by Karen Ocamb

Election Night 2008. The Music Box @ Fonda in Hollywood was filled with revelers expecting two historic firsts—an African-American man elected president of the United States and the people of California validating marriage equality by voting down the odious Proposition 8.

Thunderous cheers shook the theatre as CNN declared each state for Barack Obama. But wandering unnoticed through the crowd were grim-faced No on Prop 8 campaign supporters shouting into cell phones: People had stopped going to the polls in West Hollywood and Silver Lake and there were still two hours before the polls closed.

A quiet dread crept into the night’s festivities. West Hollywood City Councilmember John Duran, chair of Equality California, and Lorri Jean, CEO of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, the event organizers, took to the stage to warn the crowd not to be discouraged by the early returns—historically, absentee ballots are cast early by conservative voters.

At 8:01 p.m., bottled up excitement exploded into euphoria as CNN declared gay-friendly Obama America’s 44th president; the dream was no longer deferred.

But as time ticked on, the Prop. 8 results worsened. The initiative to give chickens and pigs greater cage space was passing; the perennial parental notification bill was being defeated; and Prop. 8—propelled by a campaign of lies—was passing. Elation rapidly slid into jaw-dropping shock, depression and anger. The results were gelling into roughly 52 percet yes to 48 percent no.

The No on Prop 8 campaign refused to concede defeat—absentee votes were still being counted. A day later, they acquiesced.

The impact of the vote was profound and personal, especially for the young Obama enthusiasts for whom equality was a virtual assumption.

But passage of Prop. 8 didn’t happen in a vacuum. Despite its reputation as a progressive blue state, California has always had red entrails. When Gov. Gray Davis was elected in 1998 after 15 years of right-wing Republican dominance, he would only sign a modest domestic partnership registry bill in 1999, the year Vermont instituted civil unions. And Prop 22 passed in 2000 with a resounding 61 percent vote, cementing the legal definition of marriage between one man and one woman and denying recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages.

But behind the scenes in 2002, Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors, newly elected Assemblymember Mark Leno and members of the LGBT Caucus started strategizing how they could get to full marriage equality. That resulted in AB 205, the expansion of the existing domestic partnership law introduced in 2003 by Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg. On the Assembly floor, some Republicans opposed the bill as condoning “perverse” homosexuality and “friends” of the LGBT community walked out to avoid voting. But Kors took a hard line against legislators and Davis (who faced a recall and needed LGBT support). Davis signed the bill Sept. 19, 2003, with implementation to begin in 2005.

“The lesson we learned was that we had to play hard ball sometimes to get them to do the right thing. And then once they did, we’d support them,” says Kors. “That’s how it works.”

That November, Leno coyly suggested a marriage bill. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had just ruled in favor of marriage equality, so the thought didn’t seem that far-fetched. When the idea was floated, however, many in the LGBT community thought Leno was grandstanding and that marriage equality was a pipe dream.

Longtime Marriage Equality California (MEC) advocates such as Molly McKay and Davina Kotulski, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson and Metropolitan Community Church founder Rev. Troy Perry and Phillip De Blieck were not among the critics. In fact, every Valentine’s Day for years they showed up before city or court clerks requesting civil marriage licenses.

Then on Feb. 12, 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom unexpectedly ordered the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, quietly facilitated the first marriage between pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. About 4,000 couples married until stopped by court order on March 11, launching a spate of lawsuits.

But on Sept. 6, the California Legislature passed the country’s first non-court-ordered marriage bill, sponsored by EQCA and authored by Leno. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill—and a second marriage bill on Oct. 12, 2007—but EQCA had made support for marriage equality the standard by which political candidates would henceforth be judged.

Not everyone cared about marriage equality, saying it wasn’t their issue. A handful of LGBT leaders, however, knew there would be a ballot backlash and convened a meeting at the San Francisco LGBT Center in January 2005. The group included Jean, Kors, Kendell, Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Seth Kilbourn of the Human Rights Campaign, Jenny Pizer of Lambda Legal and a representative of MEC.

A few months later, the first statewide meeting of the new coalition met at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, with the majority of attendees being people of color, including Black AIDS Institute founder Phill Wilson and Andy Wong from Chinese for Affirmative Action.

In late 2005, the right wing filed measures with the Secretary of State’s office, which the coalition thought might qualify for the 2006 elections.

By then the coalition had grown to include representatives of between 30-40 organizations. They elected a seven-person executive committee: Jean, Kors, Kendell, Wong, Beinestar’s Oscar de la O, the ACLU/Northern California’s Maya Harris and Delores Jacobs from the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center.

