November 26, 2008

De-Briefing: No On 8 Postmortem, a.k.a. Virtual Town Hall Meeting

(I’ll bitch later about how this VOIP meeting required Windows Live Meeting — software I didn’t have, didn’t want, but installed anyway.)

Moderator:

Karen Ocamb
News editor, Frontiers and IN Los Angeles

Participants:

Lorri L. Jean
Chief Executive Officer, L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center

Geoff Kors
Executive Director, Equality California

Rev. Eric Lee
President/Chief Executive Officer, Southern Christian Leadership Conference Los Angeles

Shannon Minter
Legal Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights

Steve Smith
No on 8 Senior Campaign Consultant, Dewey Square

Amy Balliett and John A. Pérez were no-shows.

Unless in quotes (”"), statements are paraphrased.

As you can guess, I have a lot more to say about all this than I’ve interjected here. I’m just way too tired right now — transcribing my notes took a long time (please excuse the inevitable typos). Besides, I’d rather you tell me what you think. (I already know what I think.)

Ocamb: What were the failures and where do we go from here?

Kors: We need to learn from every aspect of the campaign. “We’re gonna have an outside consultant come in and do a thorough analysis.”

Sapph thinks: Geoff, you just finished telling us in a letter how many “professional campaign consultants” were involved in this campaign — which was lost — and now you’re going to hire yet another consultant to come in and tell you what went wrong?

Kors: “I think in hindsight the lack of early money was critical because it allowed the other side to define the campaign…” No On 8 couldn’t couldn’t counter Yes On 8’s “huge media buy.”

Sapph thinks: Early on, yes, I remember. By mid-October, Yes On 8 was outspending No On 8 by over $10 million.” However, within a week, the No camp was outraising the Yes camp by something like 6:1, triggering Frank Schubert’s panicked “cardiac arrest” call (”Unless we raise $3 million in the next week, we’re going to lose”). If Schubert was in a panic, that tells me we were thisclose to squashing the Yes camp like a bug — what happened?

Jean: Agrees with Kors. “Early money was really a key.” No On 8 had a record-breaking amount of money during the summer, then it slowed. “People weren’t digging deep for a whole host of reasons.” She has questions of her own about “the future of campaigns like this.” They ran the campaign “by the book”; Steve Smith was the lead consultant, with a team of “campaign professionals, and we listened to what they said.” Had focus groups, did polling, and developed a “message in line with that.”

Sapph thinks: And that’s the problem: relying on “professionals” who, with the exception of Steve Smith’s lone win in stopping the 2006 marriage ban in Arizona, has gotten us nothing but marriage bans in 30 states today (including Arixona now).

Jean: “How do we figure out if there are completely new and different ways to move voters and change their minds?” … “A decision was made” not to lead with Barack Obama’s opposition to Proposition 8, and then the other side led with Obama, “and we were playing catch-up.”

Sapph thinks: They didn’t “lead with that” — their dirty-tricks mailers highlighting Obama’s opposition to SSM, targeting the black community, didn’t happen until late October (the date on that press release should be Oct. 31, not Oct. 1). Beyond that, however, let me ask you this: If I, someone so far removed from all the world of all these “professional campaigners” you used, could see the Obama catastrophe coming more than a year ago, and could predict the effect on the Prop 8 campaign before Prop 8 even had a number (like, less than a week after the California Supreme Court ruling, when I mused “how the presidential election will impact the California ruling,” why couldn’t all these “professional campaigners”? I wasn’t right about everything, and I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, but — to my own dismay — I’ve been right all along about the damage Obama’s staunch opposition to marriage equality was going to have on us. If I could see all this coming, why couldn’t all those “professional campaigners”?

Smith: Agrees about not having enough money early in the campaign, “but in some ways that was the [No On 8] campaign’s fault, because we let the early Field Poll numbers stand out there unchallenged … We knew that it was a much closer race” than it looked.

Minter: “As someone who was not part of the official campaign,” his “overhwleming response” is “gratitude that we came as close as we did … I am amazed that we came so close to winning. Having said that…” it was the lack of early money, and a “lack of early, complete engagement on the part of our community … Our community was too complacent at the beginning.”

