NY Gay Groups Use Donations to Become a Force in Elections

The city of Rochester and its suburbs along Lake Ontario may seem an unlikely focal point for the national gay rights movement.

But many of the philanthropists who have bankrolled gay and lesbian causes throughout the country have poured tens of thousands of dollars in the past month into the State Senate campaign of Rick Dollinger, a Democrat and ally of the gay community. Mr. Dollinger is challenging a Republican incumbent, Joseph E. Robach, whose district includes Rochester.

Mr. Dollinger is not the only beneficiary of the gay community’s largess in this election. From Suffolk County on Long Island to the suburbs of Buffalo, checks from donors in far-flung places like West Hollywood, Denver and Chicago have been pouring into the campaigns of Democratic Senate candidates, adding a surprising dynamic to the battle to oust Republicans from their last post of power in state government.

In a sign of how pivotal New York has become in the effort to strengthen civil rights for gay men and lesbians, leading advocacy groups like the Human Rights Campaign and fund-raisers with ties to the deep-pocketed Gill Foundation — a philanthropic group — are aggressively involved in the effort.

“The institutional gay community is very, very invested in this,” said Tom Duane, a Democratic state senator from Manhattan who was one of the state’s first openly gay elected officials when he won his seat in 1998. “I think everyone believes this is the year for New York. This is it, and everyone is going all in.”

With Democrats just two seats away from capturing a majority in the Senate, gay and lesbian advocates believe that legalizing same-sex marriage in New York is within their grasp. The State Assembly passed a bill last year that would allow same-sex marriages. But the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to bring it to the floor for a vote. Gov. David A. Paterson, a strong ally of gay men and lesbians, has said he would sign the bill.

In New York, which recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, gay and lesbian advocates see an opportunity for a victory that has eluded them elsewhere. In states that allow same-sex marriages, it is the courts, not the Legislatures, that provided the legal imprimatur.

Gay Groups Use Donations to Become a Force in Elections
New York Times, United States -