The campaign committee then formed a hiring committee that interviewed political consultants with experience in California ballot measures. They hired Zimmerman & Markman, who just edged out Steve Smith with Dewey Square. Dissatisfied with the consultants’ campaign manager, they hired Dale Kelly Bankhead, who had been with the ACLU/San Diego, had campaign experience and had been on the campaign committee.

Meanwhile, the right-wing groups argued over strategy. Gale Knight, widow of state Sen. Pete Knight of Prop. 22 fame, had support from Focus on the Family and bested Campaign for Children and Families’ Randy Thomasson. But they failed to qualify an initiative.

The campaign coalition could not afford to stay operational, so the effort dissipated—though outreach to communities of color continued with guidance from the Task Force’s Thalia Zapatos and others, prompting the formation of such groups as API Equality and the Jordan/Rustin Coalition.

All was quiet until the summer of 2007 when Knight, who formed a national coalition called Protect Marriage, re-appeared.

The campaign committee ramped up again and hired Steve Smith, whose team had successfully defeated two parental notification initiatives. Smith’s campaign plan anticipated expenditures of $15-20 million on both sides. His initial polling suggested that the campaign would start out slightly behind but end up slightly ahead.

They also separated their effort from the educational commercial campaign “Let California Ring” that rolled out in October 2007. It showed a bride stumbling over obstacles on her way to the altar, a metaphor for the barriers faced by same-sex couples. Internal polling showed that the message worked with its target audience—suburban women.

The campaign anxiously watched for paid professional signature-gatherers. But by the end of January 2008, there was no sign of funding activity on the Secretary of State’s website.

“We began to breathe a sigh of relief,” says Jean. “We were just about to think they had waited too long when Boom!—money and signature-gatherers arrived.”

After weighing the pros and cons, the campaign committee mounted a Decline to Sign campaign, believing the opposition had made a fatal error in starting so late. The committee raised about $1 million and the Task Force and HRC donated field staff.

Then, on May 15, the California Supreme Court ruled that denying same-sex couples the fundamental right to marry was unconstitutional, raising the stakes.

On May 22, the high court refused a petition to stay its ruling until after the election, paving the way for marriages to begin June 17, with a special waiver granted to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, and another couple in Oakland to marry on June 16.

In the euphoria of victory, many dismissed a May 23 Los Angeles Times poll indicating possible trouble and clung to a caveat in the poll report. Though the amendment led 54 percent to 35 percent among registered voters, typically, the Times said, such controversial measures need to start out with over 50 percent to win.

“Although the amendment to reinstate the ban on same-sex marriage is winning by a small majority, this may not bode well for the measure,” said Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus.

Overall, the Times reported, Californians opposed the court’s marriage-equality decision by a 52 percent to 41 percent margin. Among those strongly opposed (and who strongly backed a proposed constitutional amendment) were married people, those without college degrees, seniors and suburban Southern Californians.

Those who supported the court’s decision were largely liberal Democrats, whites with college degrees and Bay Area residents. Democrats supported the ruling by a 55 percent to 39 percent margin, and independents supported it 51 percent to 40 percent.

“Yet support for the ruling did not necessarily lead to opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment, and vice versa,” the Times reported.

Critics noted that the polling data didn’t include the thousands of newly registered young voters accessible only by cell phones.

Five days after the Times poll, the California Field Poll reported that registered voters approved of allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry by a 51 percent to 42 percent margin statewide. The poll also found voters “leery” of the proposed amendment.

The Field Poll also found that 18-29-year-olds favored gay and lesbian couples marrying 68 percent to 25 percent, and 30-39-year-olds approved by 24 percentage points. However, voters 65 or older disapproved by a wide margin—55 percent to 36 percent.

The Field Poll also noted that voters in Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area supported same-sex marriage, while voters in the Central Valley and in the nine Southern California counties outside of Los Angeles County disapproved. Additionally, coastal counties approved 55 percent to 37 percent, while inland counties opposed, 52 percent to 40 percent.

The initiative’s proponents submitted 1,120,801 signatures for “The California Marriage Protection Act”; they needed only 694,354. The measure qualified on June 2, becoming Proposition 8.

The positive Field Poll message stuck—pumped through Pride parades all summer.

Meanwhile, Steve Smith staffed the Equality for All/No on Prop 8 campaign with the public relations firm Ogilvy International. The campaign committee hired respected pollster Celinda Lake and the BlackRock Internet firm for Web-based strategies that proved to be “very disappointing,” according to an insider.

