Well, we have some good news and some bad news to report in Maine today. First, let's start off with some good news. Maine Public Broadcasting just got the hot new Pan-Atlantic poll numbers.
Pan Atlantic's Patrick Murphy says the survey of 400 likely voters found 53 percent opposing Question 1, which would repeal Maine's gay marriage law, while 42 percent favor the measure and six percent remain undecided. [Empahasis mine.] The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent.
Murphy says Question 1 is getting a different reaction in Maine's two congressional districts, with voters in the 1st District favoring the measure by a 20 point spread, while voters in the 2nd District remain nearly equally divided. He says among the state's Catholic voters, the measure has a narrow margin of support, 49 to 46 percent.
Public opinion on Question 1 in Maine, which would reject the state's law allowing same sex couples to marry, is knotted up two weeks before election day. 48% of voters in the state support it and 48% oppose it.
With most voters' minds made up the election is not really about persuasion at this point but turnout. Even a small difference in the ability of supporters and opponents of the referendum to get their folks out to the polls could tip the scales with the issue this close.
PPP says it can't get any closer. It was an automated (robodial) poll, so I guess it's to be expected that their numbers would be different from the live callpolls' results. We can argue over whose method produces more accurate results, but ultimately all the polls point to a close race. No matter what, we have our work cut out for us.
(I just arrived in Maine, will have more on this tomorrow. In an off-year election when youth turnout is difficult, Andrew's right that this thing isn't done yet - promoted by Adam Bink)
According to new poll data, 51.8 percent of people who plan to vote in November say they will vote no or are leaning in that direction on question 1, the people's veto of Maine's same-sex marriage law.
The poll shows that 42.9 percent plan to vote yes, or are leaning that way. And 5.2 percent remain undecided.A "no" vote would allow the same-sex marriage law to stand. A "yes" vote would overturn the law.
The poll was from Portland-based Pan Atlantic SMS Group, which released its fall Omnibus Poll today. [..] According to Pan Atlantic, the survey is of 401 Mainers who identified themselves as "likely" voters in the Nov. 3 election. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
So either we have quite a tiny lead or we're starting to see a larger lead. But most likely, No on 1 is leading by just under 9%. Folks, that's still too close for comfort.
Check out this video of AMERICABlog's Joe Sudbay at our Maine fundraiser on Saturday night. Joe's a Maine native, and he just got back from the state this past week. He hits on some of the latest details from on the ground.
The part that really gets me is that last year, while we were winning across-the-board in Congress and Obama won the White House, we lost California. It was a bittersweet victory. When someone at the party asks Joe "why does this matter to the other 49 states", Joe rightly replies, "because we've never won one." He's right. We have to break that streak, and we have to do it in Maine.
I remember in California, a lot of celebrities woke up at the very last minute to the notion that we might lose. They even held this big swanky fundraiser at Ron Burkle's mansion less than two weeks, where Melissa Etheridge got up on stage and offered to play any song for a $50,000 donation. There was an awkward silence for quite some time when no one volunteered. It was kind of sad that it had come to that.
That's why giving before October 15th- the day early in-person voting starts and the campaign finance deadline occurs- is so critical. So the campaign, unlike Prop 8, has the resources it needs when it needs them.
Click helow to chip in and take us across the finish line. We're at just $1,866 on the OpenLeft/Better Dems page. Let's take it well past $2K today.
On Saturday night, I helped throw a party to raise some coin for the No On 1 campaign in Maine. Just before Joe Sudbay spoke about the importance of the campaign, I was chatting with a friend about the speech. Something she mentioned that really got to me. She pointed out how 30 states have had votes on marriage equality since 1998. The right-wing has won all 30 of them. With the exception of our side winning a 2006 vote in Arizona (which we lost two years later), the haters are batting have won every single one. All thirty. Batting 1.000. A perfect streak.
That, she said, was just as critical as Obama at the HRC dinner talking about his plans to sign a federal hate crimes bill, or hope to repeal DOMA. Funders fund success, and nothing says success like a perfect record on marriage initiatives. Winning breeds more funding and excitement among the base, which breeds more success.
We have to break this streak.
