New York’s state Senate, gay marriage and Mike Bloomberg

This week, New York took one more step towards becoming a one party state. For the first time in four decades, Democrats took control of the state Senate, locking the GOP out of all levels of state government.

As you might remember, this outcome was not a foregone conclusion: After Democrats seized a 32-30 majority on November 4th, three of their state Senators threatened to bolt the caucus for somewhat unclear demands – a mix of identity politics and policy disputes.

This created a chaotic situation in which Democratic leaders begged the Gang of Three to stay in the party, at first offering them a stunning amount of concessions before retreating when the caucus’s rank and file protested.

At the end of the day, Democrats managed to cut a deal with Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sen.-elect Pedro Espada and Sen. Carl Kruger to get them to vote for Democrat Malcolm Smith as Majority Leader. On Wednesday, the deed was consummated and the state Senate was officially taken over by Democrats.

The biggest question mark that now remains is gay marriage. Governor David Paterson, like his predecessor Eliot Spitzer, was interested in legalizing same sex unions – and this was the main reason Ruben Diaz, a staunchly homophobic minister, threatened to back Republicans.

Rumors have been circulating that Democrats told Diaz they would not introduce a gay marriage bill over the next two years if he stuck with the caucus. The party’s leadership has denied having made any such promise, but Diaz has indicated that discussions with party leaders have reassured him about the reform’s prospects.

Democrats are already saying that too many of their members would vote against the bill for gay marriage to pass the state Senate. That might be true (they do, after all, only have a 32-30 majority), but for such information to be leaking this early clearly suggests that the Democratic leadership has no intention of pushing gay marriage very hard in the coming months.

The second question mark is the leadership change’s impact on Mike Bloomberg. The New York City Mayor might not be a partisan Republican, but he has frequently clashed with Albany Democrats, and state Assembly President Sheldon Silver takes great delight in squashing Bloomberg’s plans.

Over the past year, Bloomberg donated a lot of money to Republicans to help them retain control of the state Senate and he campaigned on behalf of GOP incumbents. For Democrats to now seize control of the state Senate will make Bloomberg’s ties to Albany even more raucous.

This could make it tougher for him to convince Albany to pass New York City-related bills for which Bloomberg needs state approval (this is especially the case for taxation-related issues). And don’t forget that Bloomberg could remain in Gracie Mansion until 2013 now that he changed the city’s term limit laws, so this will affect him in the long term.

On the other hand, Bloomberg could gain a huge boost soon if David Paterson appoints Caroline Kennedy to the Senate. The former first daughter’s connections to the Mayor have caused some prominent Democrats to express worry, and Kennedy refused to answer when Politico asked whether she would support Bloomberg’s Democratic challenger in this fall’s election. If she becomes Senator, Kennedy would be unlikely to do much to help the Democratic nominee, further reducing the party’s hopes of regaining City Hall.

Then again, Caroline Kennedy might no longer be favored to win Paterson’s nod. The Village Voice now thinks that the front-runner might be Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand! Could it be that the main alternative to a woman with little to no public record (but who, we are told, leans to the liberal side…) are two conservative Democrats (Reps. Gillibrand and Israel)? It’s hard for progressive Democrats to know where to turn. On the other hand, the list of those who are known to have received Paterson’s Senate questionnaire keeps getting lengthier. The latest known contender is Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. [Update: Kennedy and Paterson held their first in person meeting to discuss the seat yesterday.]

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Also: I will introduce yet another look for the website in the days ahead. I will be hosting Campaign Diaries myself, which will lead to a fair amount of changes – and it will also mean that I will be allowed to put in some ads again. (My longtime readers will remember that I had ads until the summer.) I know that will annoying, but that should help me take care of the website’s operating costs.

Poll roundup: It’s a tie in Virginia, McCain leads in Alaska and Prop 8 is losing

Three new presidential polls were released since Friday morning, two of which are from battleground states rated “toss-up” or “lean” in my latest ratings:

• In Virginia, Rasmussen finds the two candidates tied at 44%, with McCain leading by 1% when leaners are included. Last month, Obama got 45% to McCain’s 44%. The bad news for Obama is his favorability rating: 47% of respondents now have an unfavorable opinion of him (compared to 36% for McCain), including 31% who say their view is very unfavorable.

