[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/equallywed.com\/how-we-won-new-york\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/equallywed.com\/how-we-won-new-york\/","headline":"How We Won New York","name":"How We Won New York","description":"By Marc Solomon, National Campaign Director, Freedom to Marry From The Huffington Post, June 30, 2011 On Monday, June 13th, I arrived in Albany for...","datePublished":"2011-07-01","dateModified":"2021-06-21","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/equallywed.com\/author\/admin\/#Person","name":"Equally Wed","url":"https:\/\/equallywed.com\/author\/admin\/","identifier":787,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca62cf123aaaf135c80b055249bacbda79de9226e11cdfcde6529bedf89683de?s=96&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca62cf123aaaf135c80b055249bacbda79de9226e11cdfcde6529bedf89683de?s=96&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Equally Wed","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"http:\/\/equallywed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/equally-wed-lgbtq-weddings-logo.jpg","url":"http:\/\/equallywed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/equally-wed-lgbtq-weddings-logo.jpg","width":218,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/equallywed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/freedom-to-marry-logo.gif","url":"https:\/\/equallywed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/freedom-to-marry-logo.gif","height":119,"width":296},"url":"https:\/\/equallywed.com\/how-we-won-new-york\/","about":["Marriage Equality News"],"wordCount":2006,"articleBody":"By Marc Solomon, National Campaign Director, Freedom to MarryFrom The Huffington Post, June 30, 2011On Monday, June 13th, I arrived in Albany for what turned into a  two-week marathon.  From the first day when I — along with fellow  advocates — made the recommendation to Governor Cuomo to move the  marriage legislation forward, to this past Friday night when I had the  honor of standing behind him as he signed the marriage bill into law,  the two weeks were full of intensity and nervousness, exhilaration and  frustration, and, finally, tremendous joy.How did we pull this historic victory off?  Fresh from this triumph,  and with lessons from my work in marriage battles from Massachusetts,  Vermont, Connecticut and California to draw on, I want to share my best  thinking on the components that enabled us to win and what this means  for the freedom to marry campaign moving forward.Years of Sharing Our StoriesFirst and foremost, this victory came about as a result of years of  work and myriad conversations making the case for the freedom to marry.  The Empire State Pride Agenda has been leading the way in New York,  helping elevate the voices of same-sex couples in every part of the  state, engaging hundreds of clergy through their Pride in the Pulpit  effort, enlisting organized labor and business leaders to speak up for  marriage, cultivating relationships with electeds at every level of  government.  It’s that persistent, hard work that moves hearts and minds  over time, and in New York it had been well-executed.  New York also  benefited from the work of advocates in neighboring states to secure the  freedom to marry — Connecticut and Massachusetts in particular. New  Yorkers saw that marriage supported loving and committed couples and  families in those states and hurt no one at all.  As a result, by this  year, a full 58 percent of New Yorkers supported the freedom to marry.Demonstrating Electoral StrengthThe Fight Back New York effort in the 2010 State Senate elections was a definitive  game-changer.  After the gut-wrenching 2009 loss in the Senate, Fight  Back New York — an independent entity led by Gill Action Fund donors  and staff — took on both Democrats and Republicans who voted against  the freedom to marry.  The levels of funds invested ($800,000), the  strategic approach used to identify targets and capitalize on their  vulnerabilities, and the success in unseating three incumbents,  demonstrated that we would be relentless until we had a pro-marriage  majority in the Senate.  While anti-gay opponents like the National  Organization for Marriage and the Conservative Party threaten, our side  produced real results — results that we’ve demonstrated we will  replicate until the job is done.Governor Cuomo’s LeadershipAndrew Cuomo’s leadership in advancing this legislation was nothing  short of masterful. Never before has a governor taken charge of marriage  legislation and steered it through a legislature with such  determination, conviction and political skill.  During the final  intensive two-week period, we met with Governor Cuomo multiple times.   