Florida Agenda

Tonight’s presidential debate features the first African- American chief executive defending his seat against— arguably—the most “Establishment”- type candidate that the GOP Eastern Establishment could bring to bear. (Point of Trivia: The Republican Party included on its presidential ticket— either at the top or as running mate— someone named “Bush” or “Dole” in every election between 1976 and 2004.

How’s that for a party of insiders?) All three presidential debates between President Barack Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney will take place this month, as will the single debate between Vice President Joe Biden and his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Expect few innovations—other than the presence of CNN anchor and chief political correspondent Candy Crowley as one of the debate moderators, the first female journalist to do so since ABC News correspondent Carole Simpson ref’ed a 1992 three-way between President George H.W. Bush and his challengers, Democrat Bill Clinton, and Indy-billionaire H. Ross Perot.

(The moderators for the other two debates between Obama and Romney are PBS executive editor Jim Lehrer and CBS News anchor and host Bob Schieffer. Another female journalist—ABC News senior foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz—will moderate the debate between Biden and Ryan, on October 11.)

The first debate tonight, moderated by Lehrer, will take place at the University of Denver, Denver. It will be divided into six 15-minute segments with topics selected by the moderator—in this case, related to the economy and domestic policy.

By Joe Harris

Each segment will open with a question from the moderator, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond.

The second presidential debate, on Tuesday, October 16, will be a town meeting at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York, moderated by Crowley. The questioners—undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization—will pose their questions about foreign and domestic matters. Obama and Romney will each have two minutes to respond, with an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate discussion.

The final debate between the president and Gov. Romney, moderated by Schieffer, will be a local affair, taking place on Monday, October 22, at Lynn University in Boca Raton. The format—identical to the first debate— will concern foreign policy issues.

Both Romney and the president have challenges going into tonight’s exchange. Romney has to get the heartrates of both women and lower-middle income white voters going in order to counter Obama’s huge leads among African-Americans and Hispanics.

Having failed to make them swoon after the RNC in Tampa, Romney has seen the evaporation his once-biggest assets: The ability to paint the economy as dismal, and his appeal to swingstate voters. Polls show that Romney can’t count on voter angst about the economy in these final weeks, and the strengths which might have delivered Independents and moderates have been sacrificed at the altar of Social Conservatism and a need to mollify the radical elements of his right flank, which even now remain suspicious of his Mormon faith and (now-forgotten) progressive record in the Bay State.

Obama can still capsize: A major fumble mid-debate could dominate the news cycle and shift the narrative’s focus. It doesn’t have to be big, just distracting. (Let’s not forget his smarmy, “You’re likeable enough, Hillary” remark in 2008.) To be continued.

By JOE HARRIS

The ink on the Republican National Committee’s 2012 Party Platform wasn’t even dry (at least on the part that reads “we believe that marriage, the union of one man and one woman, must be upheld as the national standard, a goal to stand for, encourage, and promote through laws governing marriage”) when the party mandarins took the RNC Old-Timey Religious Revival show on the road, for a stop at this year’s Values Voters Summit, an event held by the family (although not “family”)- friendly Family Research Council (FRC), in Washington, D.C. FRC President Tony Perkins used the right’s boilerplate rallying cries, with calls to “limit government,” “reduce spending,” “champion traditional values,” and “protect America,” and then invited the usual suspects to declaim the gay rights agenda and the many ways it threatens those sacred bovines.

An estimated 2,500 attendees to the three-day event egged-on speakers, including Republican vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, who criticized President Obama’s anti-family (read: pro-gay) policies, and lionized traditional values, among the most popular of which proved to be prohibiting marriage rights for gay couples.

It was Ryan who packed the most “star power” (of the Hollywood variety that is, ironically, so outwardly loathed by his biggest fans), reassuring the assembled that, “We can be confident in the rightness of our cause, and also in the integrity and readiness of the man who leads it,” referring to running mate Mitt Romney. “He is a solid and trustworthy, faithful and honorable man. Not only a defender of marriage, he offers an example of marriage at its best.”

U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) spoke to the assembly about the many benefits that marriage provides to families and the economy alike (just as long as, we suppose, one is speaking of “Adam and Eve”). Said Cantor: “Marriage—more than any government program ever has or ever will—has lifted up people out of poverty, even those who felt there was no hope. Marriage has proven to be that formula which has been more successful at allowing for that pursuit of happiness.”

So far, so good. “And that is why we stand tall and stand proud for traditional marriage,” Cantor concluded. Uh-oh: Sorry, Adam and Steve. (President Obama announced last year that the Justice Department would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] in court. Cantor, you may recall, was part of the House GOP leadership that established the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to take up the slack, a move that was widely seen as a stab in the back to gay Republicans.)

