The Mad Professah Lectures

Corey Johnson has been an openly gay city councilperson in New York City representing the 3rd district which includes the gayborhoods of Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen and the West Village along with parts of the Upper West Side since 2013. He replaced former openly lesbian NYC City Council speaker Christine Quinn who lost a Democratic primary for Mayor to Bill De Blasio.

This week comes news that Johnson, who is 35-years-old, openly gay and HIV-positive, may be following in Quinn's shoes to become the Speaker of the New York City council, the 2nd most important and powerful political position in the nation's largest city. Recently re-elected to a second term, Mayor de Blasio tweeted his support for Johnson's bid to become Speaker:

Congratulations to the next speaker of the @NYCCouncil, Corey Johnson. He’s been a force for the people of his district and I know he will bring that same commitment, passion, and energy to the speakership. I look forward to working with him on a progressive agenda for NYC.

The New York Times also reported that Johnson has the votes in the 51-member council to be elected Speaker in January.

Congratulations @CoreyinNYC!

This week Annise Parker was re-elected as Mayor of Houston, Texas for a third and final term. Parker is the first openly LGBT chief executive of a Top 10 city.

With 35% of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Parker had secured 57% of the vote compared with 28% for Hall. Hall conceded less than two hours after the polls closed when early returns showed Parker securing the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

Parker's victory is in contrast to high-profile losses by other female candidates running for Mayor of major cities in 2013 such as Christine Quinn in New York City and Wendy Greuel in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Times analyzes why Parker won:

“The mayor has an image as a technocrat, a policy wonk, not an in-your-face left-wing activist. She’s not someone who really alienates conservatives,” said Mark Jones, chair of the political science department at Rice University in Houston.

While Hall lived in a mansion just outside Houston until last year, Parker graduated from Rice, worked in the oil and gas industry and lived with her domestic partner, Kathy Hubbard, and three children in an older home in the city’s historic Heights neighborhood.

Parker started out as a gay activist in college, was president of the Houston GLBT Political Caucus and has been open about her family, attending black-tie events with Hubbard. But, Jones said, “she doesn’t make a political issue out of it.”

“She’s first and foremost a mayor who focuses on policy,” he said. “Her life is one that people in Houston can really identify with.”

Before she was first elected mayor in 2009, Parker served on the City Council and as Houston controller. During her first mayoral term, she handled budget cuts without raising taxes, which Jones said earned her respect from conservative and centrist voters.

Congratulations to Mayor Parker!

Carlos Menchaca became the first openly gay councilperson elected in Brooklyn

New York City held its primary election this past Tuesday and although the results of whether Bill de Blasio made the required 40% to avoid a run-off are still not finalized, there were some exciting moments for the LGBT community despite the unsuccessful end of openly lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's run to become the first openly LGBT person elected to head the nation's largest city.

The Gay Politics blog of the Victory Fund reports:

Historic wins came in the outer boroughs, where Brooklyn’s Carlos Menchaca [pictured] upset incumbent Sara Gonzalez in the District 38 race with 58% of the vote. In the Bronx, voters in District 15 elected Ritchie Torres with 36% of the vote in a 6-way race. Both Menchaca and Torres will become the first openly gay Councilmembers from their respective boroughs. 

Incumbents Danny Dromm of District 25 and Jimmy Van Bramer of District 26 were unopposed in Tuesday’s primary elections, while District 2 Councilwoman Rosie Mendez fended off a primary challenge and secured a third term with 81% of the vote. Finally, Corey Johnson won the District 3 primary with 63% of the vote to succeed Council speaker Christine Quinn.

The New York City council will most likely have 6 openly LGBT members out of a total of 51 members, which is pretty good representation of 11.7%!

Congratulations to everyone.

Oh Canada! Kathleen Wynne has been elected to head the Ontario Liberal Party, which means that she will become the Premier of the Province of Ontario, Canada. Ontario contains the nation's capital city Ottawa as well as its largest city, Toronto. A Province in Canada is equivalent to a State in America and a Premier is the equivalent to an American governor. However, due to the parliamentary system the people do not directly elect the Premier, Premiers are selected at party convention by members of parliament and other activists in the party or coalition which currently has the most number of seats in the provinicial parliament. It is this election which Ms. Wynne won, making her the first woman and first openly LGBT premier in the history of Canada, according to the Globe and Mail:

A policy wonk with a laid-back, likeable persona, Ms. Wynne successfully pitched herself as a woman ready to govern, promising to bring the legislature back next month and push forward the party’s agenda by working with the opposition.

Despite concerns she was too low-key to fight her way to victory, Ms. Wynne turned in a formidable performance at the convention, with a raucous entrance that saw her supporters dancing on-stage, followed by a speech that combined personal anecdotes with partisan rhetoric.

