Source: New York Times, Buffalo News, New York Daily News, Gay City News
Rochester and Buffalo may seem unlikely focal points for the national gay rights movement, but those are just two of the places throughout New York where state senate candidates have received infusions of cash from LGBT equality advocates who hope Democrats will take control in the state senate in New York for the first time in 43 years.
The donations are flowing mostly to six Democratic candidates -- from Long Island and Queens to Rochester and the 61st Senate District in the Buffalo area.
The money is also heading to the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, the chief fundraising arm for the party’s efforts to retake the Senate.
LGBT rights advocates have poured tens of thousands of dollars in the past month into the State Senate campaign of Rick Dollinger, a Democrat and ally of the gay community, New York Times reports.
Dollinger is challenging a Republican incumbent, Joseph E. Robach, whose district includes Rochester.
Joe Mesi, who is in a tight race for a senate seat in the Buffalo area, is another recipient of the largesse.
He received a donation of $4,000 from Boston-area resident Ronald Ansin who told Buffalo News that he has never met Mesi, has never been to the Buffalo area and readily admits he knows nothing of the ins and outs of Mesi’s State Senate campaign.
Ansin told Buffalo News that he gave the money to Mesi because of "a realization that there's an opportunity to secure for the people of New York the same rights with respect to same-sex marriage that we have here in Massachusetts."
Ansin also wrote another $19,000 in checks to five other Democratic senate campaigns around the state, Buffalo News reports.
In a sign of how pivotal New York has become in the effort to strengthen civil rights for gay men and lesbians, leading advocacy groups like the Human Rights Campaign and donors with ties to the deep-pocketed Gill Action Fund are aggressively involved in the effort.
LGBT advocates in New York say Mesi's race and others like it are vital because a shift in control of the upper house in Albany could pave the way for several of LGBT legislative priorities that been blocked for years by Republicans.
Efforts have intensified in recent years to permit same-sex marriage in New York -- now legal in California, Massachusetts and, most recently, Connecticut. The Assembly last year passed a same-sex marriage bill, and Gov. David A. Paterson has indicated he supports the right, Buffalo News reports.
But the Senate, dominated by Republicans for seven decades, has declined to bring the measure to the floor for a vote.
The gay community has won the support of the lower house, the Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats and from Governor David Paterson for marriage equality and two of its other top legislative priorities -- a transgender civil rights measure, and a public school anti-bullying law that would include protections against harassment based on both sexual orientation and gender identity.
Dean Skelos, the Long Island Republican who earlier this year became Senate majority leader, has signaled a willingness to finally settle the anti-bullying issue early in 2009, according to Gay City News, but not the other two rights issues.
Now, supporters of same-sex marriage see opportunity, if Democrats can erase the slim GOP majority in the Senate -- now at 31-29 with two vacancies -- and win just a couple of the half-dozen seats in play during the upcoming election.
"I'd like to see the Senate flip. I would like to see marriage equality in New York and everywhere else," said Andrew Tobias, an author from Miami who is also treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. He recently gave $4,000 to New York Senate Democratic candidates.
"It's kind of crazy that New York would be dominated by Republicans for so long,” Tobias added.
Less than a week before an Election Day shaping up to be a very good one for Democrats nationwide, the question of whether the party is going to take control remains an open question, Gay City News reports.
A year ago, the state's largest LGBT political advocacy group, Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), offered an unusually detailed discussion of its political action committee plans to Gay City News.
ESPA said it would join a "coordinated victory campaign" by the Democrats in their State Senate races because of what it called "the continued recalcitrance" of the senate Republican leadership toward taking up key community issues.
Executive director Alan Van Capelle laid out not only ESPA's plans to Gay City News, but also talked about the commitment that the Gill Action Fund had made to flipping the Senate.
That support is now evident in campaign financial reports that show local races like Dollinger's in Rochester getting checks from donors in far-flung places like West Hollywood, Denver, Chicago, and Kalamazoo.
The checks come from philanthropists who have bankrolled gay and lesbian causes throughout the country. New York Times calculated earlier this week that gay-rights advocates had almost half-a-million dollars into New York Senate races.
Tim Gill, an entrepreneur and philanthropist from Denver who founded the Gill Foundation and Gill Action Fund, is responsible for at least $114,000 of that amount, with his largest gift, $50,000, made in April to the New York State Democratic Committee. That puts Mr. Gill among the single largest donors to the state party this year.
Among the other big contributors is Jon Stryker, a billionaire and gay philanthropist who has been contributing heavily to state house and races for at least the last two election cycles, reports New York Daily News.
As is usually the case with donations suggested by Gill and his allies, the donors have been largely silent about their role in Senate campaigns for fear of raising the ire of social conservatives, the Times reports. But a review of campaign finance disclosure forms by the Times and a similar analysis by Buffalo News shows that gay and lesbian advocates have become a quiet but potent force this election season.
Even before Stryker's donations were reported, gay rights groups and donors affiliated with them had given a total of at least $510,000 this year to Democratic Senate candidates and campaign funds controlled by Democrats, according an analysis of disclosure documents by
Buffalo News. Much of that money was donated in the past month and pointed at a handful of competitive races, campaign finance filings show, according to the
New York Times.
The New York arm of the Human Rights Campaign’s political action committee had given $63,525 to Democratic Senate candidates earlier this month according to New York Times. All but $9,500 of that was donated in the past few weeks.
Opponents of gay marriage rights complain that the money flow is providing an unfair advantage to Democratic candidates.
"We can see the writing on the wall if the Democrats take that house," said Dennis Poust, a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, the official voice of the church's bishops in the state.
"We have a governor who supports same-sex marriage very strongly, and we have an Assembly that has already passed the bill. It’s hard to see a scenario where that bill doesn’t become law right off the bat," he added.
Source: Gay Groups Use Donations to Become a Force in Elections | New York Times
Same-sex marriage supporters aid Mesi in Senate race | Buffalo News
The Man from Kalamazoo | New York Daily News
State Senate Battle Down to the Wire | Gay City News