Gay and lesbian voters emerged as one of the most cohesive blocks in Tuesday`s presidential election, giving a huge majority of their votes to President-elect Bill Clinton, according to two national polls.
At the same time, openly gay and lesbian candidates won 27 of the 52 races they entered, ranging from Congress to local office.
Nationally, the number of openly gay elected officials rose to 75 from 64.
”That looks to me like a spectacular success rate,” said William Schneider, a political analyst of the American Enterprise Institute. ”Only a few years ago it would have been politically suicidal for someone to run as a hom*osexual.”
Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, called the 52 percent success rate for gay and lesbian candidates a ”sign of gradually evolving public tolerance.”
An election night telephone poll by Overlooked Opinions, a Chicago-based market and opinion research firm specializing in gay issues, showed 89 percent support for Clinton among the 1,152 gay voters surveyed.
An exit poll by Voter Research and Surveys of 10,124 voters showed that 70 percent of hom*osexual and bisexual voters supported Clinton.
Gans believes the 89 percent figure is more accurate.
”This election marks a rite of passage,” said Robert Bray, spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. ”It is the first time we voted as a block. We went from social pariah to political partner.”
An Oregon initiative that would have defined hom*osexuality as ”unnatural and perverse” was defeated, but a Colorado measure to prohibit laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation was approved. Attempts to repeal gay rights laws were defeated in Portland, Maine, but approved in Tampa.
Gay activists worry that opponents of gay rights will introduce measures like Colorado`s in other states and they are concerned that in Oregon 44 percent of voters supported a law that many say would have legalized discrimination.
But they are heartened by most of the election results and a little surprised to finally ”be at the table,” said William Waybourn, executive director of the Lesbian and Gay Victory Fund.
”We have turned an immense corner from being a special-interest group to being part of the team,” Waybourn said. ”This is the first time the head of a major political party has campaigned on gay and lesbian issues. This is new to us, and we are challenged by it.”
The Victory Fund, founded in 1991 to support gay and lesbian candidates, gave $233,000 to 12 candidates, Waybourn said.
The Human Rights Campaign Fund, a gay and lesbian political action committee that contributes money to congressional candidates who support gay issues regardless of their sexual orientation, gave $718,000 to 179 candidates, said Tim McFeeley, executive director.
”Clinton did a great job in adopting many of the issues that we fight for and in not being the least bit ashamed or apologetic to have gay people as advisers in his campaign,” McFeeley said.
Clinton pledged to lift the ban on hom*osexuals in the military, said he would support laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation and openly courted the gay vote. At the Democratic National Convention, there were 110 openly gay and lesbian delegates.
President Bush opposed lifting the military ban and establishing what he called ”special rights” for gays. Several speakers at the Republican National Convention denounced hom*osexuality. There were no openly gay delegates.
Clinton`s support of gay issues did not hurt him, political analysts say. But the Republicans` anti-gay rhetoric may have hurt them. The GOP dropped the ”family values” campaign quickly when the American public responded negatively and demanded that the candidates talk about the economy.
”The Republican convention did not work because it was intolerant and stigmatizing,” said Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute.
”Republicans did not use hom*osexuality as a wedge after that because they risked a backlash among educated suburban voters who do not want to be associated with what they perceive as intolerance.”
The phone poll by Overlooked Opinions found that 58 percent of gay Republicans and 96 percent of gay Democrats voted for Clinton. That poll showed 94 percent of gays and lesbians voted. The margin of error was 2 percent.
All the gay and lesbian candidates who won are Democrats. In Illinois, gay Republican Tim Drake lost his bid to oust veteran Democrat Ellis Levin in the newly redrawn 12th House District.
Massachusetts Reps. Gerry Studds and Barney Frank, both openly gay, were re-elected. Lesbians were newly elected to legislatures in Wisconsin and New Mexico. Gays and lesbians were re-elected as state lawmakers in Texas, Oregon, Minnesota, Maine, New York, Vermont and Washington state.
A lesbian was elected to the New York State Supreme Court, and another was elected mayor of Santa Monica, Calif. Six gays and lesbians were elected to local school boards. Six gay men were elected to neighborhood commissions in Washington, D.C., posts similar to ward committeemen in Chicago.