Although the Man-Who-Would- Be-President did not make a live appearance, he spoke via recorded video, telling the assembled that a Romney Presidency “will defend marriage, not try to redefine it.”

By JOE HARRIS

In November, voters in four states will be asked to make permanent— more or less—their jurisdictions’ treatment of marriage equality (or reasonable facsimiles thereof). Ballot initiatives in Maryland and Washington will determine whether marriage equality laws signed this year will stay on the books. In Maine, voters will decide once and for all, they presume, whether to allow gay marriage back into the Pine Tree State (where it was already signed into law—and overturned at the ballot box—in 2009). And in Minnesota, a constitutional amendment would enshrine marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

The Maine Event

AUGUSTA, MAINE – In 2009, state lawmakers enacted marriage equality, but it was overturned in the voting booth. Supporters of ballot Question 1 want to reinstate same-sex marriage. Both they and their opponents criticized the wording of the ballot question (“Do you want to allow same-sex couples to marry?”) as being too simplistic. Although Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, has been silent about his position on the issue, in May he criticized the teachers’ union for endorsing it, and later vetoed the union’s pay bill. Polls suggest that most voters (58 percent) support the marriage equality referendum.

Freedom to Marry in the Free State?

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND – Supporters hope to pass an initiative repealing the state’s Civil Marriage Protection Act, which was enacted earlier this year in support of marriage equality. Survey data shows strong support for same-sex marriage in Maryland.

The Veep, the General, and the Gays

ST PAUL, MINNESOTA – Although gay marriage isn’t legal there, Republican lawmakers and conservative activists support a constitutional amendment to prohibit it from ever rearing its head in the North Star State. The ballot measure asks, “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?” (Republicans want you to answer, “Yes.”)

The question’s opponents include former Vice President Walter Mondale (D-MN), Fortune 500 corporation (and Minnesota-based) General Mills, Thomson Reuters, Target, and U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).

Ever-Pink in the Evergreen State?

OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON- The state’s Referendum 74 would repeal the marriage equality law signed in February by Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat. The referendum question asks voters to approve or reject the law, which “allows same-sex couples to marry, applies marriage laws without regard to gender, and specifies that laws using gender specific terms like husband and wife include same-sex spouses.”

The law also says that “After 2014, existing domestic partnerships are converted to marriages, except for seniors. It preserves the right of clergy or religious organizations to refuse to perform or recognize any marriage or accommodate wedding ceremonies. The bill does not affect licensing of religious organizations providing adoption, foster-care, or child placement.”

Major supporters of Washington state marriage equality include Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, Nike, and Starbucks.

By JOE HARRIS

The late Hunter S. Thompson would have felt comfortable lurking in the wings of Ybor City’s Honey Pot nightclub last Tuesday night, with a surreal, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”-esque vibe to the gay bar and the several hundred Republicans-and-their-besties who had gathered for a night of “booze” (in the words of co-organizer Jimmy LaSalvia, who noted that, “This is the largest event hosted by a gay group at a Republican convention, not that size matters.”) and talking points.

To underscore just exactly who was “coming to dinner” (or in this case, drinks), the RSVP email was clear: “Homocon 2012 is not a clothing optional event! We don’t care what you wear, but you do have to wear clothes.” LaSalvia, who co-founded GOProud, a group for gay conservatives, orchestrated Homocon 2012 to be an evening of strippers (who honestly weren’t all that stripped-down—in deference, I’m sure, to the Romneys, who were just down the road) and party stalwarts. And even if Ann Coulter wasn’t in attendance (as she had been in 2010), former Romney foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell (who was reportedly squeezed out of his Team Mitt gig because of pressure from social conservatives) was.

LaSalvia’s GOProud is the only gay group thus far to endorse the Romney-Ryan ticket. The larger Log Cabin Republicans have yet to give the running mates their blessing, although the organization’s DC chapter voted last week to endorse the ticket and recommended that the national organization do likewise, with acknowledgment made for the group’s differences with Romney over points of LGBT civil rights, including marriage equality.

But for LaSalvia, it was a Big Gay Tent, with same-sex marriage taking a back seat to matters of economic policy. “Before you can get married, you have to have a date,” noted LaSalvia, perhaps a little too glibly. “And everyone knows you can’t get a date without a job.” In keeping with the upbeat dynamic, LaSalvia—perhaps with diplomacy in his mind—failed to note that GOProud itself was prohibited from attending this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC).

There was also no mention made that after the Obama administration announced that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal court, it was Republican House leaders (under Speaker John Boehner) who took up the slack, with gusto and glee (no pun intended). Nor that the 2012 GOP Platform calls for enshrining DOMA as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, forever defining marriage between a man and a woman.

