When I went on a hiatus last month I said that I would still make diaries when I felt the subject matter was important. At the time most of the emphasis at DKos was on election fraud, and the Washington and Ohio recounts. I also didn't feel like the atmosphere at the time was conducive to more arguing over gay rights. Now that those have died down I see that most discussions I may have wanted to start are already being more than ably handled by others (like Pam's wonderful GLBT roundup diaries -- she even posts photos, which I just never felt like doing). However, there are 2 matters I wanted to discuss because I haven't seen them mentioned on the blog, at least not in any detail. So here is the first matter (the second will be in another diary).
3=term Massachusetts state legislator Brian Golden had a very busy 2004.
He led the charge against same-sex marriage in MA. He was
interviewed by the utopia of yuppie wingnuts, National Review. He campaigned for Bush in New Hampshire. And a few weeks ago he
gave up his seat to take a job in Mitt Romney's administration.
Oh -- did I mention that Golden is a Democrat?
As many MA residents here will tell you, there are plenty of right-wing Democrats in Massachusetts, for many years they ran the show, and in some places still do. Golden campaigned for Bush in 2000 and again this year and finally apparently some people had enough -- he was going to face a nasty 2006 primary.
The only announced candidate for the seat is Timothy Schofield, who was campaign treasurer to Dave Friedman, who lost a 2002 primary to Golden. Schofield was already filed for a 2006 primary and has $10,000 in the bank.
Who are some of the other likely candidates? Is this a safe Democratic seat? How progressive is Schofield? Will he vote for the anti-gay amendment that is coming up for a final vote sometime this year or next year (likely this year)?
Golden voted against the final compromise amendment, but only because he opposed both gay marriage and civil unions. He voted for amendments by Philip Travis and Tommy Finneran that would have banned gay marriage with nothing in return.
Speaking of former speaker and homophobe supreme Finneran, his seat is also open due to his retirement. That is presumably a pretty safe Dem seat.
Is there any chance a progressive or a pro-gay Democrat can get either of these seats? Or even a pro-gay Republican? In MA there are one or two Republicans who are more tolerant than Democrats (the Democrat who replaced retiring Republican senator Jo Ann Sprague supports the amendment, while Sprague was an equal marriage advocate).
Is MassEquality or any other MA gay group getting involved in these races? Or is there little chance of either seat going to a pro-gay candidate? Activists will need every vote they can get if they want to defeat the amendment, if/when it comes up for a vote.