Fundraiser Kimberly Ray, who had been with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, was hired for around $15,000 a month, slightly less than the going rate. Some thought she promised to raise millions from her straight fundraising lists, while others expected less. She, too, proved a “disappointment,” said an insider, though she apparently complained that she was never given access and the tools to facilitate her job.

Jean subsequently brought on longtime development directors Joel Safranick and Julie Anderson (paid through the Center’s budget) and she put together an L.A.-based fundraising team that included Oscar-winning producer Bruce Cohen. The San Francisco-based campaign committee hired John Gile, former executive director of Project Angel Food.  

On July 18, the Field Poll announced that a survey of 672 likely voters found that “if the election were being held now, more voters say they would vote No (51 percent) on Prop. 8 than would vote Yes (42 percent).” The poll also found that “White non-Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians are lining up on the No side by five to four margins. This contrasts with the voting preferences of Latinos, who are supporting Prop. 8 five to four.”

The survey was based on questions about familiarity with the ballot title “Limit on Marriage Constitutional Amendment,” a title Attorney General Jerry Brown conferred before the court’s ruling. After the marriage equality decision, Brown changed the title to “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.” Prop. 8 proponents rushed to court to protest, but a judge let the change stand.

However, the judge allowed Prop. 8 proponents to keep their disputed ballot argument that said the amendment “would protect kindergarteners from classroom indoctrination on the virtues of same-sex marriage,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Yes on 8 campaign dismissed the public polls, saying they failed to measure deep-seated moral convictions of voters who opposed changing the traditional definition of marriage or believed the alleged dire consequences should Prop. 8 fail to pass. Throughout the campaign, Kors also constantly cautioned that the No campaign’s internal polls were tighter than public polls suggested. Neither caution was given much media coverage.

In July 2008, Dale Kelly Bankhead was rehired as a campaign manager, replacing Seth Kilborn, who EQCA hired away from HRC to manage “Let California Ring” before he became the interim campaign manager. Yvette Martinez was also hired as political director. Most experienced consultants were committed to the Obama campaign, though others say they were either never consulted or their free advice was refused as the campaign progressed. Smith says he did use several additional California consultants. 

By August, the No on Prop 8 campaign had raised $10-11 million. But it was difficult to raise the rest of the $20 million necessary to buy expensive TV and radio airtime, which is cheaper in the summer. Believing victory was inevitable, some thought e-mail requests from Kors and others were just sneaky attempts to raise money for their own organizations.

Others felt inspired. On Aug. 2, EQCA’s 10th annual dinner in Beverly Hills, honoring Newsom and Kendell, was packed with newly married and engaged couples.

“Words matter,” said John Duran. And after all the fights for dignity and equality, “do we really have to fight for this one word—marriage? … And now these words: ‘That you love one another, to honor and to keep you in adversity and prosperity, in sickness and in health, and love one another until death do you part. And under the authority of the laws of the great state of California, I now pronounce you legally married.’ Words do matter, after all.”

Kors later said EQCA raised more than $2 million that night.  By Nov. 4, EQCA was the single largest fundraiser and contributor for No on Prop 8, accounting for more than $11 million.

Those dissatisfied with the campaign did their own thing. Robin Tyler, for instance, was angry about LGBT invisibility and produced online videos in conjunction with the Feminist Majority featuring happy same-sex couples and straight actors. And Fred Karger created the website Californians Against Hate that proved valuable in tracking Yes on 8 campaign contributions.

Meanwhile, the campaign committee swelled, eventually reaching about 200 participating organizations. And big donors, such as the California Association of Teachers, joined the executive committee. Eventually a mini-executive committee was created to make quicker decisions, which resulted in rubber-stamping by the coalition partners.

Still struggling for money, disagreements were waged over issues such as lawn signs. Some said, “Lawn signs don’t vote. They make no difference on how people vote. Let’s focus money on what will let us win.” Others disagreed, saying “It’s visibility. Our community wants them—we have to give it to them.”

But the biggest problem facing the campaign was complacency. A new poll taken by the Public Policy Institute of California between Aug. 12-19 indicated that 54 percent would vote against Prop. 8, while 40 percent would vote Yes. Unexplained was the 47 percent to 47 percent split on whether lesbians and gays should be allowed to marry.

A spokesperson for the Yes on Prop 8 campaign scoffed, saying “Prop. 8 backers are busy mobilizing their base, especially in church congregations.” Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition noted that in 2000, polls showed Prop. 22 failing until Election Day, when it passed overwhelmingly.

The complacency problem came to a head at the Democratic National Convention. The No campaign hoped to get tremendous political support and financial commitment, but other than statements decrying the anti-gay initiatives in California, Arizona, Florida and Arkansas, they heard only, “You’ve got this in the bag.”

