Gay marriage bill rests on politics

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – As the California Assembly prepares to take up gay-marriage legislation as early as today, the state Senate measure’s fate may rest not with lofty arguments about the centuries-old institution of marriage but with the political futures of a handful of wavering lawmakers.

All four Democrats whom advocates have identified as swing votes represent districts with many Hispanics or blacks – two groups that, because of their religious backgrounds, are among the wariest of broadening the definition of marriage to say it is a union of two people rather than of a man and a woman.

Making the consequences of their votes even more sensitive, all four lawmakers – Jerome Horton of Inglewood, Gloria Negrete McLeod of Chino, Simon Salinas of Salinas and Tom Umberg of Anaheim – are in their final terms in the Assembly and eyeing higher offices.

This political reality has become a factor in determining votes since the advent of term limits, and other lawmakers and political consultants say it weighs heavily on the marriage issue, one of the year’s most controversial in Sacramento.

“Everyone who has indicated that they are still thinking about this has uniformly told me that if it were only a matter of conscience, of course they would be there, but that their own 2006 races are the issue,” said Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, one of the gay-marriage measure’s sponsors.

The California Senate approved the bill on Thursday, the first time a legislative body in the United States has endorsed gay marriage without being compelled by a court order.

Intense pressure from both sides is focusing on the 80-member Assembly, where a handful of abstaining members led to the bill’s narrow failure in June. Advocates say they need only three more votes to send the measure to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, al-though such a victory may be only symbolic, given that the Republican governor has signaled he would veto it.

Opposition groups are urging their supporters to blanket pivotal lawmakers with calls and faxes. They say that lawmakers who vote for the measure, AB849, are insulting the 61 percent of Californians who approved Proposition 22, which declared that California would recognize only marriages between heterosexual couples, in 2000.

“They thought they voted to preserve marriage and this wouldn’t be allowed to take place,” said Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute, a Sacramento group that backed the proposition five years ago. “They’re pretty frustrated and letting the representatives know.”

Gay-rights advocates have hired Christine Chavez-Delgado, granddaughter of Cesar Chavez and an organizer for the United Farm Workers of America, to help develop grass-roots support across the state. The farm workers group endorsed the measure in late June after the defeat in the Assembly.

Advocates also are trumpeting a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, released last week, that shows registered voters split 46 percent to 46 percent on the topic.

They also note that two of the swing votes belong to Assembly members who are hoping to be elected in the fall to the seats of Senate Democrats who voted for the measure. Kuehl distributed CDs with the taped Senate floor debate to the crucial Assembly members.

“Our base is incredibly engaged, and we will support the people who stand with us,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, the statewide gay-rights group that sponsored the bill. “Ultimately – and I think these candidates know it – the people who care passionately on this issue on the other side aren’t voting for them.”

But the undecided legislators – all of whom abstained last time – are hard-sells because of their political ambitions.

“It would be one thing if they were running in San Francisco,” but you’ve got (places) where the voters all overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political consultant.

“You have to ask, how does this vote impact my next election? Some will deny that, but we need to be open and honest,” Simon Salinas told the Los Angeles Times. “If I was thinking entirely politically, I would vote no because then I could show to my constituents that I was representing them more conservatively.”

Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist, said lawmakers’ votes against gay marriage may also come back to haunt them in elections beyond next year, saying, “In the long term, it can affect whether they face a primary challenge for some other office.”