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1. We lost 24-38. All 30 Republicans voted no (I wrote that Little voted yes when a colleague just off the floor said he heard her vote yes, which was mistaken). Eight out of 32 Democrats voted no.
2. Monserrate, one of the Senators who flipped control of the Senate in a coup earlier this year, and who was recently convicted on charges of slashing his girlfriend's face, voted no. He was in favor of marriage equality for years, dating back to his time on the NYC City Council. He was in favor in his run for Senate. Marriage Equality New York reported him in favor when we won the State Senate last fall. He voted no. He is already a big target.
3. We got two of the five undecided Dems I listed (Foley, Valesky). Addabbo, Huntley, Kruger voted no.
4. All of the four hard No's I reported a few weeks ago indeed turned out to be No's (Aubertine, Diaz, Onorato, Stachowski).
5. On why in the world we would have a vote only to lose by eight votes, here's Sen. Tom Duane, the openly gay lead sponsor and vote-counter, back in April:
Sen. Tom Duane, D-Manhattan, the leading advocate of same-sex marriage in the Senate, predicts passage with votes to spare. We'd settle for any margin sufficient to remove one more barrier of discrimination.
In May:
But Tom Duane, the Manhattan Democrat leading the gay marriage push in the Senate, said he's sure there will be enough votes, including some from Republican lawmakers.
With Assembly passage, Duane said "the logjam will be over."
"There will be some 'me-tooism,' " Duane added.
In June:
State Senator Tom Duane of Manhattan, the openly gay, hyper-vocal proponent of marriage equality, said yesterday that he's received private assurances from at least 32 of his colleagues that they will vote in favor of a marriage-equality bill introduced by Governor Paterson and recently passed by the State Assembly. Though he wouldn't specify which senators had pledged support, he did say the list included several Republicans. "I would not want to deny them the pleasure of telling you themselves. That would just be wrong and really impolite of me to do that," he said, assuring simply: "I have the votes."
In October, following being called out by the Empire State Pride Agenda at their dinner:
So, I think there's some fear that marriage might not happen. But it is happening. We have the votes the governor is providing great leadership on it. He absolutely wants it to happen the votes are there for it to pass.
In November:
I'm not releasing my vote count until we're ready to vote. What people have told me, they've told me in confidence. It just wouldn't be appropriate for me to share that.
One way to look at this is that Duane can't count votes. Probably more accurate is that he, and the Dem leadership, were lied to en masse. I'm told by a number of reliable sources that we had commitments from several Republicans to vote yes. This felt wrong from the moment I saw not a single Republican spoke on the floor in debate, probably because there was a live video stream and no one wanted to get on tape being a homophobe. Essentially, we got punked.
Update: In Sen. Duane's statement I received over e-mail, the first paragraph hints at that:
Today's vote against Marriage Equality makes me very angry. Promises made were not honored. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community, and all fair-minded New Yorkers have been betrayed. I am enraged, deeply disappointed and profoundly saddened by the vote today.
6. As a Western New York native, where my entire family still lives and where I went to college, this feels like a punch in the gut. For the second time in as many months. Losing by so many hurts even more. Earlier this month I learned I were ever to get married back home, my intended and I would become the first same-sex couple ever married at my home synagogue in Williamsville, NY. I guess it will have to wait a little while longer.
The good news is that I'm headed to NYC on Saturday for a NYS-focused online organizing conference, where many of us will be scheming on how to start knocking off as many of the Senators as we can who screwed us today. The recently-launched reBootNY, which you should sign up for if you want to do something about this, is one way. This ain't over.
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