Clinton Courts LGBT Voters in Texas and Ohio

With the much anticipated Ohio and Texas primaries just one day away, the candidates for the Democratic nomination have been reaching out to the LGBT community as they campaign. Last week, Senator Barack Obama made news with his paid advertisements in LGBT press outlets in Ohio and Texas and his open letter to the LGBT community.  On February 27th, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton held a  conference call on LGBT issues, and answered questions for reporters from several LGBT press outlets, including the Texas-based Dallas Voice, the Ohio-based Outlook Weekly and Gay People’s Chronicle. She has also conducted interviews with other LGBT outlets, including The Advocate, Logo and The Washington Blade, and published a “Message to LGBT Americans” on OurChart.com. “Let me tell you what I have been telling voters across America. I am fully committed to the fair and equal treatment of LGBT Americans,” she wrote in that posting.

Given her media outreach, it will be interesting to see how Clinton’s efforts play in tomorrow’s primaries – especially in the large gay communities of Dallas and Houston, and in Ohio, which has the country’s sixth largest LGBT community.  While Clinton has made serious efforts to reach out to LGBT voters, Obama has seemingly received more media coverage – fairly or not – for his efforts, especially from his recently published open letter (some bloggers have gone so far as to accuse him of stealing from her playbook). We will find out tomorrow how all this plays out with LGBT voters in Texas and Ohio. One thing is for sure: both Democratic candidates are reaching out to the community in an active way we have never seen before in a presidential election.

Paul Karr is the Director of Media Field Strategy