I'm telling you all this because October 15th is the final stretch in Maine. It is both the first day voters can vote in-person as well as the final campaign finance deadline. Thanks to you, I'll be arriving the evening before to cover part of the final stretch.
Like any campaign, or family, No On 1 relies on a budget, and needs to know how much it will take in before doing final field organizer hiring, buying ad spots, and so forth. We can see how much the other side has raised, which is important. And a less-than-expected showing for us also can get right-wingers to dump more in, spotting a chance at victory. That, along with early voting starting, makes October 15th the second-most critical day of the campaign.
If you are going to give at all during this campaign, I urge you to give now. Like campaign manager and straight ally Jesse Connolly wrote here at OpenLeft, Maine is a cheap date state. Their finance director sent me a list of costs- you wouldn't believe it. We raised $1,300 on Saturday night, enough to buy 100 yard signs, 70 cell phones for volunteers to talk to voters, produce a radio ad, and pay a field organizer for an entire WEEK. It's a bargain.
Your contribution of $24 can buy 20 yard signs. Your $36 can fund field supplies for one entire canvass. $125 can buy all of that AND twenty $3/day cell phones for volunteers to call voters. You can help break the streak.
If we don't ante up here, the haters will get all the funding they need to go into other states where we are poised to win legislatively, and file ballot initiatives. We will find ourselves being asked to put resources into more states and be spread thin. This 30/30 streak has to stop, and it has to stop in Maine.
Welcome to Jesse, who is managing the No On 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign.-Adam
Thanks for the opportunity to post at OpenLeft and thanks to everyone who contributed to send Adam Bink to Maine to help us fight the right wing effort to repeal our state's new marriage equality law.
Adam made an important point in his post, An Interconnected Movement. It's easy to silo issues and to view the Maine campaign solely as an LGBT campaign. But, it's more than that. It is about generating momentum for the progressive movement.
I am managing the No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign in Maine, but I don't come from the world of LGBT activism. I'm a straight ally who believes strongly in equality for all. This is the fourth time I've run a state-wide campaign, including Kerry-Edwards in 2004 and the re-election of our Governor in 2006. Those were both very important, but I think this campaign has the most potential for national significance.
Maine was the first state to have its same-sex marriage law pass the legislature and it was a huge moment when Governor John Baldacci signed the bill into law. In Maine, we have a process called the "people's veto," which allows citizens to challenge legislative enactments through referendum. The anti-gay forces, funded by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), Focus on the Family, the Catholic Diocese of Portland and the Knights of Columbus formed a campaign to overturn the new law at the ballot box this November 3rd.
Our opponents hired Schubert Flint Public Affairs, the same firm that ran the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign in California last fall. They are running the same campaign they ran in California -- literally. This week, the Yes on 1 campaign began running an ad that was virtually identical to an ad from the Prop. 8 campaign. You can see both ads here. The one difference is that the Mainer, Charla Bansley, in their ad is actually a well-known anti-gay activist who is the local leader of Concerned Women of America. This summer, she delivered her anti-gay message at a teabagging event, which showed one more time, as Adam noted, "The conservative movement is very interconnected."
The same cast of characters is running the same campaign in Maine that succeeded in California. But, we're not letting them get away with it this time. We've got an aggressive paid media campaign underway - and we're rebutting their message of lies with paid and earned media. One of our state's more conservative newspapers called one of their ads "baseless."
More importantly, we've been developing a very strong field component. As most politicos know, referendum campaigns, especially those in off-year elections, are won or lost in the field. And, the people working on our campaign know how to get-out-the-vote. In Maine, no one does it better than the folks who are working with us.
In Maine, the No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign has to win - and we need help.
We have to win in Maine not only to secure full equality for Maine's same-sex couples, but to help shut down the conservative agenda.
In addition to sending Adam to Maine, you can donate to our campaign via OpenLeft's very own ActBlue page. Help us make sure we have the resources to keep our ads on the air. In a small state like Maine, every little bit helps. I call it a "cheap-date" state.
Also, you can join Adam in Maine through our Volunteer Vacation Program, which begins the first week of October. People from all over the country are coming to Maine to be full-time volunteers on the ground in targeted towns for one week. We'll provide the housing for anyone who can get to Maine. Our friends over at Travel For Change are helping arrange travel and are more than willing to help you sponsor another volunteer if you can't make it yourself, including taking your donated airline miles.
