Issue 1 wedge effect in Ohio

[jmknapp]

Here's a web page with some interesting charts regarding Ohio state issue #1 (gay marriage ban) correlated with Kerry support among white conservatives, white liberals and blacks:

Ohio Issue 1

[Eloriel]

1. Wow - that last chart

certainly explains why it's called a wedge issue, doesn't it?

[jhgatiss]

2. I'm really interested in this....

I'm not sure if you caught the Dispatch article (before you cancelled your subscription after their Bush endorsement of course) before the election about the funding of groups related to issue 1. The article said that the opposition group (Ohioans for Protecting the Constitution) had disclosed their backers (mostly relatively small donations with large cash infusions from the HRC and a notable $10k donation from a Mr. Gerald Springer (wonder who that is, huh?). To the point, the group supporting issue 1, Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, had revealed little of their funding sources. At the time of the article's printing (and my last check of the state funding database yesterday), the group had only reported a $50 from their founder (and three times married) Phil Burress along with a $3419 "in kind" contribution from the parent organization Coalition for Community Values. The Dispatch estimated it cost them over $500,000 to circulate the petitions and get Issue 1 on the ballot. Where did the rest of that money come from? And is it legal that they haven't disclosed it yet? (I'm betting that it came from someone very wealthy and close to Bush a'la Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.)

Any campaign finance experts out there want to take a stab at this?

[jmknapp]

3. I canceled my Dispatch subscription back in 1992 I think

When they censored a Doonesbury strip featuring Dan Quayle.

On the Issue 1 funding, I wonder if the signature-gatherers weren't paid (a la the Nadir campaign at $1/signature) and where that money might have come from. I saw one guy doing it who looked one step away from a street person, a black fellow working the crowd at the Bush rally Sept. 1, who said he was "undecided" where I asked who he was voting for.

[jhgatiss]

4. I would say that they were definitely paid.

I picked up an article in one of the local papers describing some of the arm-twisting, homophobic tactic that they were using at county fairs to elicit signatures. I think it was in either the Outlook or Gay People's Chronicle. They were saying horribly tasteless things like, "Sign the petition to ban the fags!" Or something like that...

Anyways - that all plugs into my desire to find out who footed the bill for this piece of bigotry.

[jmknapp]

5. Speaking of republicanus ingnorati...

And their modes of sppech and thought, here's the way a freeper described the political geography in Franklin County:

"Overall the political geography isn't surprising at all. The areas that went heaviest for Kerry are either slums (south side, Hilltop, west side, near-OSU) or 'trendy' strongholds of social-liberalism infested by queers and the yuppies that support them (Victorian Village, Clintonville, Old Towne East and of course, German*bil* Village). My best guess about Kerry's big support in Upper Arlington: those old-guard Republican stalwarts are either retiring to Florida or dying off, and their replacements in the neighborhood are dweeby OSU professors and other academic types (educrats)."

[jhgatiss]

6. Where the hell did you get that from?

[jmknapp]

7. Free Republic

of course.

[jhgatiss]

8. I don't even want to know....

I would just get angry if I read that site - I'm sure of it!