Obama Picks Up LGBT Supporters From Edwards

The Advocate reports "a critical mass of John Edwards's LGBT steering committee is going public with support for Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton. Twenty-two members of the Edwards campaign's original 59-person gay and lesbian committee will now be working for Obama victories next Tuesday and throughout the rest of the primary season.

The new Obama converts include Eric Stern, who headed up Edwards's LGBT steering committee, and longtime gay activist David Mixner, who famously campaigned for Bill Clinton in 1992, holding some of the first gay fund-raisers for a U.S. presidential candidate."

Obama Picks Up LGBT Supporters from Edwards

From www.advocate.com

A critical mass of John Edwards’s LGBT steering committee is going public with their support for Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton.

By Kerry Eleveld

A critical mass of John Edwards’s LGBT steering committee is going public with their support for Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton. Twenty-two members of the Edwards campaign’s original 59-person gay and lesbian committee will now be working to elect Senator Barack Obama next Tuesday and throughout the rest of the primary season.

The new Obama converts include Eric Stern, who headed up Edwards’s LGBT steering committee, and longtime gay activist David Mixner, who famously campaigned for Bill Clinton in 1992, holding some of the first-ever gay fundraisers for a U.S. presidential candidate.

Mixner, a former peace activist during Vietnam, came out early for Edwards after the former North Carolina Senator made an unequivocal case for ending the Iraq War at the historic Riverside Church in New York City.

Mixner said Sen. Obama’s clear and consistent opposition to the war is also driving his decision on this go ‘round. “Moving from one candidate to another is never an easy process,” he said, “but the times demand that we all participate fully and completely to bring about change. Originally, my support went to Senator Edwards because of the war in Iraq. For the very same reason, I am supporting Senator Obama. This is not even a close call for me.”

Stern, who served more generally as a political adviser to the Edwards campaign, said he met personally with the Hillary Clinton’s director of LGBT outreach, Mark Walsh, as well had several phone conversations with Tobias Wolff, the chair of Obama’s national LGBT policy committee.

“I have mentors working on the Clinton campaign,” said Stern, who is also a former director of LGBT Outreach for the Democratic National Committee in California. “Their outreach was as aggressive and as sincere. It’s been a difficult choice for many of us.”

Of the remaining 37 former steering committee members, Stern said another eight were leaning Obama, three were fully committed to Clinton, and others remained undecided or had not contacted Stern.

Stern admitted that he had already been leaning toward supporting Obama, mainly because similar to Edwards, Obama has refused to take money from special interest groups. He also feels that Sen. Obama has the “purest position” of the any of the three candidates in supporting full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act since 2004. Clinton supports repealing only the part that prohibits the federal government from recognizing state sanctioned same-sex marriages, leaving in place the portion that allows states to ignore legal marriages performed in other states.

After meeting with both of Obama’s and Clinton’s LGBT leaders, “it became clear to me personally that our committee had a vision for the role of the LGBT community that was similar to the role that LGBT supporters were already playing in the Obama campaign,” said Stern. “It is a pure grass-roots, activist oriented operation,” he added, noting that the 22 committee members will now be taking part in Obama’s field operations, the policy department and the press department. “Thus far, it’s clear that we will play a similar role in the Obama campaign.”

The new LGBT Obama converts will spend the next several days doing exactly what they had planned to do for Edwards, a strategy that Stern called both a “viral and local grass-roots effort” – sending emails out to their respective networks, as well as phone banking, canvassing and encouraging others to get involved with the campaign.

“We believe that Obama can pick up more delegates if the 12-15% of Edwards supporters nationwide – and even more in some states – will turn out for Obama,” he said. “We believe we can make difference.”

Besides Stern who is based in San Francisco and Mixner who lives in New York, some of the members who made the leap to Obama are heavy hitters in the February 5 voting states:

Arizona – Linda Elliott, Human Rights Campaign member of the board of directors, and a major fundraiser for defeating the state’s constitutional marriage amendment;

Georgia – Kyle Bailey, chair of Atlanta Stonewall Democrats; LGBT Caucus vice chair of the Young Democrats of America; former state board member of the National Stonewall Democrats;

Northern California – Evan Lowe, an openly gay Councilmember for the City of Campbell

Southern California – Pam Cooke, National Stonewall Democrats board member; past president, Stonewall Democratic Club of Los Angeles

Tennessee – Jim Maynard, president of Memphis Stonewall Democrats

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Below is the full List of former Edwards supporters who are now publicly supporting Obama as provided by Eric Stern:

Eric Stern, Former Political Advisor to the John Edwards for President Campaign, Former National Stonewall Democrats Executive Director; Former Director of LGBT Outreach for the Democratic National Committee (CA)

David Mixner, Writer/ Democratic Party Activist (NY)

Linda Elliott, Member of the Board of Directors for the Human Rights Campaign (AZ)

Evan Low, Councilmember for the City of Campbell, CA

David Garrity, Vice Chair of Maine Democratic Party

Andy Szekeres, Former Colorado Stonewall Democrats Co-Chair; Former Wisconsin LGBT Field Director, Kerry-Edwards (CO)

Kyle Bailey, Former Board Member--National Stonewall Democrats (GA); LGBT Caucus Vice Chair of Young Democrats of America; Chair of Atlanta Stonewall Democrats

Pam Cooke, National Stonewall Democrats Board Member; Past President, Stonewall Democratic Club of Los Angeles, CA