Wrong. “It was always very close,” Smith says. “You had about 40 percent of the folks who hated us, and 40 percent of the folks loved us, and there was 20 percent [undecided] swimming around in the middle. That 20 percent never substantially changed … But people moved back and forth several times inside the 20 percent.”

For instance, Smith says, after the high court ruled in May, the 20 percent “moved about eight points against us because people resented the court seemingly overturning the voters,” giving the Prop. 8 campaign a good message: Bash the court instead of debate the issue.

The “stunning” press on Marriage Day, however, swung the undecideds back to the No side. But as the summer wore on, Smith says, polls showed the undecideds swinging back to Yes. “I think folks got overexposed, and they just sort of became tired of the issue. And that was part of our problem.”

Meanwhile complaints mounted. Longtime politico Gloria Nieto, for instance, who ran a local field effort out of the Billy DeFrank Community Center in San Jose, was furious at state political director Sarah Reece.

“Sarah's response to me personally was ‘Well, if you don't think we are doing this right, maybe we won’t run a campaign down here,’” says Nieto. A San Jose resident, she applied to be the campaign field staffer in the region but was rebuffed in favor of someone “who has lived here all of 30 seconds.

“The final straw came when I was talking to the child [in charge], Hannah from Wisconsin, who told me I could not take a day off to get married,” says Nieto. “What is this for, then?”

Comparing the Obama ground campaign (which had $300 million) to the No on Prop 8 field campaign, Nieto also says, “we had the typical top-down, mono-lingual, urban-based campaign that was lacking resources, a coherent message and goal posts that were moving every day. No walking neighborhoods, a muddled message on the phone so that at least 10 percent of probable voters thought they were going to support us by voting Yes.”

Smith says phone banking may have been controversial—he had to basically lobby the Task Force, which was running the field campaign—but it was a more efficient way to target the roughly 2 million undecided voters.

“We had an election in which 80 to 85 percent of the people had made up their minds, so if you were going to concentrate on the people who were undecided, you were going to end up skipping seven out of eight doors as you walked down the street,” says Smith. “So the same number of volunteers can reach many, many more people if you target and use the phones, rather than target and use the walk, and that became real clear real early in the campaign.”

Another controversial tactic, which he didn’t originate, was having phone-bank volunteers—who were recruiting and booking volunteers for field work and Election Day—also ask for money at the end of the call.

“I think they were right to do it,” says Smith. “Usually when you ask for money at the end of a volunteer call, what you’re going to do is get a little bit of money, but you’re going to suppress a lot of volunteers. This campaign was so intense … we actually raised a lot of money, and we didn’t suppress that many volunteers because people were so committed.”

By the end of the campaign, says Jean, phone bankers had one-on-one conversations with more than 200,000 undecided voters. On the weekend before Election Day, the campaign deployed 13,000 volunteers, with 11,000 volunteers working the polls and doing Get Out the Vote on Election Day. “That’s unprecedented,” says Jean.

By September, the campaign was overwhelmed with “tons of donations” at almost every level, e-mails and phone calls from people who wanted to get involved. The executive committee decided they just couldn’t respond to everyone—prompting more charges of top-down “elitism.”

But as the battle heated up, the No on Prop 8 campaign realized they didn’t have enough money for a strong media buy for their first ad, which featured an elderly couple talking about their lesbian daughter.

While the Yes on Prop 8 campaign raised almost $16 million from June 1-Sept. 11, thanks in part to the emergence of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate, the No side raised only $11 million.

Kors screamed for funding: “If they continue to have more resources, it will be very difficult for us to prevail.”

Scrolling through the donor rolls on the Secretary of State’s website, IN Los Angeles magazine discovered that popular TV star Ellen DeGeneres, who had just married Portia de Rossi, contributed nothing to the No on Prop 8 campaign—though she eventually produced an online video which she paid $100,000 to air briefly. Scores of other mega-A Gays were missing as well, including Rosie O’Donnell whose marriage in 2004 was a media event. And, despite its pledge to stand against divisive measures, the Democratic National Party never contributed to the No campaign.

On the other hand, philanthropists such as David Bohnett, David Maltz, Robert W. Wilson and Bruce Bastian, companies such as Apple and PG&E and labor organizations such as the California Teachers Association, United Farm Workers and SEIU/ United Healthcare Workers/West were among those who contributed substantially. Politicos such as Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa also contributed significantly by Election Day.

