‘The number of people who vote in this Sept. 12 primary is small,’ says Sean Patrick Maloney. ‘If gays and lesbians turn out, they can have an impact.’
Thousands united Nov. 12 in front of a Mormon temple in Midtown and marched to Columbus Circle to protest Proposition Hate, er…Proposition 8.
A new generation of activists unites via the Internet. Log on and Join the Impact.
A multimedia SAGE campaign makes LGBT elders more visible—even on New York’s subways and buses.
How will his departure affect LGBT issues in Albany?
Industry leaders powwow to raise questions about the persecution of clubland.
Anti-gay hate crimes are on the rise across the U.S.—homophobic incidents have even surfaced at a local production of play “Judy and Me.”
Spurred by a gay marriage ban in California, simultaneous protests were
held Nov. 14 across the nation. In Manhattan, 4,000 rallied at City Hall.
Next up: A Dec. 10 event called A Day Without a Gay.
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By KERRY ELEVELD
Monday, September 11, 2006
The Attorney General’s race is up in the air after a flurry of activity the past two weeks before the primary, and at press time, no public polling was available to ground us.
Openly gay candidate Sean Patrick Maloney, who is running third in the race, said, "I think something extraordinary is possible on Tuesday… We’re moving up and the question is how far we can get down this field with the time remaining."
On August 23, the Marist College poll showed Andrew Cuomo getting 46 percent of likely voters, Mark Green carrying 28 percent, Sean Patrick Maloney taking 10 percent, and Charlie King with 1 percent. Fifteen percent of voters were still undecided, and a separate Quinnipiac poll showed 50 percent of voters said they still might change their minds.
Charlie King, the only African-American candidate, has since dropped out of the race (though his name will still appear on the September 12 ballot) and he endorsed Andrew Cuomo, the former Clinton Housing Secretary. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who was on the fence between King and Cuomo, finally followed suit and endorsed Cuomo.
To be sure, Cuomo’s camp is hoping it can pick up the African-American vote and boost his downstate numbers at the polls. Some strategists say Mark Green, the former New York City Public Advocate, has an edge on Cuomo downstate, which hosts the largest pool of likely primary voters.
But an August 21 Pace Poll showed that 61 percent of King’s supporters would vote for Maloney if King dropped out.
Cuomo has been sitting on his lead and turning blue in the face holding his breath until September 12. He ducked three of the last televised debates. When the New York Times endorsed Green two weeks ago, Cuomo told reporters he hadn’t read the endorsement. When The Village Voice ran an unflattering investigative piece last week on Cuomo’s ties to businessman Andrew Farkas, Cuomo told reporters he hadn’t read it.
Green, in turn, has been turning red in the face trying to discredit Cuomo’s record at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is clearly Cuomo’s biggest credential.
"You’ve got two professional candidates doing what professional politicians do. One is trying to play it safe, trying to run out the clock. The other is slash and burn, and neither gives people anything to vote for," said Maloney, an investigative attorney and former aide to President Bill Clinton.
Last week, Cuomo, Green, and Maloney met up in a final debate in front of the New York Bar Association. The three talked substance for most of the debate, but the last few minutes predictably devolved into sniping between Cuomo and Green.
Notably candid, Josh Benson of the New York Observer’s Politicker web site wrote, "Green visibly flipped out…"
Ben Smith of the The Daily Politics blog concluded, "The muttering among the lawyers in the room was that they’d be voting for Sean Patrick Maloney, for what it’s worth."
That’s exactly the conclusion that Maloney hopes other voters will make. "You’ve got very clear choice now, between two guys acting like professional politicians and one guy who’s just very different," he said.
Asked if he had been approached by anyone to leave the race, Maloney said he’d had "conversations" with people but made it "very clear" that he wasn’t interested.
"There are worse things than losing—what they are is becoming some faint echo of the guys you’re running against by subscribing to the cynical notion that there’s an easy way out through a secret deal or a negative attack," he said. "That kind of politics doesn’t interest me."
Though he’s not sure what the future holds, Maloney said he’s committed to public service, he’s committed to the change that’s taking place in Albany, and he’s committed to helping the LGBT community take part in that change.
"Gays and lesbians have a gift to offer the Democrats, and it is that telling people stuff they may not want to hear is how you earn their respect. Better to be respected than to be chasing people’s approval," he said.
But he also acknowledged that the LGBT community has some work to do in terms of being better represented and becoming more politically sophisticated.
"Can you organize yourselves and reach across lines of difference to build the larger coalition necessary to win power statewide? That’s the undiscovered country," he said.
The New York Post seems to have gotten that message. Even as it endorsed Cuomo last week, it wrote, "Openly gay, Maloney avoided becoming a Johnny-one-note, instead focusing commendably on the sham of ‘public authorities,’ secretive, unaccountable quasi-governmental agencies that spend billions. A principled pol, Maloney appears to have a political future."
As far as Maloney is concerned, that future could still be now. "People need to vote. The number of people who vote in this primary is very small. If gays and lesbians turn out, they can have an enormous impact."
One thing is clear, voters are still ambivalent about the frontrunners in this race. An August 31 Zogby International poll gauged the candidacies of both Andrew Cuomo and Mark Green against Republican Jeanine Pirro and said, "The polling shows all three AG candidates are struggling to lock up their political bases, with nearly one–quarter of respondents from their own parties saying they are either undecided or will support someone other than their party’s candidate."
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