Lee: “I can only speak from the persepctive of the community” from which he comes/is engaged with, the African-American and Latino communities. “I do not believe there was an adequate enough outreach and engagement of our community. … I think we missed an opportunity to counter the dialogue from the Yes On 8 people. From a grassroots perspective, I’m not sure how much of the TV advertising would affect the African-American and Latino communities. Going forward, I would think that there needs to be some relationships developed between our respective communities. I also think we have to be careful in framing the message that African-Americans were not receptive to labeling it as a civil rights struggle, but as a human rights struggle.”

Ocamb reads related questions from two listeners: 1) Why was the decision made not to “unmistakably” frame it as a civil/human rights issue that would set a danergous precedent for all minorities, and 2) Was the Samuel L. Jackson TV ad effective? Asks Smith to respond.

Smith: Not sure if Jackson ad was effective or not. In “polling late in the campaign, you could read that it was not very effective.”

“That late in the campaign, your undecided vote usually bumps ‘no’ — this bumped ‘yes’.” It all goes back to “that whole confusion” about Yes versus No.

As for how to frame the issue, “polling across the board — African-American, Latino, whatever — polling indicated one of our strongest arguments was that we should not treat people differently, and that’s how we opened the campaign.” Then Yes On 8 started in with the “schoolkids” propaganda.

Regarding framing it as human/civil rights issue: “I think there is no question the polling indicated [resistance to that].”

Ocamb directs listener question to Kors: Who were the point people in the African-American and Latino communities, and how much was spent to reach out to them?

Kors: Apart from the No On 8 campaign, there’s been an education effort since 2005. Over $4 million spent since July on “outreach to communities of color on the issue of marriage, specifically.” Mentions Christine Chavez, news ads in “seven or eight languages,” meetings, radio ads.

For No On 8, Alice Huffman was hired to do AA outreach, and “other groups” were brought in; similar in Latino community.

“Obviously, we need to do more and a better job of that. LGBT people are part of every single community…”

CNN exit poll caused a “misperception about the African-American vote.” CNN poll was based on 30 precincts/small sampling. All other exit polling Kors has seen has shown AA’s closer to the “general vote” of 51% to 58% voting yes on 8. “It’s important to correct that.”

Ocamb directs question from Queerty to Jean: Who composes this evaluation board (that will be analyzing the campaign); will No On 8 commit to making the evaluation public; and, why should we continue to support the same leaders? Another listener: Will the campaign allow input into the independent evaluation?

Jean: “We are currently looking for people who are experts in doing this… We don’t have them engaged yet.” Intends to get input from people “at all levels of involvement in the campaign.” In terms of making evaluationj public, “none of us [on this call] have the authority to make that call for No On 8,” but feels it would “not be wise” to make results public, “because it will include recommendations we don’t have our opponents to have.”

Ocamb: Who does have that authority, and can the strategy part of the report be redacted (making the rest of the report public)?

Jean: Authority would be “the broader executive committee campaign on the campaign.” It’s “hard to speculate on what would hurt us or not without seeing the evaluation” when it’s completed.

Ocamb reads questions from four listeners, directs them to Smith, re: undecided women voters, what was done to target undecided Republican women, why wasn’t Schwarzenegger used/why didn’t No On 8 hold the governor to his promise to help?

Smith: The “basis for the campaign was about 40% of the public that was absolutely in love with Prop 8,” about 40% absolutely against it “no matter what we did,” and “20% that really moved back and forth [between Yes and No] in the campaign a great deal.” A “slightly disproportionate number” of that 20% were women. Most of the public “exit polling says men and women voted almost the same. In fact, all private exit polling says men were significantly tougher on us. What we needed to do was make up for that with women,” and we didn’t succeed. “Republican women were certainly much easier for us to get than Republican men.” Re the TV ad with Schwarzenegger that came out late in the campaign: Schwarzenegger “doesn’t do as well with Republican men as [he does with] Republican women.”

Ocamb opines that women “were finally swayed by that Yes On 8 ad” using the San Francisco Chronicle story on kindergarten kids going to a lesbian wedding; “that sort of pulled them back to the Yes side.”

