Outside Spending Tipped the Iowa Supreme Court Retention Election

One of the constant mantras of Maggie Gallagher - who I confess to view as a complete nasty, self-enriching whore pulling down a nice six figure income marketing hatred - and her fellow professional Christians is that the citizens of the various states need to be allowed to vote on whether or not LGBT citizens will have civil rights much less marriage equality. At first blush - assuming, of course, one ignores the equal protection dictates of the U. S. Constitution - the chant might sound at least somewhat acceptable to the ignorant and gullible. But in reality, citizens of a particular state such as Iowa are not truly allowed to hold a straight up or down vote. Instead, they are but the pawns of larger forces from outside the state that seek to manipulate and distort the vote outcome. Don't believe me? Take a look at the chart above that tracks spending on last years retention vote for justices of the Iowa Supreme Court. You know, the very same justices who struck down Iowa's religious based ban on same sex marriage. Almost ALL the money and political effort to remove the targeted justices came from OUTSIDE of Iowa. Here are some highlights from Follow the Money.org:

$1.4 million of independent spending sought to influence the outcome of three state supreme court retention elections in 2010, making it the office most targeted by independent spending.

The 2010 retention elections were unique in the fact that all three justices failed to win retention—the only time that any Iowa Supreme Court justice, let alone three in the same election, failed to win retention.

All three justices received less than 46 percent of the vote, in stark contrast to previous Iowa Supreme Court retention elections between 2000 and 2008 where no money, independent or otherwise, was spent. In that time, all of the ten justices standing for retention received more than 70 percent of the vote, including Justices Streit and Ternus, losers in 2010, who both received 76 percent of the vote when they last stood for retention in 2002. These results, coupled with the fact that no supreme court justice has lost a retention election since 1962, suggest that independent spending played a key role in reversing the established norms governing Iowa's judicial retention elections.

Independent expenditures that targeted the Iowa Supreme Court race accounted for 33 percent of all independent expenditures in the 2010 election: $870,077 was spent on television and radio advertisements and an additional $224,126 was spent on get-out-the-vote activities.

The largest outside player? Maggie Gallagher's National Organization for Marriage which despite losing lawsuits all around the country has yet to disclose the sources of its huge financial war chest. My bet is that if and when we finally find out the source of NOM's money, it will include the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church - both of which need to lose their tax exempt status - and other donors who will outrage rank and file citizens.

Pam's House Blend Makes Technorati's Top 50 U.S. Politics Blogs

I want to extend sincere congratulations to Pam Spaulding and her group at Pam's House Blend for making the top 50 political blogs in the USA (the Blend landed at #40). It's a well deserved achievement and we should all be proud of what the Blend has become. Getting to know Pam at the LGBT Blogger Summit last December was a real treat and her wit, passion and willingness to call things as she sees them are an inspiration. The Blend is definitely one of my must read blogs every day. The amazing thing, of course, is that bloggers like Pam make a difference without the huge funding available to the MSM which in comparison is too often lazy, unwilling to do more than parrot BS handed to it, and never willing to call folks bigots and liars. Here's some of Pam's reaction:
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[W]ritten by unfunded politically-minded, coffee-stained, PJ-wearing baristas, competing on the list against corporatized, institutional, media-backed and think-tank blogs on that list. If you removed all of those funded political blogs like The Politico, CNN's Political Ticker, Think Progress, et. al., the Blend would be in the top 25 political blogs in the nation.

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That's quite terrifying to me on some level to see the blog's reach and influence; after all, 1) it's not generated from inside the Beltway or a major media market; 2) it's a diverse roster of contributors; 3) it's run by a black lesbian with a lot of LGBT and race-focused content. I wonder what has been the reason for this success? I really don't have a clue when you see the Blend stacked up against all those other influential blogs.

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Oh, just so you know, I've never been approached by any media entity or institution to "buy out" or fully subsidize PHB, so I doubt you'll see that happening any time soon, despite the ranking. It sits in an odd niche, has a quirky collection of voices, and no one would want to see it radically change even if that meant stability and guarantee of sustainability. Of course that also means it could just go away at any time due to its current model of flying by the seat of your independent pants.

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In my view, Pam is far too modest. She is an amazing person and a role model for those of us who are frustrated part time journalists and columnists. Again, congratulations Pam and crew!!