By way of e x p l a n a t i on—or possibly apologia– Sarah Longwell of Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry told NPR, “Well, the main thing that we want to communicate is that the freedom to marry is really consistent and in line with the conservative ideology of individual liberty, personal responsibility, family, and freedom. And so I think that conservatives tend to respond to that language. They understand that they do want to minimize government’s role in people’s lives, maximize freedom.”

Maybe they’ll be more responsive— and more inclined to “maximize freedom”—in 2016.

By JOE HARRIS

Walk with me, if you will, through the fields of my political imagination, while we analyze if former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s endorsement on Sunday of President Obama’s re-election campaign gives us a window into what turns him on. Although “comeback” is on the lips of many observers, the first word to pop into my mind is “punishment,” followed by “masochist,” and an image of the Once-and-[He Hopes]-Future- Governor playing a B&D/S&M scene with political operatives from both major parties.

The Republicans have already talked about Crist’s endorsement in the same terminology a dominatrix might use to scold a naughty businessman during a lunchtime quickie. Florida GOP chairman Lenny Curry slammed the former governor as “a self-centered career politician,” “repugnant,” “selfish,” and “looking after his own interests,” and then verbally spanked him, adding, “in spite of an approaching hurricane, no less!”

The notion of Crist as a “political masochist” seeking release through punishment is only heightened (exponentially) with the thought of how DEMOCRATS will go after him once his plans are known. It’s a pretty safe bet that Crist’s move was timed to maximize the media attention, and is another major step by the once-popular politician to crawl up from the ash heap of history towards rebirth as a Democrat and a return to competitive politics. It also increases the buzz to a fever pitch concerning Crist’s intentions to run for governor in 2014, or other elected office—but this time as a Democrat. You’ll have a chance to see his “audition tape” next week, when he addresses the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Republicans will have a field day condemning a recycled Crist, attacking him like they did John Kerry as a flipflopper, but also as a party traitor, and a collaborator with the hated Occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They have already pointed to his abandonment of his previous positions, including his 2010 admonition against Obama that, “I don’t agree with the guy on hardly anything he does,” his self-description as a “pro-life” “Ronald Reagan Republican,” his opposition to ObamaCare, and his “cheerful” support of a state constitutional amendment banning marriage equality.

And the Republican Party “talking points” actually suggest, “You should take every opportunity with the media to remind Floridians that Crist has made a career out of bashing the Democrat Party and everything President Obama stands for.” Imagine how much hay other Democratic candidates will make of that when they stand against Crist during a future primary.

In the words of the Florida GOP’s Curry, “Charlie Crist has demonstrated, yet again, that his political ambition will always come first.”

For his part, Crist has been invoking the memory and paraphrasing the words of Ronald Reagan, suggesting that he didn’t leave the GOP in 2010, but that rather the party left him, by embracing extreme positions and beliefs. The GOP talking points try to blunt that defense by noting that the ex-governor jumped the party’s ship for an electoral opportunity, and “left because polls showed he had a better chance to win the [U.S.] Senate seat as an Independent.”

Does Crist have a right to a “second act” in politics? Sure he does. But Republicans have a legitimate right to cast him as an opportunist—a professional politician who is just looking for an elected office to occupy. South Floridians have seen this before (sorry, Jim Lewis). My own fascination with train wrecks leaves me wondering what kind of punishment the members of his own (new) party have planned for Crist: Florida politics’ Once-and-Future whipping.

JOE HARRIS

The non-profit LGBT advocacy group Equality Forum has released its survey of Fortune 500 companies that include sexual orientation in their workplace policies. According to the data—which was compiled in collaboration with Professor Louis Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, and Ian Ayres, William K. Townsend Professor at Yale Law School—a record 479, or 95.8 percent, of the 2012 Fortune 500 are in compliance with the group’s criteria. Among the companies in compliance with sexual orientation protections are Citigroup, CVS Caremark, Comcast, Target, Nike, McDonalds, Toys’R’Us, and Family Dollar Stores. Equality Forum launched its Fortune 500 Project in 2004, when 323 (64.6 percent) of the Fortune 500 provided protection for their employees based on sexual orientation. A list of the 21 non-compliant companies, and the Top 10 companies in compliance, looks like this:

Efforts to reform the Republican Party’s position on same-sex marriage failed Tuesday morning, as delegates meeting before the official start of the Republican National Convention considered two amendments that would have added support for some form of civil union.

The first—and more radical— proposal from Rhode Island delegate Barbara Fenton called for a total end to government-recognized marriage, to be replaced with a uniform recognition of civil unions for both straight and gay couples. Although Fenton, a Roman Catholic, said she personally opposes same-sex marriage, “those are my religious beliefs, and this country was founded on the separation of church and state.”