While Jean and Cohen worked on an October mega-fundraiser at philanthropist Ron Burkle’s house (which raised $3.9 million), consultant Chad Griffin helped bring in $100,000 from actor Brad Pitt for a straight-based anti-Prop. 8 effort organized by San Francisco Attorney Dennis Herrera. Producer Stephen Bing and director Stephen Spielberg were also among Hollywood’s contributors.

By the end of September, the No campaign was stunned to learn that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was responsible for more than a third of Yes on 8’s roughly $16 million. In June, church President Thomas S. Monson issued a letter telling Mormons everywhere to “do all they can” to support Prop. 8. (A subsequent report by blogger hekebois on Daily Kos revealed an internal church memo dated March 4, 1997, about the Mormons’ plan to work with the Catholic Church to sponsor an anti-gay marriage initiative in California. An ad hoc bloggers group spearheaded by the Courage Campaign and Calitics mounted a significant online campaign.)

The No campaign didn’t expect the religious right’s ferocity. “This vote on whether we stop the gay marriage juggernaut in California is the Armegeddon,” said Rev. Chuck Colson. Rev. Jim Garlow announced a mobilization of “God’s Army” at a Nov. 1 rally at Qualcomm stadium in San Diego.

“The future of our nation hangs in the balance!” said the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins.

For Patrick Guerriero, on leave from Gill Action Fund to serve as the new No on Prop 8 campaign director, the game-changing moment came on Oct. 1: The Yes campaign had $12.75 million in the bank; the No campaign had less than $1.8 million.

“It’s all hands on deck,” said Guerriero.

On Oct. 7, polls by both SurveyUSA and Celinda Lake showed that Prop. 8 had a four- point lead. Smith told reporters the No campaign was being “out messaged” and outspent (Yes on 8 had raised roughly $26 million, compared to $16 for the No campaign). “To hell with orange, we’re going straight to red [alert],” Smith said.

The breakthrough Yes ad opened with a menacing-looking Gavin Newsom yelling “Whether they like it or not,” referring to same-sex marriages.

Kors repeated his mantra: “We are going to lose this election if we do not raise the money we need to be competitive on these airwaves. That’s what it comes down to.”

He was right. For all the finger-pointing following the devastating loss, Smith says it all came down to that final ad featuring the front-page San Francisco Chronicle story of kindergarten children attending their lesbian teacher’s wedding.

“I think we lost because fundamentally we didn’t get enough votes from women,” says Smith. “We lost women by about a point, instead of winning them by nine points. That’s where we lost the election.”

The original No ad with the older parents worked well with women, Smith says. But it was a “weak buy,” and then the Yes campaign opened with the effective ad featuring Newsom. Women held, but men started to erode immediately. Then came the Yes ad with the little girl telling her mother that she learned in school that princes could marry princes.

“When they did the ‘princes’ ad, the women started to peel. It took us a while to respond, and we put up a Jack O’Connell ad [the Superintendent of California Schools, who said the Yes ad was ‘lies’], and we started to bring the women back. But at that point, instead of fighting to expand out [the base of women voters], we are then fighting back to winning women.”

The O’Connell ad, another one featuring Sen. Dianne Feinstein and media with education leaders saying the Yes claims were lies, moved women back to the No side. Then came the kindergarten ad.

“You could see in the polling numbers people were starting to doubt the other side’s claim. And then the wedding on the steps happened. And it was like confirmation—it is true. … That, more than anything else, is why we lost women. Was everything perfect [with the campaign]? No. There were lots of little mistakes … But who defines the issues in these campaigns wins. We didn’t quite have enough resources to really define it, so when they hit us on kids … The debate stayed, ‘Was it about schools or not?’ And once the debate stayed there, we were cooked. You can’t win a marriage campaign debating kids in school because people will vote for their kids every time,” says Smith. “Without the wedding on the steps at City Hall, I think we would have won the campaign.”

Smith promises an in-depth analysis of the $70 million initiative battle in 60 days, which will include looking at why there was no statewide field office in voter-rich L.A.

And, says Guerriero, “One great lesson, is that the public wants and needs validation—that it’s okay to support full equality for LGBT people and that requires visibility, yard signs and public displays of support. People want to be personally engaged in something this big.”

Meanwhile, spontaneous protests continue throughout California and the country, organized organically by the youth-inspired JoinTheImpact.com. The next major event is expected on Dec. 10—A Day Without Gays, when gays and lesbians are encouraged to call in sick to work and spend no money for a day. Courage Campaign founder Rick Jacobs is continuing an online petition drive to repeal Prop. 8, which has so far collected the names of more than 300,000 people.

And a legal challenge, spearheaded by NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter, is expected to be heard before the California Supreme Court in March.