Reads a related question: Listener “disappointed that there were no attempts to counter the claims of protecting family values and protecting children,” and “the ‘older hands’ who had experience with the Briggs initiative said everybody knew going into this campaign that children were going to be raised as an issue…” Why wasn’t No On 8 “more prepared to deal with that onslaught?”

Smith: If there was “a single reason we lost,” it was the “chain of events” in which Yes On 8 “opened on kids [and] we began to respond.” The lsebian-wedding ad was “bogus”; No On 8 responded with the Jack O’Connell ad, which “began to snap the votes back our way.” The “problem was the event in San Francisco” (the lesbian wedding); “we had just spent a lot of money saying” Yes On 8’s claims about schoolchildren were not true — “and then the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle … was saying, ‘Well, hold it, here’s an example, so you’re saying “That’s not true” is wrong.’” Campaign could not have foreseen that.

“I think that took women in a place where they were beginning to question what was true and what wasn’t, and when they had to choose between treating people equally, and their kids, they chose their kids.”

Ocamb asks Lee how he thinks ads featuring same-sex couples with children, and of color, would hit the African-American community.

Lee: “I think there would have been even more resistance, because I don’t think that in any community we have adequately engaged our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in dialogue, with acceptance, in dignity, in equal rights. … We have not yet come to the point of fully engaging the community without, perhaps, some homophobia, because we don’t talk about it much, and so, untilo we get to a point where there’s relationships developed… I think we have a long way to go before we can accept the changing dynamics of the family structure.

Ocamb asks how to reach out to both people of color and the religious community?

Lee: “One of the things… engage the pastors in the African-American community”; they have a “tremendous amount of influence and status… and I did not get the sense that there was a significant” outreach. It’s all about the “infrastructure in the community. If you are not part of the community, it’s hard to know who you should speak to, and how to frame the issue.” Some clergy “could see it as a human rights issue,” and some “refuse to taje discussion out of the theological discourse.” Thinks with some AA clergy, you just have to “cut bait” (i.e., cut your losses).

“I didn’t see outreach to traditional civil rights organizations” other than NAACP and UFW.

“Perhaps you have to go community by community [to] understand the relationship dynamics”; what works with one community in L.A. might not work with another in Oakland. “Not one size fits all in California, or for African-Americans.”

Ocamb Mentions Lori Jean bringing up Obama; early on, Obama was “asked to issue a statement, which some thought was confusing, because” the message Obama and Joe Biden were sending was that they do not support gay marriage. Would it have worked to have sent out a No On 8 mailer with Obama’s name on it, and other prominent African-Americans, “especially as there was indication of strong” and early “African-American turnout”?

Lee: “I think that would have been effective.” African-American voters often “put a tremendous amount of trust in their local” and state “elected officials,” and will vote on their recommendations.

Also thinks it would have been good to get community activists (e.g., from the Urban League) involved.

Also thinks “tremendous amount of early voting” had a big impact. “If the belief is that No On 8 did not gear up quickly enough, we may have lost some opportunity for No On 8 with early voters. But, again, I’m not sure of the timing.”

Smith: When early voting started, “we were, I think, in a fundraising deficit of about $11 million. I think everyone had anticipated this would be a fifteen- to twenty-million-dollar campaign. We were ahead of track for that,” but then “during September, the Mormon church put out a directive to its members…”

Contribution “reporting for the summer doesn’t come in until October 6th”; it was “then we learned they raised an astounding $24 million, to our $14 million. I think that clearly had an impact on early voting.”

Re Obama, cards were made, and “handed out at African-American churches” the last weekend before the election. Also did targeted mailers.

Sapph is interrupted here for a few minutes by the doorbell. Seriously.

Jean is explaining structure of No On 8 hierarchy; in short, anyone who contributed $100K or more to No On 8 was on the executive committee.

Sapph’s jaw hits chest.

Jean: “People who” gave/wanted to give “substantial” amounts of money wanted to be on the executive committee. Executive committee “grew fairly significantly.” By beginning of September [after Labor Day?], No On 8 consultants were “saying, ‘Hey, look, we need a smaller, more nimble body we can talk to.”