Opponents, including Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council and a delegate from Louisiana, invoked the judgment of history. “This would move us away from a party that recognizes the benefits that marriage extends to a society,” said Perkins. “We recognize nature, we recognize history, that nature is the union of one man and one woman.”

A second proposal called for supporting civil unions for same-sex couples. Delegate Pat Kerby of Nevada, who proposed the amendment, said, “I believe this is an issue that will be a tipping point, and that we can take this stance and still keep our commitment to the institution of marriage.” Both proposals failed in a voice vote.

– Joe Harris

By Joe Harris

The decision by Mitt Romney last weekend to name U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his presumptive vice presidential nominee may be the kind of political cover the Republican presidential contender needs as he shifts his campaign from primary season-mode to a general election campaign status—a “calibration” the former Massachusetts governor may find more to his liking, especially as it relates to the values stuff with which he seems most uncomfortable.

Despite his credentials as a returned Mormon missionary, a graduate of Mormon Church-owned Brigham Young University, a captain of finance, and an active Republican (since 1993, anyway; prior to that, he was a registered Independent, who had previously voted for some Democrats, including the late Paul Tsongas during the 1992 Massachusetts presidential primary), Romney has been viewed with suspicion by the social Right and other values voters.

His single term as governor of the Bay State (2003 to 2007) did not endear him to fiscal and small governmentconservatives outside—or frankly, inside—of “Taxachusetts,” especially after his 2006 signing into law of the state’s health care reform legislation (or, more informally, “Romneycare”), the first of its kind in the U.S., which provided nearuniversal health coverage access via statelevel subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance.

Although in Massachusetts he presided over eliminating a projected $3 billion deficit—in part by reducing state funding for higher education, and cutting aid to municipalities—the pragmatic Romney approved the raising of fees, and his public austerity was aided by an unanticipated windfall of federal funds, and unexpected revenues generated via a capital gains tax hike.

Conservatives can be forgiven for being confused about where Romney actually stands on the subject of gay civil rights, and Democrats like to point to the candidate’s perceived contradictions on the subject, as when, during his 1994 campaign against Ted Kennedy for the late Liberal lion’s U.S. Senate seat, Romney promised the Log Cabin Republicans of Massachusetts that he would seek “full equality” for LGBT persons, and went so far as to say that he was more supportive of gay rights than Kennedy.

In May, when President Obama announced his support for gay marriage, Romney acknowledged that, “Benefits of that nature may well be appropriate, and states are able to make a provision for the determination of those kinds of rights.” The practicing Mormon has said that his opposition to marriage equality stems from his religious beliefs.

In 2003, when the Massachusetts courts legalized same-sex marriage, the governor complained that the state was becoming “San Francisco East.” He also warned in (mock?) horror a conservative audience that “some are actually having children born to them.”

How will his Ryan selection impact this election cycle’s yet-to-be-seen Romney, particularly for gays? It may have already started, with the announcement last week by a Romney campaign spokesperson confirming the candidate’s opposition to the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay leaders, something which he publicly expressed during his failed 1994 Senate bid. Andrea Saul told reporters that the former governor believes “all people should be able to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.” That won’t play well with the people most uplifted by Ryan’s selection for the ticket. Stay tuned.

By Joe Harris

In a new TV ad, Mitt Romney’s campaign calls “Obama’s Florida” a state with “8.6 percent unemployment, record foreclosures, [and] 600,000 more Floridians in poverty.”

Not according to Rick Scott, who calls that same 8.6 percent unemployment a signal that the Sunshine State is turning an economic corner, posting online that the number vilified by Romney is “the lowest it’s been since December 2008!” and adding that “the number of unemployed has gone from 568,000 to 320,000,” and job growth “has been positive for 23 consecutive months.”

Using the same data, Gov. Scott has touted the numbers to promote his administration’s economic policies. The two men may get a chance to add up the numbers later this month in Tampa, during the Republican National Convention, August 27-30.

Mitt Romney (L) Rick Scott Florida(R)

By Joe Harris

Several dozen LGBT activists and allies crossed the road to the Pompano Beach Chick-fil-A franchise, in support of National Same-Sex Kiss Day, which was organized as a counter-demonstration to Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. The latter event was encouraged by GOP pastor/ politician Mike Huckabee as a way to mobilize the traditionalist base to support a company—in this case, the 66-yearold chicken chain and its founders, the Southern Baptist Cathy clan—that opens its checkbook for conservative causes.

Organizers of the Same-Sex Kiss Day say their event was set up before Huckabee’s open-mouthed offering to the poultry purveyors, who LGBT activists claim have ponyed-up more than $5 million to support a radical right-wing political agenda.