• In Alaska, Research 2000 has McCain maintaining a decent-size lead, 51% to 41%. That is up from a 49% to 42% lead two months ago.

• In Maine, finally, Obama’s lead is cut by more than half in the latest Rasmussen poll. Up 22% last month, Obama is now leading 46% to 36%. Remember that the state awards 2 of its electoral votes by congressional district, and the first district could be an opportunity for McCain.

Both parties are now up on air in Virginia, but that is not the case in Alaska where Obama has had the state’s airwaves to himself for about a month now. This raises the same question we asked about North Carolina on Thursday: Why are the numbers in those states remaining stable despite Obama’s organizing and marketing efforts? It seems almost heretical to ask such a question considering that it is already extraordinary for a Democratic candidate to reach 45% in North Carolina and the low 40s in Alaska, but since it is now clear that the Obama team is playing for the win in those states, we now have to look at those red states by considering Obama’s chances of victory.

The answer could be problematic: Obama might already be reaching his ceiling in those red states because of how enthusiastic Democrats are this year, which could make it difficult for him to continue progressing — at the very least, it will not be as easy a rise as it been up to now. Obama’s very high unfavorability rating in states like Virginia and North Carolina confirms that they aren’t many who aren’t voting for him but who could be convinced to do so.

That said, the Virginia numbers have been very encouraging for Obama for months, as he has been at least tied with McCain for all of 2008. There is no question that the result in Virginia will be tied to turnout and that the battle lines are already drawn: McCain needs to rely on strong voting patterns in the military areas and Obama will need to spend the next 3 months organizing Northern Virginia.

Meanwhile, a number of down-the-ballot races:

• Rasmussen’s poll from Maine’s Senate race finds Susan Collins leading 49% to 42% — the same margin she led by last month.

• In Alaska’s Senate race, Research 2000 finds Mark Begich leading 47% to 45%, slightly down from a 48% to 43% lead last month and back in the margin of error.

• In North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, Beverly Perdue is up 43% to 40% in Civitas’s new poll, a stable margin compared to their June survey.

• Finally, in Alaska’s House race, Ethan Berkowitz leads Republican incumbent Don Young 51% to 40%, compared to a 10% margin last month.

• Finally, the California Field Poll finds Proposition 8 – the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage – losing 51% to 42%.

Interestingly, the first four polls polls show very stable margins from the institutes’ previous polls. The largest movement consists of Begich losing 3%, which suggests that we have entered a period of relative stability in congressional politics.

A few quick notes, as usual, about some of these races. First, the numbers of the Alaska House race are pretty much worthless until we know whether the GOP will renominate Don Young. With 2 challengers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and helped by outside group, Young’s place on the general election ballot hangs by a thread and it could be much more difficult for Berkowitz to win if he is facing a Republican not plagued by scandals.

In Maine’s Senate race, meanwhile, Collins has been enjoying huge leads for months against a candidate Democrats were touting from day one. Rasmussen is the only institute to have shown single-digit races and Collins under 50%, and we are still awaiting confirmation from other polls. As the presidential race heats up and the electorate becomes more polarized, Allen will try to link Collins to her party label; for now, his efforts have not been successful.

Finally, the rule of thumb about California proposition is that the yes vote has to start substantially ahead to have a chance at winning at the polls in November as undecided voters tend to break heavily towards a no vote. That is usually due to propositions seeming confusing, and that factor might be reduced on the relatively simple issue on gay marriage, but the poll still bring good news to proponents of gay marriage.

The positioning game: Obama criticizes MoveOn and 60s “counterculture” in patriotism speech, opposes California marriage ban

Every four years, the Democratic candidate embarks on a more or less subtle positioning game once he has secured his party’s nomination. Over the past two weeks, we have watched Obama’s attempts to strengthen his centrist credentials by announcing he would vote in favor of the FISA bill and criticizing the Heller decision. (I am not including Obama’s opposition to the Supreme Court’s banning the death penalty for child rapists in this list, as he had clearly taken a similar position in the past).

