GOP Senate candidates in New York are feeling the aftermath of their 2011 decision to vote for same-sex marriage.
Dubbed the fearless four, Steven Saland, Mark Grisanti, Jim Alesi, Roy McDonald practically received a proverbial tickertape parade after casting their vote last summer. Hefty profiles in The New York Time Magazine and Time, a pricey fundraiser in Manhattan, and, most importantly, assurances from the public that they’ll be safe come next election.
Unfortunately, the careers of two of the four senators may come to a close once absentee votes are counted for Friday’s primaries in the Empire State. McDonald is trailing by 130 votes, and Saland, who cast the deciding vote, leads by only 42 votes. Meanwhile, Grisanti led by a considerable margin against an little-known opponent though anti-equality advocates have pledged to support a third-party candidate in the general election just to deny him a victory. The fourth, Alesi, decided to retire.
So where’s the support that was promised a year ago? “We are in it for the long haul with any supporter of gay marriage,” lead lobbyist Brian Ellner, said in June 2011 as he was trying to convince the four to support the bill. “We have not lost a single supporter because of their support of marriage equality in an election and we are certainly not going to start now.”
And while other aspects, such as labor unions, can certainly be to blame, NOM is taking the poll results and running with it, hoping to scare Republicans in other states into voting against marriage equality. “The message we sent was pretty simple,” said Brian Brown, executive director of NOM. “If you are a Republican and you vote for [gay] marriage, you are going to lose. There is no other way to spin this,” he said. “This is a disaster for supporters of gay marriage.”
Photo: towleroad.com
