by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2013 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Eric Isaacson
Lorena Gonzalez
Kevin Beiser
Francine Busby
The
predominantly Queer San Diego Democrats for Equality heard from four widely
ranging speakers at their regular meeting April 25. Eric Isaacson, local
attorney who has represented a wide coalition of faith-based organizations —
California Council of Churches, California Faith for Equality,
Unitarian-Universalist Legislative Ministry of California; Northern
California/Nevada and Southern California/Nevada Conferences, United Church of
Christ; Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis; and California Network of
Metropolitan Community Churches — in marriage equality litigation since 2004,
spoke about the recent U.S. Supreme Court hearings in the cases challenging
Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA). Lorena Gonzalez,
who recently stepped down after over six years as head of the San
Diego-Imperial Counties Central Labor Council to run for the 80th
District seat in the California State Assembly, came to get the club’s
endorsement — which she did, unanimously. The club also heard from openly Queer
San Diego Unified School District board member Kevin Beiser and newly elected
San Diego County Democratic Party chair Francine Busby.
“There’s a
perception that all religion is against marriage equality,” Isaacson
acknowledged at the opening of his presentation — which is why he rattles off
the list of his faith-based clients virtually every time he speaks publicly
about the issue. Put on the agenda to report on the Supreme Court hearings
March 26 and 27, Isaacson’s main theme was that the conservative majority on
the current Court may either throw out the case against Proposition 8
altogether or rule on the comparatively narrow ground of whether the
initiative’s proponents had “Article III standing” to be in the case at all.
This would, Isaacson explained, bring a progressive result — the end of
Proposition 8 and the resumption of legally recognized marriages of same-sex
couples in California — through legal reasoning conservatives have relied on to
keep progressive cases out of the courts altogether.
“Conservative
justices have come up with a lot of reasons why you can’t sue in the courts,”
Isaacson explained. “The Los Angeles Police Department was pulling people over
and choking them, sometimes to death, and the Supreme Court threw out a case
challenging that on the ground that the person bringing it didn’t have reason
to believe he personally would be pulled over and choked unconscious again. The
Supreme Court has used standing to throw out cases brought by environmentalists
and peace activists suing to stop drone attacks. But if you want to file suit
to make President Obama show his birth certificate, that will also be thrown
out.”
Standing became
a major issue in both the Proposition 8 and DoMA cases because the government
officials who would ordinarily defend the constitutionality of state and
federal laws — the governor, the President, and the attorneys general of the
U.S. and California — refused to do so. Instead Prop. 8 was defended by
attorneys representing the five people who organized the campaign to put it on
the ballot, and DoMA was represented by the so-called “Bipartisan Legal
Advisory Group” (BLAG), formed by the Republican majority in the House of
Representatives to defend the law. Isaacson said there’s already a Supreme
Court precedent, Arizonans for Better English, that initiative proponents do not have the right to defend their initiative against a
court challenge — but, he added, in the Prop. 8 hearings “the justices who are
always in favor of limiting standing — Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel
Alito — had no problem with the proponents having standing, and the others had
doubts.”
Isaacson also
discussed the possibility that the Supreme Court may “DIG” the Prop. 8 case.
“DIG” is short for “dismissed as improvidently granted,” which is basically the
Court deciding they made a mistake in agreeing to hear the case at all and
therefore they’re not going to rule on it one way or the other. Isaacson said
that the supposed “swing” justice, Anthony Kennedy, may seize on this as a way
to get rid of a case he doesn’t want to rule on either way. “He’s uncomfortable
ruling there’s a nationwide constitutional right to marriage equality,”
Isaacson explained, “but he’s also uncomfortable ruling the other way. … He
looks for trends, and wants to be right on the trends in both public opinion and the law.” On marriage equality,
which voters in state after state turned down until 2012, when the Queer
community won all four marriage votes on state ballots, Kennedy may simply want
the Court to wait until the trends in public opinion are more clear, Isaacson
suggested.
On the DoMA
case, Isaacson explained that there are two main sections to the law — Section
2, which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages legally
performed in other states or countries; and Section 3, which denies federal
benefits to legally married same-sex couples. Only Section 3 is at issue in the current case. “There
are a couple of standing questions in DoMA,” Isaacson explained. “The Obama
administration agrees that Section 3 is unconstitutional. Where is the
adversity between parties? If the government doesn’t have standing, does John
Boehner’s BLAG have standing? The Senate is not on board with them and
therefore they’re not the ‘legislative branch.’ The standing problem is so
severe the Court hired a Harvard law professor to argue there is no standing.”