This week, Obama embarks on an attempt to address the perception among some voters that he somehow lacks patriotism. As I have noted previously, McCain himself has implied that he is the truer American. Most Republicans do not dare hit Obama too directly on these issues, but a vigorous online campaign to spread smears and false rumors about the Democratic nominee has had some success in influencing public opinion, so much so that Obama was confronted to questions relating to this at last April’s Philadelphia debate. Obama’s first general election ad sought to address some of these concerns by focusing on the Senator’s “Kansas values” and the Democrat continued his re-introduction today with a speech on patriotism in Missouri. Tomorrow, he will deliver on speech on faith.

Complicating the picture a bit was Wesley Clark’s statement yesterday on McCain’s qualifications to be president, a statement the McCain campaign considers an opportunity to even the playing field by portraying themselves as the victims as well. “I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president,” Clark said. The McCain campaign has been all over this, assembling a panel of veterans to respond to Clark — including a man who appeared in the 2004 Swift Boat ads!

Note that Clark questioned the relevance of McCain’s POW years to his presidential experience claims and he did not question anything about the POW years. His argument was thus radically different from what the Swift Boat ads were doing four years ago. In fact, his line of attack is closer to the Obama camp’s argument during the primaries that Hillary Clinton’s 8 years as First Lady did not constitute presidential experience.

The Obama campaign issued a statement “rejecting” Clark’s comments today: “As he’s said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain’s service, and of course he rejects yesterday’s statement by General Clark.” And today’s speech in Missouri, Obama sought to put all attacks on McCain’s patriotism, military service and POW years off-limit:

Beyond a loyalty to America’s ideals, beyond a willingness to dissent on behalf of those ideals, I also believe that patriotism must, if it is to mean anything, involve the willingness to sacrifice – to give up something we value on behalf of a larger cause. For those who have fought under the flag of this nation – for the young veterans I meet when I visit Walter Reed; for those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country – no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides. We must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period. Full stop.

But Obama went further. First, in a move that Eve Fairbanks interprets as a nod to potential running-mate Jim Webb, Obama also attacked the 1960s “counterculture” types who refused to honor Vietnam veterans returning from combat. Obama added that this “remains a national shame to this day. Note that this kind of language is particularly new, nor is it unexpected coming from Obama, who has spoken negatively of the 1960s Left and long criticized the anti-Vietnam movement for its polarizing effects:

Some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself – by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.

Ever since Bill Clinton denounced Sister Souljah in 1992, Democratic nominees have sought to recapture that moment to show they are not beholden to left-wing groups and to bolster their moerate credentials. While the campaign’s anti-Clark statement was dicatated by political necessity, Obama’s choice to denounce MoveOn.org’s “Betray Us” ad months after that controversy erupted is a classic example of Democrats trying to channel the Clinton of 1992. After lamenting that politics felt “trapped in old, threadbare arguments” and “caricatures of left and right,” Obama went on to say that this was

most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.

This symbolic move was as transparent an attempt to grab Sister Souljah headlines as anything Obama has attempted over the past few weeks, and a wholly unnecessary one at that given how much time has passed since this controversy. And Obama had less definitive opinions on this subject back when it was hotly debated: Obama did not criticize MoveOn when pressed to do so and he did not participate in the Senate vote that condemned MoveOn.org back in September. The bill got 72 yeas and Clinton voted against it, though she did “condemn” the MoveOn ad. And how far can he go in criticizing a group that isnot an individual like Sister Souljah but a powerful political organization and a strong fundraising tools for Democrats down and up the ballot?

At the same time, progressive activists breathed a sigh of relief this week as Barack Obama announced his firm opposition to California’s Proposition 8 which attempts to ban gay marriage:

As the Democratic nominee for President, I am proud to join with and support the LGBT community in an effort to set our nation on a course that recognizes LGBT Americans with full equality under the law. That is why I support extending fully equal rights and benefits to same sex couples under both state and federal law. That is why I support repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, and the passage of laws to protect LGBT Americans from hate crimes and employment discrimination. And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.