At the No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign, we've been very appreciative of the support from progressives around the country. This is about marriage equality in Maine, but it's about much more, too.
First, I want to thank everyone who contributed for me to go to Maine next month and blog on the ground about this campaign. If you haven't chipped in yet, you can do so here. Thank you so much for your generosity, and look for some great content here at OpenLeft in just a few weeks!
Earlier this week I wrote about the anti-equality campaign's new ad in Maine, which is a carbon copy of the Yes on 8 campaign's ad in California. The two campaigns use the same consulting firm, Schubert Flint Public Affairs. The ad was about how marriage equality would force school districts to teach the principles of equality in local schools (oh, the horror).
Our side hit back, and the ad was universally debunked as misleading at best and a lie at worst.
Gerald at Dirigo Blue called the Maine Department of Education, which then released a statement saying a change in Maine's definition of marriage would not require local school districts to change their teaching requirements.
Maine legislative leaders, several former attorneys general and law experts wrote a memorandum ripping apart the argument in the advertising as completely false.
Our side successfully hit back against the right-wingers in the journalistic department. Today, the No On 1 campaign is hitting back on TV:
There are multiple ways to help take this further. If you're in Maine or know someone who is, ask them to sign up for the No On 1 e-mail list, and to write a letter to the editor on how false the other side's ads are. If you're not in Maine, go to your Facebook wall and/or Twitter feed, and post the response ad (here's the link) and this link to sign up for the No On 1 campaign. Because even if you don't know anyone in Maine, you may have friends out there on the internets who do. If you're either, you can go vote in this local FOX poll (right side of the page).
I wrote yesterday about an interconnected movement. Fighting back- bloggers, you, and No On 1- together is how we can string together victories that demoralize and help defund the right. Let's get it done.
So the Hey Hey Ho Ho Equality Has Got to GoYes on 1 campaign in Maine came out with their first ad, and the good news is that, well, it's not so great.
Aside from being a classic fear ad, it strikes me as wholly inauthentic. I don't know what's with the Boston College expert walking around his office (did they just flip through their rolodex and pick a name at random?), freaky Thriller music and lots of words running across the screen all at once. Contrasted to the first two No On 1/Protect Maine Equality ads below with two authentic families, it's a dud.
Here's the bad news. The Break Up FamiliesYes on 1 campaign's ad buy is $700,000, enough for each voter to see that ad 20 times.
But there's also some more good news. The No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign just launched a peer-to-peer fundraising tool to use to hit up friends, family and colleagues you have. I've played with it a bit, and it's pretty easy to use.
I just thought about it, and I have plenty of LGBT friends who are not invested in this campaign because it's way up in Maine, but should be, the same way we all care who wins a random primary election somewhere else. I believe the Maine campaign- particularly in the wake of the Prop 8 loss- will be an important moment in progressive and LGBT politics. If they win, their side is batting 1.000 on marriage ballot votes since 2004. That's critical for the haters to keep receiving support and funding from the right-wing. Our side will also be severely demoralized after this and Prop 8. If we win, we preserve the rights of Mainer families and have an important victory to take to the bank. We have to win.
That's why I'm writing tonight, using this tool, to ask them to support a campaign that will affect us all. And you'll support quality ads and what I and many colleagues know to be a very good campaign staff. I hope you'll join me.
A little while back, I wrote about how the haters in Maine are using fear of "gay sex education" in public schools as a weapon to scare people into stripping rights away from gay couples in Maine. Here's the bulk of the original e-mail Stand For Marriage Maine sent out:
For many of us, this week marks the start of the new school year. So in honor of back-to-school season, let's try a little pop quiz. Which of the following does not belong in the same group as the others:
(A)History
(B)Mathematics
(C)English
(D)Homosexual Marriage
If you guessed ''D'' - you're right! Mainers firmly believe homosexual instruction has no place in the classroom. Maine's public schools should focus on reading and writing, not mandatory gay sex education.
There's only one problem: an irresponsible piece of legislation known as LD1020. If allowed to take effect this law would throw to the trash heap our decades-old interest in promoting traditional marriage. It would legalize homosexual, genderless marriage. And if marriage is redefined to be genderless, then same-sex marriage must be taught as being the same as traditional marriage. This has profound consequences for your child's classroom education.
