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Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s campaigns have been visibly courting LGBT voters in Pennsylvania in the few final days leading up to today’s primary. The media have focused attention on the LGBT electorate with prominent stories in different regional and national outlets, picking up on why LGBT voters support who they support, and highlighting each campaign’s LGBT outreach strategies. LGBT press reported heavily on Chelsea Clinton’s Friday night out at Philadelphia’s gay bars. She was accompanied by prominent Clinton supporter and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. But Chelsea’s night out wasn’t all the media saw. National cable TV outlets, as well as local Pennsylvania press, picked up on her recent walking-tour, where she campaigned for gay and lesbian votes. Mainstream and gay outlets both covered Chelsea interacting with the community in a more social setting, and were just as interested in her more traditional campaigning.
Monday’s Patriot-News featured a story on why LGBT voters were voting for one candidate over another. Nearly all of the coverage focusing on the LGBT Pennsylvania electorate has explored the reasons behind why individual voters are supporting their candidates.
According to the Patriot-News piece, LGBT voters seem to be expressing personal preferences that aren’t related to the candidates’ positions on LGBT issues, but rather broader issues like health care, the economy or the war in Iraq. As we have seen from the beginning of this election season, journalists are framing LGBT issues (like marriage for gay and lesbian couples) as larger social issues. In return, the media are reflecting the diversity of LGBT voters, and reporting on the fact that LGBT voters care about issues across the board, and that voters across the board care about LGBT issues.
Paul Karr is the Director of Media Field Strategy
Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama sat down last week with The Advocate to discuss topics such as his hopes for LGBT legislation during his term as president, his first friendship with an openly gay person, and the effects of the Donnie McClurkin controversy. Over the course of the campaign, Obama has often taken a different path than his rival Sen. Hillary Clinton when it comes to where he addresses LGBT issues. Clinton already spoke with The Advocate last fall and since Super Tuesday has also given interviews to regional LGBT newspapers like the Washington Blade and the Philadelphia Gay News, while Obama previously had not spoken to the LGBT press since 2004.
During the interview, Obama addressed criticisms he has received for what some perceive as silence towards LGBT media. When he declined an interview with the Philadelphia Gay News last week, the paper responded by printing a blank space in its pages where his interview would have appeared. Obama told The Advocate that he has chosen to focus on discussing LGBT issues to a general audience rather than speaking to specialized press. “It’s easy to preach to the choir,” he said. “What I think is harder is to speak to a broader audience about why these issues are important to all Americans.” He then mentioned his speech at Ebenezer Church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day where he “talked about the need to get over the homophobia in the African-American community.”
Discussing the controversy over including anti-gay pastor
Donnie McClurkin on his South Carolina tour, Obama said it was an opportunity
for constituencies with differing opinions to have a more open discussion. “If you’re segmenting your base into
neat categories and constituency groups and you never try to bring them
together […] you never create the opportunity for people to have a conversation
and to lift some of these issues up and to talk about them and to struggle with
them,” he said.
The Advocate reporter Kerry Eleveld
notes how the length of the Democratic primaries has given candidates more time
to reach out to LGBT constituents through the media. “Candidates continually pivot and adjust in order to engage
ever more voters,” she said. “Had
the race stopped cold in the snows of New Hampshire, gays and lesbians would
have been left with one interview of record for each Democratic candidate
in total.” Whether through
mainstream or LGBT media, the candidates hopefully will continue to include
LGBT issues as a vital part of their platform and LGBT constituents as an
essential part of their voting base.
Cindi Creager is Director of National News
As presidential hopefuls vie for the vote in the upcoming
Paul Karr is Director of Media Field Strategy
With the manner in which media follow and speculate about the presidential campaigns, the real issues that concern voters in the 2008 election can often be overlooked. To help remedy this problem, CNN Newsroom’s
Cindi Creager is Director of National News
When Philadelphia’s largest gay political group, the Liberty City Democratic Club, endorsed Hillary Clinton Monday, LGBT blogs and newspapers took notice. Though both Clinton and Barack Obama spent time campaigning in Ohio and Texas via LGBT press by giving interviews, publishing op-eds, and taking out ad space, they haven’t been as active in Pennsylvania LGBT press. Despite the absence of targeted campaigning, Philadelphia Gay News’ publisher has been quoted as saying: “The Clinton campaign takes the GLBT community very seriously.”
LGBT outlets in Philadelphia have focused their candidate coverage on Clinton this week, recapping that two of the city’s three LGBT Democratic groups have endorsed her. It will be interesting to see if Obama or Clinton will reach out to LGBT outlets like the Philadelphia Gay News or EDGE Philadelphia the way they did in Ohio and Texas. Stay tuned to see which candidate the LGBT community in Pennsylvania stands behind during the April 22 primary.
Paul Karr is the Director of Media Field Strategy
Although the media is following every twist and turn of the campaigns of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, the work of candidates to reach out to the LGBT media and to seek LGBT endorsements has yet to be addressed by many mainstream reporters, despite the unique role that LGBT movement leaders and LGBT media have had during this campaign season.
Recently, Obama's campaign announced that a diverse group of prominent LGBT leaders and advocates has publicly endorsed him. The new group of 40 supporters includes transgender advocates Donna Rose (who is also on the GLAAD Board of Directors) and Pauline Park, GLSEN Executive Director Kevin Jennings, actor Wilson Cruz, Missouri State Representative Jeanette Mott Oxford, and Pride at Work (AFL-CIO) Executive Director Jeremy Bishop. The Advocate reported that one of the key issues that motivated many LGBT Democrats to support Obama over Clinton is his support for a full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). As opposed to Obama, Clinton would still allow states to determine their own marriage laws by only repealing the part of DOMA that prohibits federal recognition of marriage for gay and lesbian people.