This might not seem like that shocking a move, but keep in mind that John Kerry’s idea of moving to the center in 2004 was to not only declare himself satisfied that Missouri had voted to ban gay marriage weeks before the general election but also declare that he himself would have voted in favor of the ban had he been a Missouri voter! The problem with Kerry’s statement and similar attempts is how weak and pandering they sound, and it’s good to see that the Obama campaign isn’t following Kerry there.

Gay marriage politics, as New York joins the party

Two weeks after the California Supreme Court injected gay marriage back in the national discussion by legalizing gay marriage, New York State joined the party last night when recently promoted Governor Paterson issued a directive instructing state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere (read: California, Massachusetts, Canada and a few European countries). In other words, a couple married in Boston will be allowed to file a joint tax return in New York even though they are not able to get wed in the Empire State, making it the only state which does not allow gay marriage but recognizes those of other states.

Eliot Spitzer and now David Paterson are both favorable to gay marriage, but the state Senate, still controlled by Republicans by the tiniest of margins, blocked the legislation introduced by Spitzer intended to legalize it. Without the backing of the legislature, issuing a directive to recognize out-of-state marriages is the only move Paterson could have made.

This development changes the national debate a bit, since an important reason given by advocates of constitutional amendments banning gay marriage at the state level is that states who are against gay marriage might be forced to recognize those performed in “hippie” states with loose morals like Massachusetts and now California. That is also one of the main rationales for the Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996 and signed by Bill Clinton. But here is now the first state that recognizes out-of-state marriages, and does so voluntarily, without any court injunction (in fact the New York court system already ruled against cases that demanded the legalization of gay marriage).

These recent developments are creating two widely diverging state of affairs within the same country. On the one hand are states that are coastal states that are taking a very progressive position and in which gay couples now have most if not all of the rights reserved to straight couples. On the other hand are states like Virginia and many of the places that passed gay marriage amendments where gay rights are worsening, as many of the rights that gay couples were able to claim until recently were undermined by the amendments that were supposedly concerned with gay marriage but that banned all sorts of other arrangements, making it impossible for couples in states with “super-hate amendments” to have any sort of rights.

Electorally (this is, after all, an electoral blog), this creates a curious situation: If gay rights become so differentiated regionally, will the issue have as much of an impact in states that now have strong constitutional provisions against gay marriage and that are thus not at risk of having their supreme courts rule in favor of it? The only way in which gay marriage could be introduced in places like that is if the federal Supreme Court intervenes and, given the court’s composition, that is unlikely to happen before many decades.

In brief, the GOP might have overplayed their hand. The reason abortion remains so powerful an issue is that it is still legal everywhere, even though Republicans had many chances to actually do something about it (given how many Justices they appointed over the past thirty years, the road to an anti-Roe majority was open to them). But with constitutional amendments taking the issue off the table in many states, gay marriage is unlikely to replace abortion as the wedge issue the GOP will use to hammer Democrats. Not to mention that the amendment’s defeat in Arizona in 2006 showed that the tide might be turning.

As for the more progressive states, the shift in public opinion is even more obvious as gay rights are now increasingly removed from the realm of issues the GOP will even think of exploiting given that it is they who would come to look regressive. The latest Field Poll, California’s most trusted and reputable pollster, found this week that a majority of Californians now favor gay marriage: 51% versus 42%. That’s a stunning turnaround from past years, as it was 30% support in 1985, 37% in 1997 and 44% in 2006. Among the 18-29 year old age group, 68% support gay marriage, suggesting that its recent emphasis on social issues contributed to the GOP’s losing its grip on an entire generation.

The Field Poll also finds that a majority of Californians would oppose a gay marriage amendment if it makes its way to the November ballot, striking a blow to Republican hopes that they can overturn the Supreme Court’s decision at the ballot and confirming that the referendum is not likely to influence the presidential election or threaten Obama with the loss of California’s 55 electoral votes.

Update: As a new New York Times article reveals, it looks like David Paterson will be remembered as a key player in the gay rights movement given the obstinacy with which he advocated these issues since the 1980s.