Bill Hedrick, President of the Central Ohio Stonewall Democrats

David Mariner, Former Out for Howard Dean Co-Chair (MD)

Jason Lansdale, Past President of Stonewall Democrats of Central Ohio

Daniel Hinkley, Nevada Stonewall Democratic Caucus President

Misty York, Communications Director for the Kentucky Fairness Alliance Christopher Prevatt, Chair of Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club (Orange County, CA)

Jim Maynard, President of Memphis Stonewall Democrats

Daniel Graney, Past President of Stonewall Democrats of San Antonio

Arthur Nunn, Former Missouri for Edwards Volunteer Organizer and Founder of LGBT for Edwards Myspace Group

Brad Reichard, Public Relations Executive (MA)

Michael Shannon, National Security Expert (DC)

Les Krambeal, Board Member for the National Stonewall Democrats (AZ); Co-Chair, Southern Arizona Stonewall Democrats

Robert D. Horvath, Jr., Member of the Board of Directors for the Mautner Project (DC)Patrick J. Lyden, LGBT Community Activist (DC)

*All organizations listed for identification purposes only.

Gay City News Endorses Obama: What We Can Do For Our Country

In a presidential inaugural address that inspired a teenager from Hope, Arkansas named Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy famously urged Americans to focus not on what the country could do for them, but on what contributions they could make to the nation.

Mind you, we in the LGBT community are not yet nearly at the point where this nation has made good on the contributions it owes to our lives, our families, our well-being, even our equal citizenship. Faced with the choice of two progressive Democrats who have spoken at length and with conviction about the challenges facing our lives, we still don't have the luxury of picking a candidate who will advocate for our right to marry. We must yet take it on faith that the next president will have the fortitude to insist that Congress - including too many stragglers within the Democratic Party - open up the nation's military to out gay and lesbian patriots. It is far from certain that the next time the Democratic Congress takes up an employment nondiscrimination measure it will include transgendered Americans as well as gay men and lesbians among those protected.

But after seven years of George W. Bush, and compared against the prospect of either John McCain or Mitt Romney, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama truly offer hope to LGBT Americans that help is on the way.

Given that the two Democratic contenders share a similar, generally friendly and supportive posture toward LGBT Americans, we ought to think about the message our choice sends about a fundamental question - what our politics should be all about. We are finding our place here and there at the table, but we have also spent much of our life on the outside. The nation needs to hear our views on how American politics can accommodate new voices in the mix.

Judged by that measure and taking full stock of how the Democratic nomination contest has unfolded, we believe the choice is clear.

Gay City New endorses Barack Obama.

The Illinois senator has spoken of a politics of hope and change, not surprisingly given a life that has included a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, a term as president of the Harvard Law Review and a job as a community organizer on the streets of Chicago.

Obama is a relative newcomer to the national scene, and it is not unfair to ask that he explain as clearly as possible how his skills, experience, and vision qualify him for the toughest job on earth. He deserves kudos for his courage in standing up against the rush to war in Iraq at a time when conventional political wisdom counseled a would-be national figure to do otherwise. He will serve the nation well if he can articulate a comprehensive approach not only toward the mess in Iraq but also the broader and more explosive question of America's standing in the entire Islamic world.

In his recent comments about what Ronald Reagan offered to Americans hungry for optimism and new ideas, Obama ought to have made more clear his understanding that at critical moments the hope for unity cannot substitute for hard choices. This newspaper was probably tougher on Obama than anyone else was for his ill-considered decision to call on Donnie McClurkin - a so-called "ex-gay" gospel singer vitriolic in his attacks on the LGBT community - to reach out to churchgoing African-American communities in South Carolina. We are counting on him to make wiser choices in future efforts to "build bridges" - and on that score applaud the loving words about his "gay brothers and sisters" Obama enunciated from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Atlanta pulpit last week.

The McClurkin episode, unfortunate as it was, pales in comparison to the divisiveness that Senator Clinton has allowed her campaign to devolve into. Her comparison between the roles played by Dr. King and President Lyndon Johnson in advancing civil rights can be chalked up to inartfulness. The comments coming from her surrogates are far more disturbing, forming a pattern that sadly can no longer be ignored.

Three Clintonites - the husband of former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen, Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson, and, most damningly, key strategist Mark Penn - all injected Obama's acknowledged youthful cocaine use into the debate. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo inexplicably used the phrase "shuck and jive" in describing what a presidential candidate might try to pull with the media, and then had his operatives bombard the press with official umbrage that his words might be construed as targeting the African-American senator.

Nobody, however, has been more egregious than Bill Clinton. In his ardent championing of his wife, the former president has dissed Obama as "a kid" and this past Saturday was quick to mention Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 South Carolina primary wins to contextualize Obama's commanding victory.

Notwithstanding the role of BET's Johnson and the ardent support for the New York senator from towering African-American members of Congress such as Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters, the Clinton campaign's intent is clear - Barack Obama, after his strong showing with white voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, must be marginalized as the "black candidate," or Hillary runs the risk of losing.

That is unacceptable, and the LGBT community should lend its voice to a growing progressive chorus in turning its back on this kind of politics. For us, winning in the ghetto is no longer good enough - not for blacks, not for gays, not for anyone.

There is a great deal we admire about Hillary Clinton, and our conclusion about the direction of her campaign is arrived at with a heavy heart. Should she prevail in the nomination fight, we have hope that the better angels of her nature will come to the fore in the fall campaign.

But at this moment we put our faith in the hope that remains undimmed. We urge a vote for Barack Obama.