Influence of Gay Bloggers Highlighted in Washington Post

The Washington Post has an article up today entitled "Gay Bloggers' Voices Rise in Chorus of Growing Political Influence" that among other things profiles Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend. Having met Pam at the LGBT Blogger Summit last December, I can vouch for her intelligence, quick wit and great sense of humor. Ditto for Mike Rogers also mentioned in the article. The article also notes several other "must read" blogs that include the Bilerico Project for which I am now a contributor through Bilerico-DC (that blog's formal launch will be on March 2, 2009). The article likewise notes how the gay political presence online is helping to re-energize and strengthen the gay rights movement in a bottom-up manner, with bloggers from off the beaten track having the ability to be involved. I congratulate Pam, Mike and other gay bloggers - a number of whom I met at the Summit - for their efforts to make a difference. Here are some story highlights:

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Only the blogosphere, perhaps, has room for Pam Spaulding -- a black lesbian who lives in North Carolina, the only state in the South that has not banned same-sex marriage. "California, Arizona and Florida all passed marriage amendments in November," says Spaulding, 44, an IT manager by day and a round-the-clock blogger. "All eyes are on North Carolina now." . . . What she doesn't write is that, so long as she's blogging, what happens in North Carolina won't stay in the Tar Heel State.

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Pam's House Blend is an influential voice in the gay political blogosphere, must-reads that include the Bilerico Project, Towleroad and AMERICAblog, each attracting a few hundred to a few thousand hits a day. Just as the liberal Net-roots and the conservative "rightroots" movements have affected traditional party structures, the still relatively small gay political presence online is rebooting the gay rights movement in a decentralized, spontaneous, bottom-up way. It's spreading news via blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Online, a story about two 16-year-old girls in a Lutheran private school in California being expelled for "conducting themselves in a manner consistent with being lesbians" -- as the school's lawyer describes it -- goes viral. And hits nerves.

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In the past, someone like Spaulding would have been relegated to the sidelines. She doesn't work for national gay rights organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign or the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. She lives with her partner, Kate, an audiologist, in Durham, far from San Francisco, New York or Washington, where gay activism has been historically based. But now she's helping shape the agenda, one voice in a chorus of sometimes dissonant, sometimes harmonious, often in-your-face voices that is pushing established gay groups and redefining the meaning of grass-roots action in this new media age.

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"What happened after Proposition 8 caught the national gay groups completely off guard. I think it surprised them. I think it really showed them that when it comes to harnessing grass-roots energy, they need to get online," says Kevin Naff, editor of the Washington Blade, a gay newspaper. "What happened online came together overnight for little or no money, and the protests were covered by the mainstream press. If national groups wanted to coordinate the kind of mass protests we saw, they would spend $1 million and take six months to do it."

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Though Andrew Sullivan, the openly gay Washington media veteran, has been blogging since 2000, for many, the gay political presence online began nearly five years ago. That's when blogger Mike Rogers, a longtime activist, began outing gay staffers on Capitol Hill who worked for Republicans supporting what he called "anti-gay" policies. It was controversial, it was provocative, it got everyone's attention. But the gay political blogosphere wasn't just about outing. From the outset, it highlighted issues that bloggers felt were misunderstood, back-burnered or not fully covered by the mainstream media.

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For instance, when it was announced that the Rev. Rick Warren, whose megachurch in Orange County, Calif., endorsed Prop. 8, would deliver the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration, gay bloggers pounced. . . . On inauguration weekend, when the opening prayer by Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay priest to be ordained as a bishop in a major Christian church, was excluded from the live HBO broadcast of the concert at Lincoln Memorial, bloggers pounced again. HBO ended up re-airing the broadcast with Robinson, and pressure from the gay blogosphere was one of the reasons why.

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And the sheer diversity of blogs written by gays, lesbians and transgenders proves that, like all minority groups, the gay community is not monolithic. Though they may blog about the same topic -- say, Prop. 8 -- it doesn't mean they'll arrive at the same conclusion.

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Spaulding started blogging in 2004, the year 11 states passed laws banning same-sex marriage. She blogged because she wanted to express her frustration, not because she thought people would actually read her postings. But slowly, through online word of mouth, people did. Her influence is not due to the total number of people who read her -- she averages about 8,000 unique visitors a day -- but the kind of people who do, many of whom are movers and shakers in the gay community.

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"Obama has said over and over again that his will be an inclusive presidency," Spaulding says. "So we'll see. Words are just words. They must become actions. Everyone will be closely watching." Including this blogging black lesbian from the South.