She also addressed, head-on, the worry some Liberals had expressed that an openly-gay candidate could not win a general election. She pointed out that the other candidates – a Portuguese-Canadian, an Indo-Canadian, a Catholic and a woman – would once have been thought unelectable.

“I don’t believe the people of Ontario judge their leaders on the basis of race, colour or sexual orientation,” she said to loud cheers from her supporters. “I don’t believe they hold that prejudice in their hearts.”

The United States has never had an openly LGBT person elected Governor of a state and there are only a handful of openly LGBT people who have ever been elected to statewide office in this country. I wonder how long before there will be an openly LGBT governor of  a state?

After all, Tammy Baldwin was just elected to the United States Senate in November from Wisconsin. It is very likely that Christine Quinn will be elected Mayor of New York City later this year, which is probably a more powerful position than being governor of certain states. Annise Parker is currently in her second term as Mayor of Houston.

(It should be noted that all the LGBT people who are making significant gains in politics recently have been women, not gay or bisexual men.)

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

Getty

$259 million dollars would buy a lot of wedding cake! Last week a report was issued by New York City's marketing and tourism bureau estimating the impact of the first year of marriage equality in New York State at $259 million. After New York State enacted marriage equality last summer, New York City ran a "NYC I Do" campaign to encourage same-sex couples to marry in the city and just one year later it appears to have paid off handsomely for the nation's largest city.

Time magazine reports:

Over 8,000 marriage licenses were registered to gay couples in the last year, meaning more than 10% of the 75,000 wedding licenses issued in the city were for same-sex marriages. Beyond basic government money, the new law brought in over 200,000 tourists to celebrate the marriages. That meant 235,000 hotel rooms booked at an average rate of $275, the mayor’s statement said. And we have no idea if that includes all the fabulous wedding gifts people bought.

Annise Parker, who became the first openly LGBT mayor of a major United States city (Houston) in December 2009, has announced what everyone has known for a pretty long time: she's running for re-election.

The Houston Chronicle (which endorsed Parker in her election two years ago) covered the story like this:

Houston Mayor Annise Parker filed the papers Thursday to put her name on the November ballot, a move that so far appears to be a formality on her path toward a second two-year term.

"I'm going to be a better mayor in the second term because of what I've learned in the first term," Parker declared during a visit to her campaign headquarters on Allen Parkway.

The mayor described her first term as one in which she often had to react instead of plan and shape. The economy depleted city revenue, leading to painful spending cuts. Voters handed Parker controversial mandates to initiate a monthly drainage fee and to turn off the city's red-light cameras. She compared her attempts to change the culture of a 21,000-employee city bureaucracy to turning an ocean liner. Even the weather has necessitated a response, and Parker recently imposed mandatory water restrictions on the 2.1 million people she governs.

In a second term, Parker said, she hopes to create more and respond less.

"This is a city that has tremendous potential, and I want to move the conversation to tapping into that potential, to being a cleaner, greener city, to being a city with more jobs and opportunity for everybody," Parker said.

Since the advent of term limits in 1991, no incumbent mayor has lost an election. Nor has any even had a close call in their first re-election.

Go, Annise, Go! The election is November 8, 2011. Parker has more than $2.3 million on hand and no opponents with more than $5,000. She is term-limited to 3-terms in office, so she would still have to be re-elected in 2013 to spend the maximum 6 years as Mayor of Houston.

Interestingly, in 2013 there may be another lesbian running to be Mayor of an even bigger city: New York City.

Christine Quinn, is the openly lesbian Speaker of the New York City Council and is widely considered the frontrunner to become the next Mayor of New York City, when billionaire Mike Bloomberg's controversial 3rd term ends in 2013.

This week comes word that Bloomberg is privately endorsing Quinn's bid as his successor.

The New York Times reports:

Houston, the nation's 5th largest city, is the only other major U.S. city with an openly LGBT mayor, Annise Parker. However, Quinn being elected the  Mayor of New York City would be a historical moment for the LGBT rights movement worldwide, not just for America.

The latest news from New York is that the legislative session has been extended to deal with three issues: rent control, property tax and, of course, marriage equality. The first two of the three issues have now been settled:

[State Majority Leader Dean] Skelos said he, Gov. Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are on board with agreements to extend the rent regulation law, restore a 421-A property tax abatement for city housing developers, SUNY 2020, a local property tax cap, and a mandate-relief package for localities.

Gay marriage, he said, will be conferenced once there is agreed upon language concerning religious protections. "I think we're going to have a real good concluding package," Skelos said.

Openly lesbian New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is one of the frontrunners to become the next Mayor of New York City following Anthony Weiner's resignation, has said that she expects a vote on marriage equality Wednesday or Thursday.