“By that time, Steve [Smith] had developed a campaign plan long in advance… The campaign committee conferred… Most of us were spending most of our time raising money,” getting daily reports from consultants, dealing with “legal compliance matters”… The “mimi-executive committee” (?!) was “empowered by the larger executive committee.”

Sapph is now disgusted, and pissed off.

Ocamb relays more questions about “visibility”; one listener says she & her wife created their own visibility; why did No On 8 not have presence at WeHo Carnivale? How could campaign do better to reach out to rural communities that voted yes?

Jean: No On 8 concentrated on metro areas/bigger populations where they “felt most undecided voters could be reached.”

Sapph thinks: You knew it was going to be the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, and the Gold Country voting against us, and you still concentrated your efforts in major urban areas?! And to what end? L.A. County ultimately voted against us, too!

Jean: Field campaign “had one-on-one conversations with over 200,000 undecided voters.” Field operations were run in early days of campaign by The Task Force, until mid-September, then someone from Basic Rights Oregon “stepped in.”

Sapph thinks: With all due respect to Basic Rights Oregon (and I respect BRO like nobody else; they’ve got it hella tough up there), WHY would you turn field operations over to someone whose organization couldn’t stop its own home state from implementing a CONSTITUTIONAL STATE AMENDMENT BANNING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE that went into effect FOUR YEARS AGO, and has not been able to repeal?!?! The best Oregon can do are domestic partnerships that pale in comparison to California’s DPs. Jesus Jumping Christ on a crutch!

Ocamb says it sounds like the No On 8 “ground campaign was coordinated by national groups”; says there a number of listeners want to know why “national organizations, experienced or not” came “in to run something in Calfiornia where they may not know the lay of the land?”

Kors: HRC, Task Force, GLAAD all on executive committee. All of these groups “and others’ have had a California presence for three or four years, “identifying marriage supporters, educating people…” Task Force and HRC were “extremely useful,” “on the ground in California quite a long time”; “close to 100 field staff ended up working on the campaign toward the end.”

Smith: It’s “sort of frustrating to the community… Tactically, it was the right thing to do, essentially making all those phone calls,” calling all over the state “based on very careful targeting” of likely undecided voters.

Sapph thinks: If it had been “tactically the right thing to do,” we would have won.

Smith: It wasn’t until very late in the campaign that No On 8 focused on the gay and lesbian community, “for the reason that if we had to focus the field program there” (on gays and lesbians), they couldn’t focus on undecided voters.

Described how packed San Francisco phone back office was.

Sapph is interrupted again, but comes back to find Smith basically on same subject.

Smith: It “made sense” to call undecided voters and not focus on the gay and lesbian community, “except to recruit volunteers.”

Ocamb asks why No On 8 was “not prepared for the ‘kids’ question.”

Smith: “From the consultants’ perspective… One of the most frustrating elements… We were prepared, we had an ad in the can [but that ad] didn’t deal specifically with kids in school, but with a different aspect. When they [Yes On 8] went with” the schoolkids angle, we “rejiggered the ad,” but “it was not as effective as it could have been. (That is, No On 8 didn’t see this angle coming.) It took “several extra days” to get the Jack O’Connell ad up, but then the Yes On 8 lesbian-wedding ad “undercut” the No On 8 O’Connell ad; it “made it look like we were the ones not telling the truth.”

Ocamb asks Minter to comment on listener question/remark: Opponents say denying marriage is not discrimination because the same legal rights secured through marriage can be secured through civil unions.

Minter: “Absolutely and completely false. The State Supreme Court already considered that issue” in May, in “the case we litigated for four years: ‘Is domestic partnership equal to marriage,’” does it provide same protections…? Court “emphatically and clearly” said “absolutely not.” DPs provide most of the same “material rights and obligations, but not the same equality, dignity, privacy, respect, protection…”

Ocamb asks Minter about lawsuits challenging Prop 8.

Minter: Attorney General (and others’) briefs due December 19. Our side’s reply due January 5.

“The reason we have been successful in court in the past, and a major part of the reason” we may win this time is that NCLR has “worked so closely with political groups, legal groups, jointly…”

Real question for court is: “Can a majority of voters — a bare majority — strip away a fundamental right from a historically targeted minority group? Is that something our state constitution permits to happen?”