Every time, I walked away feeling that we’d win — he was at once a  calming force, and a determined leader who developed plans, back-up  plans, and contingencies to the back-ups to give us the best shot at  ensuring victory.  It’s been especially heartening to read in these past  few days that Governor Cuomo’s leadership on this issue has bolstered  him as a Democratic frontrunner for the presidency in 2016 in the eyes  of pundits — we’ve sure come a long way.  Yet embracing this cause was  clearly important to the governor at a deeper level than the political.   To me, nothing demonstrated that more than the fact that he invited his  two daughters to the Capitol to witness the history that he was  championing.  Quite simply, had the governor not taken this cause on as  his own or worked it so skillfully, we would not be celebrating right  now.Executing a Republican Strategy When the Republicans regained control of the Senate in the 2010  elections, the conventional wisdom was that the marriage bill stood no  chance.  LGBT advocates led by Gill Action assembled a top-notch  Republican advocacy team, hiring Jeff Cook — a veteran GOP strategist  — to manage the effort, as well as Mike Avella, former chief counsel to  the Senate Republicans, to mount the Republican lobbying effort.  Freedom to Marry partnered in this effort by, first, engaging John McArtle, the former  top adviser to Senate Majority Leaders Bruno and Skelos, to supplement  the communications effort and, second, conducting in-district polling  using the Republican conference’s main pollster to help show certain  Republicans that a pro-marriage vote would not be harmful.   Additionally, our coalition enlisted prominent Republican business and  political leaders including former Republican National Committee chair  Ken Mehlman, financier Paul Singer, and New York City Mayor Mike  Bloomberg (who though an Independent is a strong supporter of the  Republican conference), to make the moral and political case for  marriage to Republican senators.  We worked overtime to enlist  Republican supporters at the local level to make the case to their own  lawmakers.  In the end, we together convinced enough Senate Republicans  that allowing a vote on the bill and ultimately advancing the bill was  both right and politically strategic — the first time ever that a  Republican-controlled legislative chamber has voted for the freedom to  marry.New Yorkers United for Marriage CoalitionFreedom to Marry, the Empire State Pride Agenda, and the Human Rights Campaign, along with Marriage Equality New York and Log Cabin Republicans of New York,  joined forces to integrate the work each organization was doing on its  own.  We each agreed to largely subsume our organizational identities to  the coalition and combine activities for the greater good of winning  marriage in New York.  We jointly hired a talented communications firm,  SKD Knickerbocker, to coordinate our media efforts; we war-roomed  together with the governor’s senior team; and we began true integration  of all of the work — lobbying, field, media, “grasstops” mobilization,  outreach to electeds and allies.  For the last few weeks of the  campaign, a core group of us spoke on the phone every morning at 8:30 AM  and our communications staff spoke daily for the final month of the  campaign.  We dealt honestly with organizational interests and did our  best to ensure they did not get in the way of the bigger goal of  winning.Engaging Lawmakers in the Field Our field effort needed to have two outcomes: First, we needed to  demonstrate to senators who had not voted with us that large numbers of  their constituents supported the freedom to marry.  Second, we needed to  get couples, parents, and families to sit down with lawmakers and make  personal appeals about why marriage matters to them.  Our coalition did  both tasks powerfully.  Led by the Human Rights Campaign’s field team,  our coalition of organizations worked together to generate those  contacts, ultimately ensuring that lawmakers heard directly from more  than 125,000 New Yorkers.  This was accomplished through  boots-on-the-ground organizing, with close to 40 organizers spread out  across the state, from Eastern Long Island to Buffalo and everywhere in  between, collecting postcards, organizing phone banks and getting people  to call their lawmakers from shopping centers, festivals and churches  — wherever people congregated.  Several lawmakers pointed directly to  the quantity of constituent contacts as a primary reason for changing  their vote.  In addition, we ensured that each of the lawmakers on our  list had sit-down, heartfelt conversations with same-sex couples and  their families — a task that Freedom to Marry organizers took on  intensively in the last couple of weeks.  We prepped family members to  ensure they were ready to share their own story with their lawmaker.   