Winning Forward

Kyrsten Sinema, 31 years old, is my dark-horse pick for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. She just spoke at my panel at Take Back America, "The Crackup of Conservatism," about something she did that something that really pissed off a lot of progressives and LGBT activists in Arizona: she ran a successful campaign to defeat an anti-domestic partnership constitutional amendment.

Yes, that's right. She won. And left many activists shrieking.

The story starts here. In 2004, conservative activists put anti-domestic partnership measures on the ballots in eleven states. Arizona was not one of them. The Grand Canyon State didn't have any big statewide race on the ballot, so the right found no reason to bother: ultimately what these anti-gay initiatives were about was mobilizing hate to bump of conservative turnout for senatorial and gubernatorial races. Arizona dodged that particular bullet. And much of the GLBT movement in Arizona chose the following course of action as a response: nothing.

It hadn't happened in 2004. So had "this crazy hope that it's not going to happen," Sinema said with incredulous intensity.

Sinema had a different idea. An anti-domestic partnership initiative would come, as sure as there are saguaro in Sedona, when the right deemed the moment propitious, whether that be in 2006, 2008, or 2010. So Sinema started organizing.

The meetings were sparsely attended: why bother? The other side hadn't even announced any plans, let alone started gathering signatures.

Sinema, however, started gameplanning, so by the time the Arizona right moved for 2006, some pieces were in place. Old heads started talking strategy—the same old strategy anti-"hate" campaigns had hauled out in losing fight after losing fight after losing fight. Losing had even been institutionalized as a positive good in the gay human rights movement: it's called "losing forward"—losing yes, but losing while doing the right thing. Losing while "raising awareness." Winning if you lose, wen the theory, because at least you "fought," nobly, "energized" lots of people, made folks feel good about "participating in the process."

At the panel, Kyrsten Sinema told the story of how she called "bullshit." "I wanted to get more votes on election day."

For Kyrsten Sinema had learned something in 2004. While John Kerry, and elevent ineffectual progressive movements to beat back anti-gay ballot initiatives were losing, she became one of the few Democratic politicians besides Barack Obama to learn what it felt like to win.

She'd been a progressive organizer for ten years. Campaign after campaign after campaign. All followed by the same post-election postmortem: we really got our people energized. We really brought more people into the process. We fought nobly. We raised awareness. We did the right thing. We were "freedom fighters."

In other words: we lost.

Sinema thought: why not victory? Gay and lesbian folks, progressive folks, prefer to talk to each other. They use words, in their movement, like "hate," "bigotry," and fairness." But what did the electorate think of words like this?

They thought it was annoying. They thought they were being insulted for being bad people. Kyrsten's movement decided to do the research to decide what kind of words did did work. As an open bisexual, "I know I'm unusual.... We had to learn the terminology and argot of the regular community.

She got accused of "throwing the community under a bus."

She would respond, "No, we're driving the bus. Get on board. We're driving you to keep your healthcare."

They would respond that she was selling out the movement.

She would respond, "We're three percent of the vote. Shut up, go home, and get on the phone."

Folks got on message. Arizona's initiative would have stripped the rights from unmarried couples gay and straight alike. Take away their right to visit loved ones in the hospital. Take away employer-based healthcare. They found an elderly heterosexual couple Al and Maxine. They told their story, and asked the question: why are you taking away Al's right to visit Maxine in the hospital?

A "gay" scandal would break in the media. As an publicly prominent bisexual legislator, running a high profile campaign, the local media would ask her for comment She would say, "Why are you asking me about Ted Haggard? Why don't you ask Senator X why he's taking away healthcare?"

Conservative media called that "offensive." he replied, "I'm not sure what about protecting healthcare is offensive."

Some gay movement stalwarts called that "offensive." She replied, "I'm not sure what about protecting healthcare is offensive."

What happened? The good guys won, 52–48. Domestic partnership benefits were preserved in Arizona.

But that's not the end of the story. It is, in fact only the beginning. By reaching ordinary voters where they already were, forming a relationship with them, they won forward. A year later, they did a poll. Seventeen percent more Arizonans were accepting of gay marriage—"gay marriage" specifically, not "domestic partnership"—than before their campaign. Though their campaign self-consciously never, ever married mentioned "gay marriage."

People just figured out they were for it on their own. After hearing about Al and Maxine.

Her voice, once more, grows intense. "I have a duty to protect the healthcare of unmarried workers." If a progressive wants therapy, she said, they should go to a therapist.