphanage was able to provide. He needed dental work, too.

Now, after a bit more than a year, he is a vibrant, lively, friendly child, a child whose smile blinds you, and whose curiosity about everything is amazing. I watched him with his parents. He is loved, and the love he feels for them is obvious. They are an absolutely beautiful family, and he is made aware of how much he has enriched his parent's lives, and the lives of those of us who love them.

You know what? The narrow minded, hateful bigots who feel it their right to deny his parents the right to marry might be able to keep doing it for a bit longer, but there is absolutely nothing they can do to prevent their love for each other, their joy in their lives, and the warmth and love we who are their friends, and family, feel for them all.

So if you are a republican, or a narrow-minded conservative, and you read this, I hope you can understand that my friend's holidays will be happy, and filled with love, and warmth, and the enjoyment they take in their loved ones, and the joy we feel being with them. Think about that, why don't you? As you try to understand why the love we feel for each other brings us all joy, and you can only feel self-pity, and hatred toward others, remember that you are only reaping the crop of hatred you have sown. If you didn't cause many of the people I love pain, I could almost pity you, myself.

[dsc]

3. I think it is great that Ms. Kelly will have two long years to think

about her vote. We need to make voting against us as dangerous as voting against the right wing. People need to pay for these votes.