Today, Bill Nemitz of the Portland Press Herald picks up the theme debunks the e-mail while ripping the chair of Stand For Marriage Maine, Marc Mutty, a new one:
All of which raises an intriguing question: Who really wrote this - and what have they done with the old Marc Mutty? Mutty was out sick Thursday and thus unavailable to explain what's causing him to see things in Maine's same-sex marriage law that, from any reality-based angle, simply aren't there.
But the Rev. Bob Emrich of the Emmanuel Bible Baptist Church in Plymouth, a member of Stand for Marriage Maine's executive committee, said the group stands by Mutty's claim that the same-sex marriage statute will require "explicit homosexual instruction in the classroom."
One problem. Emrich and Mutty are wrong. Nowhere in the law do the words "school" or "classroom" even appear.
And if you're looking for phrases like "explicit homosexual instruction" hidden in some obscure statutory subsection, trust me - it's not there. Not even in code.
[...]
In a statement issued via e-mail Thursday, Jesse Connolly, campaign manager of No on 1/Protect Maine Equality, predicted that Maine voters will "see through these cynical campaign tactics" by Mutty & Co. as the debate heats up in the coming weeks.
"This is an attempt to divert attention and raise unfounded issues," said Connolly. "Question 1 has nothing to do with schools and no one is voting on curriculum in November."
Connolly is right - and anyone who's taken the time to carefully read Maine's same-sex marriage law knows it.
Including, of all people, Marc Mutty.
This hits the nail right on the head. We still have a fight on our hands, though. The Catholic Bishop in Maine is taking up a second collection in churches around the state for money to fight LGBT equality. Karen Ocamb, who in my opinion has done the best reporting on the optics of the Prop 8 fight in CA, has a brilliant expose at Dirigo Blue on how the same entire religious right that mobilized there is setting up shop in Maine. The haters in Maine are using the same consulting firm, Schubert Flint Public Affairs, that the Yes on 8 campaign used in CA.
Stand For Marriage Maine, the right-wingers trying to repeal same-sex marriage equality in Maine, just sent out this awesome mailer:
For many of us, this week marks the start of the new school year. So in honor of back-to-school season, let's try a little pop quiz. Which of the following does not belong in the same group as the others:
(A)History
(B)Mathematics
(C)English
(D)Homosexual Marriage
If you guessed ''D'' - you're right! Mainers firmly believe homosexual instruction has no place in the classroom. Maine's public schools should focus on reading and writing, not mandatory gay sex education.
There's only one problem: an irresponsible piece of legislation known as LD1020. If allowed to take effect this law would throw to the trash heap our decades-old interest in promoting traditional marriage. It would legalize homosexual, genderless marriage. And if marriage is redefined to be genderless, then same-sex marriage must be taught as being the same as traditional marriage. This has profound consequences for your child's classroom education.
Gay sex education?! They teach that now?! Where can I sign up?
Jokes aside, the haters will lie and smear their way into victory during this campaign. Conflating marriage equality into "mandatory gay sex education" is insulting and a horrific exaggeration, but that's what they do. These are real families with real children being raised just like other kids. Nowhere in the legislation are there any kind of required classes. The right-wing has always used fear as a weapon, and it's fear of instilling values here.
Our side needs to counter it with the truth. This new ad launching after Labor Day is the way to do it. Sam Putnam, the teenager with two moms in this new ad from the No On 1 campaign, does not look like he has gay sex horns growing out of his head.
Maine residents will start to vote in mid-October. That's just six weeks away. The race to define this thing is on, and as I've heard from all my Maine contacts, it needs to be "live and let live." That message is up for grabs. With mail like this, the right-wingers are pushing their own version of that. We have to push ours.
Last night, No On 1 was added as the very first race on the Orange to Blue page from DailyKos. Jesse Connolly, the campaign manager of the No On 1 campaign, posted at DailyKos today about the campaign, thanking the netroots, including us, for helping raise the money to put ads like this on the air. Please rec and comment. Let's tip our hat back to him from OpenLeft and define this fight for Maine residents first, before the other side does.