It's a novel trend in an election year for a major presidential candidate to publicly reach out to LGBT voters. Many LGBT blogs and publications have already discussed the current work of the Obama campaign to mobilize the LGBT community by courting LGBT endorsements and by specifically advertising in the LGBT media. Clinton's campaign has taken similar steps to pursue LGBT voters, including the Super Tuesday eve release of a "Message to LGBT Americans" proclaiming: "America deserves a President . . . who values and respects all Americans and treats all Americans equally no matter who they are or who they love. I want to be that President. I want to be your President."
As the mainstream media continues to cover the many unprecedented aspects of the 2008 election, it will be encouraging to see journalists take note of the innovative work of candidates to address the diverse concerns of LGBT Americans and to actively seek their votes.
Cindi Creager is the Director of National News.
Election coverage this year has often featured conversations among voters in homes, community centers, local restaurants and other places where people gather. One of the strongest media narratives of this election has been how the grassroots are increasingly engaged in the ’08 election. Much of this has to do with the growing influence of Facebook and other online communities, but it could also be that political candidates are increasingly willing to connect with voters in a wide variety of public spaces. Just last week, Chelsea Clinton, Gloria Steinem and Rob Reiner campaigned in two popular Dallas gay bars: JR’s and Sue Ellen’s.
The mainstream media has been focusing more attention toward the places where LGBT people meet. A recent article in The Washington Post focused on the organic conversations going on in the Texas LGBT community about the election. In the case of Gun Barrel City, Texas, the meeting place for LGBT folks in the small town of 5,000 is Friends, the local gay bar. As influential news sources realize the importance of the LGBT vote, they are trying to get the pulse of the community at the grassroots level.
With the media and politicians engaging the LGBT community in new ways, there is the opportunity to elevate the stories of people who are often overlooked. Who knows, perhaps next time you go to your local haunt Wolf Blitzer will be there to ask you who you’re voting for.
Paul Karr is the Director of Media Field Strategy
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
Obama has also published an open letter to the LGBT community, which blogs have reported will be reprinted as an op-ed in Ohio LGBT newspapers. In his letter, Obama outlined his work for and with the LGBT community in the past, present and future. With various print and online outlets picking up Obama’s letter, the spotlight is once again on the LGBT community. It seemed early on that all of the Democratic candidates had similar stances on the issues: civil unions are okay, but marriage for gay and lesbian couples is too much; 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' should be repealed, and people should not face discrimination on the job. These positions were pioneering in many ways, but Obama is now attempting to break out and present himself as the gay-friendly candidate. He cites pro-LGBT co-sponsored Illinois legislation and talks about plans to fund HIV prevention programs and ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Just yesterday, he told a group of supporters at a rally in Beaumont, Texas, “I hear people saying things that I don’t think are very Christian with respect to people who are gay and lesbian.”
It will be interesting to see if Obama’s ads and op-ed are successful in making inroads into the community, especially considering that LGBT voters have traditionally been identified as staunch supporters of the Clintons. Early in the campaign season, a poll by Hunter College found that 63 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual likely voters supported Clinton. But part of Obama’s strategy has been to go after Hillary’s base rather than just focusing on independent and undecided voters. Clinton got a solid majority of the gay vote in New York and California, but Obama has had a string of impressive wins since Super Tuesday and other demographic groups that have traditionally supported Clinton, including women, have swung to Obama in recent primaries. The Federal Elections Committee confirmed that Obama has a small advantage, with folks in Texas’ gay neighborhoods split at 52 and 48 percent. The March 4 primaries will be an interesting measure of whether or not Senator Obama’s outreach to the LGBT community through the media will tip the scales in his favor.
Read Obama’s letter (PDF).
Paul Karr is the Director of Media Field Strategy
The past few months of presidential campaigning have been unprecedented for the LGBT community, and our concerns have been taken more seriously than ever before by presidential candidates. All major Democratic candidates participated in the 2008 Visible Vote Presidential Forum on LOGO last year, which brought LGBT issues to the forefront in the presidential election for the first time. Community members and bloggers alike said Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton did well with the questions asked at the forum. And on multiple occasions since, candidates have spoken about the LGBT community in speeches and at forums. Now Obama is charting new territory—he’s specifically targeting the LGBT community with ads in Texas and Ohio, just in time for the March 4 primaries. The Obama campaign has purchased full-page advertisements in local LGBT press outlets. The ads will provide information on how people can get involved locally in the campaign.
In Texas, the Obama camp is targeting Houston and Dallas, which are the two largest LGBT markets in the state. The ad will appear in the Dallas Voice and OutSmart, which are based in Houston. Latest opinion polls show that Obama and Clinton are in a statistical dead heat in Texas; reaching out to groups with traditional ties to the Clintons, such as the LGBT community, can be what puts Obama over the top. We have already seen Obama make inroads into Clinton’s base through increasing his votes among women and working class men.
In Ohio, Obama’s ads will appear in Outlook Weekly in Columbus and the Gay People’s Chronicle in Cleveland. Obama is going a step further in Ohio by writing an op-ed to be placed in Ohio LGBT papers as well. Right now reports say that Obama is gaining on Clinton’s numbers in Ohio. It’s tough to say whether Obama’s ads will bring out enough LGBT voters in his favor, but so far Clinton has not campaigned directly to LGBT voters in either Texas or Ohio.
Keep an eye out in the Texas and Ohio papers for Obama’s ads and op-ed.
Paul Karr is the Director of Media Field Strategy
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