If you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?

[ckd]

One of the key parts of the story of yesterday's Massachusetts Constitutional Convention is the part played by those legislators who changed their minds, and their votes, between January's vote and today's.

In a representative democracy, laws are affected by two separate but equally important groups: the representatives, who serve in the legislature, and the voters, who elect them. These are their stories. (Bomp bomp.)

The nine lawmakers who switched sides on gay marriage yesterday came from both parties, different parts of the state, and they traveled different ideological paths to their decisions . But in interviews yesterday, they seemed to share something in common: a desire to listen to all sides and a concern about hurting gay couples and families who they believed in many cases had experienced discrimination. The lawmakers spent hours, even days at a time during the last five months, meeting gay couples and their friends and relatives. Their personal stories made the difference more than anything else, the lawmakers said.

Voters who had supported the amendment also changed their minds:

Some constituents wrote saying that they had changed their minds, like the elderly woman who said she previously asked Candaras to support the ban.
"But since then, Gale," the woman wrote, as Candaras told it, "this lovely couple, these two men, moved in next door to me, and they have a couple of children and they're married, and they help me with my lawn. And if they can't be married in Massachusetts, they're going to leave -- and then who would help me with my lawn?"

One of the important numbers from yesterday is 151, showing that even with all seats filled and all legislators present there were not 50 votes; the other important number is nine.

Comments

[cos]

One of my pet peeves: Lots of people are focusing on the beautiful stories of how people and legislators changed their minds - which was a very important piece of this - but almost everyone is completely ignoring the far more important piece which was elections. Electoral politics is the key component that allows for any sort of social/political movement like this to achieve anything, but for some reason it's not seen as glamorous or relevant, it's seen as something dirty that people don't want to look at or touch. So people enjoy emotional stories like the ones above, and gloss over (without even realizing it) the grittier parts: running for office, canvassing door to door, getting out to vote in obscure special elections, and so on.

I wrote more about this in my comment on this bluemassgroup post.

[ckd]

I'm not dismissing it; in my comments on Making Light I specifically noted the Ciampa/Sciortino race, for example. It wasn't the central point I was trying to make in this post, though.

I'm also planning to vote on the 26th, despite it being one of the most obscure (and irrelevant) special elections I can think of; I already voted in the special primary, and Petrucelli is running unopposed in the general.

[cos]

Thanks. And I'm reacting to what I see in general - lots and lots of talk about civic engagement and changing minds, hardly any talk (outside of political groups) about the far more significant role of electoral politics in making this happen.

In 2004 the vote was 105-92, yesterday it was 45-151. 105 to 45 is 60 votes. It's hard to exactly pin down how each vote was won over, because a good number of them are a combination (was the legislator more affected by seeing colleagues lose their jobs for voting to ban gay marriage, or more affected by visits from gay constituents or clergy?) but if I had to estimate, I'd attribute about 40 out of that 60 to elections. And certainly, the number of votes we know switched entirely due to elections (that is, we have a different person in office now than in 2004) far outnumbers the votes we know switched primarily for other reasons.

One example worth noting: In 2005, a common complaint among Massachusetts Democrats was that the state Democratic party was ineffective in helping Democrats face the Romney-supported challenges in the 2004 elections. MassEquality was widely praised for stepping up to fill that vaccuum. MassEquality's support of candidates in those elections had a huge impact both on those who got that support, and on those who were left without it because they'd voted to ban gay marriage.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I'm curious what extent party discipline was relevant in yesterday's Massachusetts vote. Here in Canada, I think part of the success at the federal level came from leaders of parties making clear statements in favour of equal marriage, and in 2-1/2 cases, using whips (NDP and Bloc Québecois, as well as the Liberal Cabinet). Did the Governor matter much yesterday in MA?

[ron_newman]

I'm sure the Governor helped, but we don't have ironclad party discipline here. Some Democrats voted for the amendment; some Republicans voted against it.

[cos]

We don't technically have "party discipline" the way Canada and the UK do. There's no official party line, and no official consequence for voting against it. However - our governor, speaker of the house, and senate president, all lobbied very very hard against this amendment, and they do have a lot of clout. It made a big difference.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I really should have written that comment differently. I'm an expat American; I actually vote (federally, only) in Medford.

But I'm thrilled to hear that Patrick was lobbying that heavily.

[cos]

Here's a video of Patrick's brief remarks outside after the vote. Very classy, and just right.

[mplsvala.livejournal.com]

This was great. Thanks for posting it.

[ckd]

Wasn't the 2004 vote on a measure that would have established civil unions, though? Some of those votes could have shifted because of that, where someone might have felt more comfortable with a proposal that (in their view[1]) protected some sort of rights for same-sex couples, they couldn't support this amendment, which didn't.

[1] I say that "separate but equal" isn't.

[cos]

Possible, and hard to tell. At the time, that was what the social right was (reluctantly) backing. It was a compromise sponsored by Travaglini and Lees and seemed like it might be the best they could get. In the next session, they'd changed their strategy to the new amendment, so a lot of legislators who oppose gay marriage actually voted against the earlier amendment that time around. Significantly, Travaglini and Lees, the sponsors of the original "compromise", both backed the new amendment as well. So the old one was rejected (with only 39 votes in favor) and the new one passed. We could look at a list of the 39 who voted yes on the earlier amendment in the second session, see if any of those voted "no" yesterday, and from among those, might find some who had switched largely for the reason you suggest. I suspect the number is pretty small (to begin with, IIRC a lot of those 39 aren't in the legislature any more).

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Yes, there were 3 votes in 2004 -- 1 to establish civil unions, 1 to make same-sex marriage legal via legislation, and 1 to make same-sex marriage an amendment question. The first 2 were pretty much Not Going To Happen.

the drama of last minute switches

[cos]

BTW, I was in the room for this - some of those unexpected switches were very exciting.

(huh, now that I look again, I can spot myself in this video - right near the center for much of it - but way too small and fuzzy to identify if you didn't happen to know exactly where I was :)

Hallejulah! Praise Jesus! Blessed Be!

[mplsvala.livejournal.com]

Yay! This was a big one. How inspiring. I read quite a few of the stories. I think the banner (Victory! Love wins!) was a perfect way to share the news. Thanks so much for posting this. I have been impressed with several Globe articles I've encountered and this prompted me to sign up for their free e-news.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Good for Massachusetts!

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

A tangental positive thing about this IMHO: No gay-marriage amendment on the ballot in Massachusetts perhaps deprives the religious right and the national GOP of a rallying point that could be used to distract people from other issues. It might be a little harder to say "Forget about the war and government corruption; look at those gay people getting married!" without this. And the longer that the marriage is legal, the more Joe Average can see that the sky isn't falling and their boys aren't ditching their girlfriends to date guys and so on. While the hardcore opponents will probably never let it go, they'll be more and more irrelevant. Hmm, well, save for the high likelihood of violent radical right groups reappearing or popping up after the Democrats get control of the Presidency as well as the Congress in the next election, but oh well....