Yesterday, a number of organizations—led by people of color LGBT organizations—issued a statement entitled Prepare to Prevail: Why We Must Wait in Order to Win, which made the case that we are not ready to return to the ballot in November 2010, and recommitted to the work to move voters our way. The American Civil Liberties Union put out a statement that conveyed similar sentiments.
In response, Love Honor Cherish issued a statement of its own entitled Why We Cannot Wait, arguing that we should return to the ballot in 2010.
We thought this was a good opportunity to share our present thinking.
In late May, we told the community that, preliminarily, based on all we knew at the time, we believed we should return to the ballot in 2010. We also promised that we would not go back to the ballot on our own, but only together with coalition partners. And we said that, before we concluded what the right timing was, we would perform extensive “due diligence,” speaking with and listening to our coalition partners, volunteers in the field, donors, political consultants, pollsters, and many others. As we said in late May, a roadmap to victory includes:
- A realistic and executable fundraising plan. We must be able to raise between $25 and $50 million, with a good portion of that coming early on in the campaign when much of the persuasion work needs to be done.
- A governance structure that works. We need a campaign structure that engenders the confidence of the community and balances the need for inclusive representation with the need to act decisively and quickly.
- A winnable campaign plan. Polling shows that we have approximately the same level of support for marriage equality as we did when Proposition 8 passed. We need to know that if we can raise the funds and have a solid governance structure, we have a well-thought out program of how we are going to prevail.
- A commitment to doing the hard work. In order to move enough people to win, we must be out speaking to voters who are not yet with us, relentlessly. Tomorrow we will report on the results of our field efforts to date.
Our threshold has always been that we want to go back to the ballot at the earliest time that we have a strong chance of prevailing.
Throughout the state, our community has been having lively discussions and debate about when and how to return to the ballot. Equality California has joined Marriage Equality USA and a number of other coalition partners on the Get Engaged Tour, which solicits grassroots feedback on what the next initiative campaign should look like and when it should take place. The results of the Get Engaged Tour are being compiled by ME USA and will be shared with community leaders at the July 25 Community Leadership Summit in San Bernardino.
Information is power. We all owe it to ourselves to be as informed as possible as we develop our opinion about what we think is the best time to go back to the ballot.
To assist the community in reaching a decision, Equality California has asked several well-respected political consultants who represent different perspectives to provide us with answers to the following two questions:
Based on your professional experience with ballot initiatives and the research and data that is presently available, when do you recommend returning to the ballot to try to overturn Proposition 8: 2010, 2012, or other? On what do you base your conclusion?
What do you believe are the most important steps that the LGBT community and its allies must take to prepare to return to the ballot?
Each of the people below has generously volunteered to provide responses within the week, and we will post them when we receive them. We will also submit them to ME USA for inclusion in the Get Engaged Tour results.
- Mark Armour, Armour Media, who served as Al Gore’s press secretary, leads an LA-based progressive media and political consulting firm. Armour has successfully led ballot initiative campaigns to require the generation of more clean energy and to tax tobacco companies to support early childhood development in California.
- Rick Claussen, Partner, Goddard Claussen is among the most respected and successful Republican consultants in California. His firm has won 93% of its statewide ballot issue campaigns in California and many other states.
- Jill Darling served as Associate Director of the award-winning Los Angeles Times Poll and the Times/Bloomberg Poll from 1988 until the Times Poll was disbanded in 2008. She has national, state and local election exit polling expertise, after two decades of designing samples, questionnaires, and analysis models for primaries, general elections and absentee voter polls. Formerly president of the Pacific Association of Public Opinion Researchers, she is currently working on a history of gay-related legislation in California.
- Dave Fleischer. For many years, Dave was Director of Organizing and Training for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In that role, Fleischer played a lead part in devising strategy on literally dozens of LGBT-related ballot initiatives. Fleischer is now advising the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center’s Vote for Equality canvass project, the most extensive door-to-door effort on marriage equality in California.
- Gale Kaufman, President, Kaufman Campaign Consultants, a Sacramento-based Democratic political consultant, was awarded, in March 2006, the coveted “National Campaign Manager of the Year” by the American Association of Political Consultants for leading the coalition that defeated all four of Governor Schwarzenegger’s Special Election Initiatives in November 2005. She represents many unions including California’s largest union, the California Teachers’ Association, and is known as one of the most formidable ballot campaign specialists in California.
- Richie Ross is one of the most revered Democratic political consultants in Sacramento. A former aide to Cesar Chavez and organizer for the United Farm Workers, Ross ran the successful Proposition 98 campaign that guarantees schools a certain percentage of tax revenues. He was top adviser and consultant to former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a long-time leader on immigration-related initiatives, a top adviser to many Latino candidates and has one of California’s most successful records of winning elections over the last 30 years.
We also want to know what you think. We invite your comments both now and as their statements are posted. Please leave us your feedback and questions, and know that we’re keeping everyone’s perspective in mind as we weigh out this tough decision.