James Alesi is the first Republican state senator to publicly announce  he will vote in favor of a marriage equality bill in New York State

There is finally good news out of the state of New York on the prospects of marriage equality becoming law this year. Three Democrats who voted against the measure in 2009 have publicly announced they will vote yes this time.

The New York Times reports online:

The three Democratic senators — Joseph P. Addabbo Jr. and Shirley L. Huntley of Queens and Carl Kruger of Brooklyn — all voted against the measure in 2009, when it failed by a wide margin. Their switch to the yes column leaves all but one Senate Democrat supporting same-sex marriage — and the fate of the legislation in the hands of the Republican majority in the chamber.

“I believe that votes will be there for marriage equality if the vote happens,” Mr. Cuomo, a first-term Democrat who has made same-sex marriage a top priority, told reporters at the Capitol Monday afternoon.

[...]

Mr. Cuomo spoke to reporters along with all three of the Democratic senators, who explained why they were changing their positions on the marriage issue. Each of them said that the sentiment in their New York City districts has changed over the last several years, and that they have changed along with their constituents.

“What we’re about to do is redefine what the American family is,” Mr. Kruger said. “And that’s a good thing. The world around us evolves.”

Mr. Addabbo said that just two years ago, 73 percent of the constituents who contacted his office opposed same-sex marriage. But this year, he said, he had heard from 6,015 people in his district, of whom 4,839 wanted him to vote for same-sex marriage.

“In the end, that is my vote,” Mr. Addabbo said

It should be noted that the 2009 marriage equalitybill failed by a vote fo 24-38 even though Democrats held a 32-30 advantage at that time. Now Republicans hold a 32-30 advantage but 29 of 30 Democrats have publicly announced they will vote for the bill (only the religious extremist, heterosexual supremacist, rabidly homophobic Rev. Ruben Diaz, Sr. is voting against).
And as I was writing this blog post the first Republican member of the New York State Senate, James Alesi has announced he will vote in favor of the marriage equality bill, leaving the measure a scant two votes short of a declared majority of 32 votes in the 62-member body. These must come from the Republican caucus.

The Times-Union reports online:

Sen. Jim Alesi, emerging from a meeting with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Lt. Gov. Bob Duffy, said he will vote for same-sex marriage.

“It was very liberating,” Alesi said, describing how “anguishing” it was to vote against the bill in 2009. “If you live in America, and you expect equality and freedom for yourself, you have to extend it to others.”

He is the first sitting Republican senator to declare his support for the same-sex marriage. He joins three Democratsin the chamber who committed to support the as-yet-introduced measure Monday, bringing the total number of committed yes votes to 30. (Thirty-two votes are needed for passage.)

The current tally of Senators to contact are (courtesy Adam Bink at Prop8TrialTracker.com):

Joe Addabbo (15, Queens) (518) 455-2322

James Alesi (55, Rochester suburbs) (518) 455-2015

Greg Ball (40, Putnam County) (518) 455-3111

Joe Griffo (47, Utica) (518) 455-3334

Mark Grisanti (60, Buffalo, Grand Island, Niagara Falls) (518) 455-3240

Shirley Huntley (10, Queens) (518) 455-3531

Carl Kruger (27, Brooklyn) (518) 455-2460

Andrew Lanza (24, Staten Island) (518) 455-3215

Betty Little (45, North Country stretching from Plattsburgh to Glens Falls) (518) 455-2811

Jack Martins (7, Nassau County/Garden City) 518-455-3265

Roy McDonald (43, north and east of Albany: Troy, Saratoga Springs, Clifton Park) (518) 455-2381

Interestingly, I used to live in Troy, New York for 8 years (1986-1994) when the odious State Senator Joseph Bruno was my representative and Republican Majority Leader did his best to bottle up and kill the New York gay rights bill (SONDA) for a decade or more. Happily, he was indicted and convicted of corruption.

The current Republican majority leader of the state senate is Dean Skelos and had said that he would allow a vote on a marriage equality bill prior to the Republicans winning a majority last November.

Governor Andrew Cuomo says he intends to introduce a marriage equality bill on Tuesday, so it would seem the votes are there on the Senate floor for final passage by the end of the week. The question is will the majority leader allow it. With nearly 60% of the adult public approving of marriage equality in New York in multiple polls it would be a truly anti-Democratic (is that the definition of Republican?) move to make to prevent a bill from becoming law when the votes are there. Do you really want to be the Governor Wallace of your generation?

On Thursday New YorkGovernor David Paterson announced his introduction of a bill to end the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage at a press conference attended by openly lesbian New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, openly gay Assemblyman David O'Donnell and openly gay (and HIV+) State Senator Tom Duane.

Although Democrats control both house of the state legislature, there are a number of conservative Democrats that oppose marriage equality and do not support the legislation.