Dyana Mason, executive director of Equality Virginia, said she hopes a letter and campaign toolkit will encourage candidates not to use gay-baiting tactics, but to stick to the issues. (Photo courtesy of Mason)
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ELIZABETH PERRY
Friday, August 31, 2007
A rumored political poll, which asked voters in a local Virginia race if they would vote for a candidate if they knew he was “a closeted homosexual,” prompted gay political groups to draft a letter to the Virginia General Assembly and to launch their own bipartisan campaign to keep this election cycle clean.
“If it is true it represents a new low in Virginia politics,” said Delegate David Poisson (D-32), about whom the question was posed, in a prepared statement. “If it is not, then laws may have been broken.”
The Loudoun Connection newspaper recently reported telephone poll calls were placed to area residents asking them if, in essence, Poisson’s sexual orientation mattered. Residents were asked other questions, such as if they knew he “harbors illegal aliens” or knew he had a connection to Former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Poisson told the Blade there is “no way of knowing” if his opponent, Republican Lynn Chapman, was involved, but when he spoke to people who received the calls, and they said there was a tag line at the end of the poll saying it was sponsored by Chapman and the House Republican Committee.
He asked the poll recipients to look at their caller I.D.s to see what number the calls originated from, company name and the time. He said they matched, including the questions. Poisson said the calls all originated from Venture Data, a telephone interviewing company based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Chapman was unavailable for comment, but released a statement in which he said the calls were not part of his campaign’s recent opinion poll.
“However it does appear that calls were made to voters in the district that asked those questions,” he said. “I do not know who is making the calls. It raises the prospect that they are being made by a third party pursuing their own agenda.”
Poisson, who is married and has a daughter, denied he is gay and said he represents people who are gay and straight. He voted against the Virginia marriage amendment banning same-sex marriage last year and defeated Delegate Dick Black two years ago.
This latest round of dubious campaigning echoes the previous House of Delegates 2005 election cycle, when the Blade reported two incidents of gay baiting.
Vivian Paige, an openly lesbian candidate running for treasurer of Norfolk, was targeted by an unknown group that left fliers that called attention to her sexual orientation on cars parked outside a NAACP-sponsored candidates’ forum. The fliers featured a photo of Paige and a caption that read, “Yes, I’m a lesbian and I’m proud! It really doesn’t matter what people think, it’s my life.”
The flier purported to be an endorsement from the Virginia Partisans Gay & Lesbian Democratic Club and to have been authorized by the Concerned Citizens for Political Education. Paige was endorsed by the Virginia Partisans, but the fliers were not hers and her sexual orientation had not previously been discussed as part of the campaign. The Concerned Citizens for Political Education denied that it authorized the flier.
In another incident, Delegate Bradley Marrs (R-Chesterfield) sent a campaign letter to his constituents saying his opponent, Katherine Waddell, accepted a contribution from a “wealthy homosexual businessman.”
In a bipartisan effort to curb the anti-gay rhetoric in this year’s General Assembly elections, Equality Virginia Political Action Committee joined forces with the Virginia Partisans and the Log Cabin Republican Club of Virginia to draft a co-signed letter to all candidates running for the House of Delegates and the Senate.
“We ask you to commit to see that this code of ethics is followed exactly in your campaign,” reads the letter. “And to reject any campaign tactics that involve anti-gay rhetoric or positioning or otherwise use our community as a political tool in a divisive and inflammatory way.”
Charley Conrad is president of the Virginia Partisans and is one of the letter’s co-signers, along with David Lampo, Log Cabin vice president, and Dyana Mason, Equality Virginia executive director. Conrad said the letter lets campaigns know they’re watching and listening.
“I truly believe the voters are tired of gay-baiting and gay wedge issues,” he said. “Enough is enough, but Republicans are running scared this election cycle. They might throw gay issues in the mix again to confuse and distract the voters from the real issues of education, transportation and health care.”
Mason said she hopes the letter and a campaign toolkit will encourage candidates not to use gay-baiting tactics, but to stick to the issues. The downloadable campaign toolkit gives volunteers ideas to help Equality Virginia monitor campaigns and raise funds. She said the idea for the toolkit came out of a recent gay activists conference.
“One of the things people asked for was sample questions to ask candidates,” she said. “We wanted to develop a comprehensive tool for everyone.”
The toolkit is available for download at www.equalityvirginia.org. It is also being distributed through some 11 community action teams around the state at Pride events and the Arlington County Fair.
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