Ocamb relays a question about the status of out-of-state couples who married in California (one couple wants to know if they can sue the state for the cost of their marriage license); Ocamb herself asks, “If you lose your agument” and the court upholds Prop 8 — and what is the likelihood of that? — “what then becomes of the married couples, the 18,000 in California,” as well as the out-of-state couples who married here?

Minter: The State of California — both the Attorney General and the Governor — have been very clear in their view Prop 8 does not affect the continuing legal validity of all marriages [performed] before November 5th. You are legally married, and we believe everyone will continue to respect and recognize your marriage.” There have been no reports yet of any marriage not being recognized.

“The court has asked all the parties to brief that question — to tell the court [what] will be the effect” on existing marriages “if the court does not strike down Prop 8 in its entirety. I do think we have a very real chance” that it will be struck down; “I can’t begin to predict” what the court will do, “but we have some very good arguments, and we have a good court that takes” issues of equal rights “very seriously.”

“But if Prop 8 goes into effect, they will then consider whether Prop 8 invalidates existing marriages. The law on that point is overwhelmingly favorable to us; the law on that is very strong,” and applies equally to California residents and out-of-state couples who married in California.

If you have any problem with anyone recognizing your marriage, you should contact the NCLR or Lambda Legal.

Ocamb relays question from listener “concerned that the religious right is going after adoptions next. If Prop 8 stands, even if the [existing] marriages are valid, are there laws in place” regarding adoption, “or…?”

Minter: “I am worried about that as well. That is what is so scary about Prop 8: If a bare majority in one election can take away the fundamental freedom to marry from a particular minority group … If that can happen with marriage, then the people … who hate our community can come back at us and try to take away other fundamental rights as well. They are … hell-bent on hurting our community, on taking away every fundamental right. The frightening level of fundraising and focus anti-gay groups are able to marshal… especially when they use” organizations “like the Mormon church, [its] entire membership, nationwide, to pour money and people power into California…”

“I wish everyone in our community had realized that at the beginning,” but glad they realize it now. “It will take every one of us committing fully.” Confident that “at the end of th day, we will have full equality, but we are going to have to fight for it, and fight for it very hard.”

Ocamb relays questions from two readers re trans/intersex: 1) listener is “physically male and wants to stay that way,” but if he is “recognized on paper as female,” can he marry his boyfriend; is it possible to legally change his sex without undergoing surgery? 2) T asks if “the LGBT community will fight just as hard for the T as the LGB?”

Minter: “The law governing transgender people, and when a transgender person can be legally recognized as the other gender,” and when they can marry, “is very complicated, enormously, from state to state. California law is very favorable to transgender people… The general climate is very good for trans folks.”

Will the LGBT community go to bat for Ts? “They certainly have here in California”; strong support for gender identity; answer is “Yes, in California, and I hope so at the national level.”

Ocamb wants to “shift to what we do from this point on.” Fields question about effectiveness of organized boycotts from listener “concerned about backlash against the LGBT community for boycotting, especially given this terrible economic climate.”

Lee: “I’m not sure at this time a boycott would be effective. I think we need to educate more through communities, particularly clergy… then congregations… Community forums that would reach out effectively through community-based organizations,” through advertising in black newspapers, on black radio stations… “I’m not sure protesting at this point would be effective.”

Sapph strongly disagrees with the idea that boycotts and protests would not be effective. They already have been.

Ocamb points out effective of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott.

Lee: Not effective now. “I don’t think there’s the proper understanding of it, the proper framing of it yet in the African-American community… Asking what there’s a boycott of… I think once there’s clarity of this being a violation of human and civil rights… The first step is education on the issue.”

Sapph respectfully, and silently, submits that we who are boycotting (and protesting) are very clear in our understanding of it — and why does the AA community need to understand it first before we can do it, especially when we’re not boycotting AA’s as a group?

Ocamb turns to Jean and Kors re Day Without A Gay, and Jean’s postcard campaign to Mormon head Thomas Monson.

Kors: Day Without A Gay effectiveness “hard to know until we see how many people participate.” All activities happening right now are important; “keeping this issue alive and in the news is really critical.” Sacramento rally (on 11/22) was “great”; even the incoming President of the Senate appeared.