Same-sex marriage legalized in California

In a decision that will have obvious consequences on the presidential race, the California Supreme Court rejected state marriage laws as discriminatory, making California the second state in the country after Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriages.

The ruling was closely divided, 4 votes to 3, but this is a moderately conservative court, dominated by Republican appointments (6 to 1). An appeal is expected to the federal Supreme Court but they have never taken up the issue of gay marriage and it is unlikely they will do so now. Thus there is nothing to stop licenses from being issued later this spring. Note that California already had a domestic partnership program that was among the most ambitious in the country, as it granted pretty much all marriage rights to gay couples.

Opponents are already gearing up for a showdown at the polls to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in November — though even that will be too late to stop the marriages that will take place until then. A coalition of religious and conservative groups had already submitted a petition to place the issue on the fall ballot; the petition is being currently reviewed by the Secretary of State’s office. 763,790 signatures out of 1,1 million have to be valid, and past rates of signature validity don’t guarantee that this one will make it.

Predictably, Republican leaders are enraged against these “activist judges.” Rep. Roy Blunt, who is high up in the GOP’s House leadership, issued a statement lamenting that “the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people of California on the question of same-sex marriage demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people.” He added that “these California values are not the values of the majority of the American people.”

But the GOP is in a bind here. First, these California judges are confirmed by voters — so they are dependent on the democratic process. Second, the California legislature twice passed a law legalizing gay marriage; twice Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill saying that the matter should be settled by the judiciary and that the matter was already making its way through the courts. That’s not going to stop Republicans from denouncing the activist judges, but the fact that the state’s Republican governor declined to listen to the legislature and asked the court to rules makes their argument weaker. To his credit, Schwarzenegger did not criticize today’s decision and stated that, “As I have said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution that would overturn this state Supreme Court ruling.”

The presidential campaigns, meanwhile, have stayed largely silent on this issue today. Today’s ruling brings back the debate over same-sex marriage in the political discussio; it had largely faded since 2004. That year, George Bush benefited from two factors: (1) Discussion of gay marriage made values and social issues crucial to the campaign and (2) a bunch of states passed constitutional amendments that Republicans helped put on the ballot to boost conservative turnout. It has been debated whether these referendums actually changed turnout rates and helped Bush that much, but there is no question that heavy discussion of those issues did not help John Kerry.

This year is likely to be different, however. For one, gay marriage is already less polarizing than it was 4 years ago. Arizona rejected a constitutional marriage amendment in 2006, South Dakota almost did the same. Schwarzenegger’s opposition will make it even more difficult for conservatives to win the battle. It is true that anything that will drive conservatives to the polls will be welcome by McCain considering that his campaign is worried the most die-heart conservatives will be reluctant to support him, but I remain skeptical that this will impact the field of battle in California.

Second, gay marriage is unlikely to make that successful a comeback at the national level as well for the simple reason that John McCain is reluctant to campaign on any social issues, let alone gay marriage. If he rarely brought up abortion during the primary — though this was the one issue on which he had the most conservative record, he is even less likely to campaign on gay marriage in the general. After all, he voted against the federal marriage amendment when it came up in the Senate a few years ago. Also, Democrats are much less shy about the issue than they were in 2004, when Kerry shockingly said that he would vote in favor of the Missouri anti-gay marriage amendment if he were a Missouri resident. Both Obama and Clinton are stronger on gay rights this time, testifying to the change of climate just in the past 4 years.

Update: It looks like the new conservative strategy is the constant deferral of the decision from the legislative to the judiciary power. Here is how the New York Times describes the dissenting opinion in today’s ruling:

Justice Marvin R. Baxter, dissenting, said the majority had should have deferred to the state Legislature on whether to allow same-sex marriage, particularly given the increased legal protections for same-sex couples enacted in recent years.

“But a bare majority of this court,” Justice Baxter wrote, “not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the people themselves.”

Given that the legislature had legalized gay marriage, bills that had been vetoed because the Republican governor said he wanted to defer to the state Supreme Court, it’s hard to make any sense of Justice Baxter’s prescription.