And as is always the case, these conversations had profound effects on  lawmakers as they learned first-hand why marriage is so important to  same-sex couples and their families, including those who live in their  own communities.Enlisting Unusual SuspectsNew Yorkers United for Marriage made a special effort to demonstrate  how mainstream supporting the freedom to marry had become by enlisting  some real unusual suspects.  From businesses including Xerox, Alcoa, and  McGraw-Hill, and the heads of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and  Citigroup, to an unprecedented number of pro athletes including NBA star  Steve Nash, New York Rangers star Sean Avery, and New York Giants great  Michael Strahan, our coalition was able to put forward  counter-intuitive voices, showing how mainstream the issue had become  and giving greater license to moderate senators to change their  positions.Creating the Communications DrumbeatNew Yorkers United for Marriage set a very high bar — to have an  announcement every day of the campaign — a key endorsement, a new poll,  success in the field work — that we would roll out to newspapers and  television stations across the state.  In doing so, we literally built  our own momentum over the course of several months.   We also trained  couples in key parts of the state to become media spokespeople so that  we could generate human interest stories highlighting the importance of  marriage to those couples.  We engaged bloggers together and coordinated  and shared use of new media tools.   In all of this work and our  multi-million dollar paid media campaign (consisting of an effective and  serious television buy, direct mail into targeted districts, and  newspaper ads), the coalition adopted the messaging framework that Freedom to Marry developed based on extensive national research on how to  making the  case effectively to the “moveable middle” on marriage — messaging that  Freedom to Marry is putting into action nationwide through our Why Marriage Matters public education campaign, now shared by partners organizations around the country.Raising Dollars LocallyNew Yorkers United for Marriage expended approximately $2 million on  its media and direct mail campaign (not counting the funds that  coalition partners put into the push).  The vast majority of those  dollars came from local, New York sources.   New York-based  philanthropists observed the governor’s commitment and the advocates’  coordinated efforts, and rose to the occasion in a big way.  While  out-of-state funds from our movement’s familiar funders were a key part  of the effort, they were a relatively small percentage of the total.Moving Forward in the StatesFrom my own experience on multiple state-level marriage campaigns,  I’ve found that there is no ‘one size fits all’ campaign model; each  campaign must take into account the political context as well as the  relative strengths and weaknesses of the parties involved.  What is  clear, though, is that that successful campaigns need to incorporate  most (if not each) of the above components.  A tight-knit coalition  capable of building on what the marriage movement has done right and not  just reinventing the wheel, consisting of players that are adding real  value in accomplishing the crucial elements of the campaign, has proven  effective.  It’s what Freedom to Marry and our partners achieved in New York, what national and local partners  built in Massachusetts, and it’s proving successful in our collective  efforts to fend off a repeal of the freedom to marry in New Hampshire.At Freedom to Marry,  alongside our federal campaign to overturn so-called DOMA and our  national public education and persuasion campaigns, we have built (and  are still growing) the central capacities needed to elevate and assist  state-wide campaigns in each of the crucial areas, from strategy  development to new media, lobbying to field.  We don’t seek to run  state-based campaigns ourselves.  Instead, we look for state-based and  national partners who will join together with us in adding crucial  elements to the mix, and work to form tightly knit coalitions to  coordinate and manage the battles on each battlefield.New Yorkers United for Marriage is a terrifically successful model of  what that can look like.  And while we cannot always control who the  governor is, we do know how to put forth our best effort and run smart  and winning campaigns.  We at Freedom to Marry are eager to carry the  New York momentum forward and partner up in the next round of states to  bring home more victories.  So… let’s go! Follow Marc Solomon on Twitter: \t\t\t\t\t www.twitter.com\/MarcESolomon  "},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"How We Won New York","item":"https:\/\/equallywed.com\/how-we-won-new-york\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]