Got off a call on the Maine campaign to protect marriage equality, with a few updates:
I wrote last week that the campaign had a $10,000 matching grant from a donor in Maine. The donor then increased the match to $20,000, and we hit that by this past Friday. Thanks to all who gave, that is huge.
The co-chair of the anti-marriage equality group in Maine, Stand For Marriage Maine Coalition, compared LGBT couples to trees, saying:
A barren field full of stumps has had all its trees treated equally, to be sure. But that makes as much sense as looking at the extreme changes to Maine's marriage law approved recently by Gov. Baldacci and calling it marriage equality.
AUGUSTA, MAINE -- Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, an LGBT watchdog group, sent a letter detailing alleged election law violations by Stand for Marriage Maine to the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices. The request for an immediate investigation was sent yesterday to the Jonathan Wayne, the Commission's Executive Director and a copy to attorney General Janet Mills.
The nine page complaint (below) and fourteen attachments spell out how the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Knights of Columbus of Washington, DC and James Dobson's Focus on the Family had contributors give the money to their organizations, and then they in turn gave the money to the Stand for Marriage Maine in order to hide the identity of the donors.
[...]
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints (Mormon Church) created the National Organization for Marriage specifically to qualify and pass Prop 8 in California. Now they have NOM doing their bidding in Maine, Iowa and all over the Northeast," concluded Karger.
The campaign has set up a "Volunteer Vacation", a great idea, to help folks who want to help with the campaign go to Maine for a week. Immersing onesself in a campaign is really a great, and useful, experience. I did so in 2006 in NY-29 (Massa) managing field and not only was it really a get-away, I learned a lot.
I want to reiterate that this is literally a 10-week campaign until Election Day. It's going to go by fast. The campaign has set up four weeks in October to work, and will provide you with housing. We're also working with TravelForChange.org, which received donations of 11 million airline miles to help Obama volunteers travel last cycle, to help folks financially get to Maine. More on this soon. If you're all set to go with booking your own plane ticket now, sign up here. I'm looking at going up in late October. As Joe Sudbay (who's from Maine) wrote, the folks on the ground are the best, most experienced pros in the state, so you'll be in good hands.
When I was at Netroots Nation last week, I sat in on a meeting organized to work on the No On 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign to protect the recently-passed marriage equality legislation in Maine from repeal. Aside from being a gay man and caring about this very much, I was impressed by one big thing: that in what is an election less than ten weeks out, the No On 1 campaign sent four staff members, including their campaign manager and finance director. I'm not much the cynical "oh, they've just after the netroots ATM" type. Rather, I've talked to my friend Joe Sudbay over at AMERICABlog about them, who is from Maine, and knows many of the staff personally. These folks respect the netroots, respect our ideas and suggestions on the campaign (including lessons learned from folks who worked on Prop 8 in California), and are asking in good faith for our help.
Exhibit A is their first TV spot now up, which gets everything right about how to get at the "ick" factor of LGBT couples in an ad that the Prop 8 committee got wrong.
It shows straight individuals and straight families allied with LGBT couples (did you catch the word "together" repeated three times?). It shows LGBT couples in loving relationships. The Maine residents featured talk about progressive values of respect, fairness, and how LGBT families can make loving and committed families too. I watched it several times.
Losing Prop 8 hurt, and the one other thing I sensed at the meeting was that there are a ton of folks itching to get it right- uphold marriage in a statewide vote, and send a message to the rest of the nation. And right the mistakes we made in California. I want to do that as much as I am concerned that if we lose a second vote, it will not only depress activism and enthusiasm on our side, but will embolden the hate groups and individuals to keep on giving when one of them points to two major successful campaigns in the last two years to say, look, we know how to win these things. Give to us and we'll make sure we get it done in other states. And folks who are undecided around the country will take note of the results.
One of the worst results is that it will make the Obama Administration, which is already cautious and timid on LGBT issues, even more cautious.
We can't let that happen. The right-wingers- National Organization for Marriage, Focus on the Family, Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Diocese have already pumped hundreds of thousands in. The Mormons have done it through more covert means. The same consulting firm that ran the Yes on 8 campaign in California- Schubert Flint- is consulting for them. We have to match it. And I just learned that if we raise $10,000 by Friday, a Maine resident will double it. Let's get it started.