Boycotts in general are effective, but also thinks it’s really important to support the businesses who contributed to No On 8. A lot of businesses have supported education efforts, but only about ten willing to take a stand on Prop 8, and “those who did got considerable grief from the other side.”

Jean: Talks about InvalidateProp8 effort; since November 6th, already raised over $60,000, and have sent checks to NCLR, ACLU, & Lambda Legal.

Ocamb asks another listener question: Is there any money left from No On 8, and what happened to the lists of email addresses (of donors, volunteers)?

Jean: Hopes there’s no deficit, doesn’t know. Should know in two to four weeks. Re email addresses, campaign decided a long time ago to give “organizations active on the executive committee … access to names, email addresses… Organizations [contributing] $100,000 or more will be allowed to, I think we said, [do] fundraiser mailing [to the list]…”

Sapph is NOT happy. Sapph did NOT agree to this. Sapph already gets enough unwanted begging letters from the HRC, after telling them, years ago, to knock it off.

Jean: If there is money left over from No On 8, it will be used to “maintain voter files.”

Ocamb relays listener question about getting our own initiative on the 2010 ballot; another listener asks why there wasn’t a more sophisticated Web/online strategy, and: “How will you keep the media alive, and use more effective online strategy?”

Kors: “Equality California has a petition — we’re asking people to sign up to volunteer, [to do] education work, especially with Yes voters, [to carry and circulate] petitions…” So far, 300,000 people have signed up, and 100,000 have agreed to carry petitions. In January, there will be a “summit trying to pull one or two representatives from every organization” so we “can start discussion on education and political work to secure full equality.”

Ocamb asks about reaching people who can’t be there: “Could you Webcast that?”

Kors: Will have to check about Webcasting. So far, the “summit” is “only reaching out to groups… We’ve been having [a] group deciding the agenda, deciding goals… [This] really has to be decided from the ground up,” bringing “new people, new organizations into the dialogue.”

Re a 2010 initiative: Full analysis of No On 8 campaign underway; people trying to figure which election is “best.”

Jean: Worries that 2010 may be too soon. “I don’t want to give the [California Supreme Court] any excuse to punt on this issue — it punted before” this past election (i.e., waiting to see what happened in November, before they had to make decision). Repeats: “I don’t want to give them an excuse not to make a decision in this issue. … We’ve got to make sure when we go to the ballot proactively, if we do that,” we have “enough time to make sure public opinion has moved far enough in our favor to win.”

Sapph does not want any ballot initiative at all to decide civil rights, but agrees emphatically with concern about timing.

Kors: Money left over with EQCA ($1 million right now) has been put aside to use if we lose in court, and if not, then to defend any of the judges in a recall (by the Yes side). “The right wing has already said they will try to recall any judge who votes” to invalidate Prop 8, and we have to defeat such a recall. It’s “important our community is prepared to defend any recall of a judge.”

Ocamb with more listener questions: 1) Can you create ONE centrally-located Web site for info exchange, contributions? 2) How do we promote unity?

Kors: Unity by “making sure we’re all out there and being visible, and [by] outreach to organizations not involved” in No On 8.

Jean: Agrees; thinks “that’s the question that’s been a challenge to our movement from the very beginning,” as our community is so diverse, which can work in our favor, and work against us. “My hope that with this summitplanning in January, that will include virtually any organization, of any kind…” Also have to figure out how to keep the grassroots engaged; since election day, grassroots has “burst forth” with energy not seen since height of AIDS epidemic in 1980s; don’t want to lose that energy. “I Hope people will continue to care enough, [and] do the difficult and old-fashioned work of organizing.

Lee: Would like to see unity as an “inclusive term… that we have more representatives from different ethnicities, and from the straight community… We have to do some joint projects,” democratic clubs, things on a “social level, an economic level, that brings us together… engage in one another’s lives.” Mentions that if AA civil rights had been put to vote, “black folks would still be in segegation.”

Ocamb winds it up; mentions call had 270 people listening in.

Sapph thinks: That’s all? The call needed better publicity (I stumbled across it by accident), and REALLY needed universally-friendly software.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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