Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAugust 26th, 2008
You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting much lately. And the way things are shaping up, I won’t be posting much between now and the election.
Last week, I was selected to serve as co-chair of the Vote No on Prop 102 campaign. Vote No on Prop 102 is a broad based coalition of citizens working at the community level to conduct a grass-roots “retail” campaign to get out the vote and carry the message on Prop 102 to the different constituencies. We will be focusing our efforts on southern Arizona , but we are also interested in facilitating similar efforts elsewhere in the state.
The reason we’ve chosen to focus on Southern Arizona is threefold: 1) it’s where we are, 2) we haven’t been able to raise much money, and we need to make sure it is used effectively, and 3) Southern Arizona is where our greatest opportunity lies in defeating Prop 102. Let me explain.
In 2006, Arizona defeated a similar marriage amendment by 3.6 percentage points. Five counties voted to defeat the amendment, and the remaining ten voted to approve it. The largest margin of votes came from Pima County in Southern Arizona, which defeated the proposition by 42,806 votes, or 15.6%. That margin was large enough that even if all the other four counties which defeated the amendment had merely tied, the proposition would have still gone down by 18,532 votes state wide — 1.2% — on the strength of Pima County’s vote alone. Pima County was the only county to provide a large enough margin to guarantee defeat in 2006, and it is imperative that the grass-roots effort which worked to ensure that margin is repeated again in 2008.
This is not to say that working in other counties to defeat the amendment is not important. We are working alongside Equality Arizona on similar grass-roots efforts throughout the state. But based on voter data from 2006 and the successful grass-roots campaign that was waged throughout Southern Arizona, we feel that the anchor to another victory is in southern Arizona.
Nevertheless, we are also interested in supporting and facilitating grass-roots campaigns in whatever way we can elsewhere in the state, particularly in Apache, Coconino, Maricopa and Santa Cruz counties — all of which contributed to victory in 2006. We are already engaged with local efforts in several communities in Cochise county, and we believe there are similar opportunities in Yavapai and elsewhere. Our financial health will determine the extent of the support and resources we can extend throughout the state, but as you know, our finances are very poor at the moment.
We are busy formulating a campaign plan, we’re lining up some exciting allies, and we will have more information to share as the outlines of the campaign takes shape. We don’t have much time, and more critically, we have very little money. Please do what you can to help and contribute generously.
Thank you.
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Rob
August 26th, 2008
It is a shame that as an American citizen that you still have to go through these stupid propositions, simply to be treated as an equal citizen under the law.
Best of luck with your campaign Jim.
Norm!
August 26th, 2008
Thank you for the reminder of the gay rights fight in AZ — which seems to be overshadowed by CA.
I intend on contributing what I would have contributed to defeat Oregon’s anti-gay ballot measure had its supporters been successful in their court case earlier this month.
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