If the Court throws out the DoMA case for lack of standing, Isaacson said, then
Edith Windsor — the Lesbian widow who filed the case to get back over $360,000
in federal estate taxes when her wife died because the federal government
didn’t recognize their Canadian marriage under DoMA — “gets her money
back, but you don’t get a ruling” on whether DoMA is constitutional.
Isaacson’s predictions?
“I think Section 3 of DoMA will be struck down, and I think they’ll avoid a
ruling on Prop. 8. But I will be surprised if Prop. 8 survives.” He pointed to
the marriage equality bill that had just passed the Rhode Island legislature —
and was signed into law by the state’s governor shortly after the meeting — as
one more piece of evidence that, regardless of how the Supreme Court handles
the current cases, the trend is towards marriage equality.
Lorena Gonzalez
introduced herself as a candidate for the 80th Assembly District
seat vacated by Ben Hueso, who just won a special election for the State Senate — replacing Juan
Vargas, who gave up his State Senate
seat to run for Congress last November after Bob Filner gave up his
Congressional seat to run for (and be elected) Mayor of San Diego. Though she’s
stepped down as San Diego-Imperial Counties Central Labor Council chair to run
for the Assembly, she made it clear that her personal priorities as a
legislator are going to be the same as they were as a labor leader. “I’m going
to wake up every day and think, ‘How can I help people get good jobs and have
better lives, including retirees and children?’ I want to go to Sacramento and
do real change. I think it’s time to send an organizer to Sacramento.”
After reviewing
her personal background — including working her way through Georgetown
University and Stanford Law School; serving as senior advisor to
then-Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante on environmental, labor and tribal
issues; and then being hired to run the local Labor Council — Gonzalez said,
“We pushed an agenda and permanently changed San Diego. We helped workers who
aren’t or can’t be in unions. We’ve reached out to communities, including the
LGBT [Queer] community and ethnic communities. Now it’s time to push an
economic agenda. When you secure hard-working people the ability to get by and
provide a better life for our generation, that’s important.”
Gonzalez didn’t
mention her principal opponent, former Chula Vista City Councilmember Steve
Castaneda, though she did joke that in an attempt to embarrass her politically U-T
San Diego, owned by anti-labor and
anti-Queer developer Doug Manchester, published her salary as head of the
Central Labor Council. Longtime club member Gerry Senda mentioned Castaneda and
said that, though he’s running as a Democrat now, he was registered as a
Republican until 2008. The club ultimately endorsed Gonzalez unanimously.
San Diego
Unified School District board member Kevin Beiser, the first openly Queer
person elected to that office, came by late in the meeting and thanked the club
for giving him the so-called “friendly incumbent” endorsement for his 2014
re-election bid. “It really meant a lot to me that my home club endorsed me,”
Beiser said. He then listed some of the district’s accomplishments, including
their environmental record: “We’ve banned styrofoam lunch trays, replaced
diesel power (for school buses) with biofuels, reduced energy use and passed a
resolution for safe nuclear power [i.e., to ask that the San Onofre reactors
remain closed until they are certified safe]. We’ve promoted locally grown
organic food in school cafeterias, and expanded school gardens.”
Beiser also
boasted of the district’s “historic anti-bullying policy,” the expansion of
anti-bullying programs from 20 schools to 80, and the district’s commitment to
show the movie Bully to all
seventh-grade students. He also pointed to progress on the bedrock issue for a
school board — are our children learning? “We’ve expanded teacher monitoring
and gone to standard district-wide and individual teacher observation forms so we know what learning looks
like,” Beiser said. “Just a few years ago we were named an Eli and Edythe Broad
finalist for academic achievement and closing the achievement gap for Black and
Hispanic students. Our literacy test scores are up 30 percent, science scores
are up 50 percent and we’ve made number one in the state in math. Our
graduation rates are 80 percent.”
One reason
Beiser was grateful for the club’s early endorsement was that he’s concerned
that he might be targeted by so-called “education reformers” who advocate a
more business-like approach to school governance. “I represent the most
conservative district in the city,” he warned. “There are some elements that
are furious that they’re being represented by a very progressive LGBT person.
We want to run strong and hard.” He said he escaped a big-bucks campaign
against him last time because opponents of his agenda didn’t think he had a
chance. “This time, I have a big bull’s-eye on my back.” He noted that New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “education reform” group already targeted a
similarly progressive school board member in Los Angeles, “and I’ve heard
whispers on the Republican side that they’re looking at my race.”
Ironically,
Beiser said he’s helped by the structure of the school board races, in which
candidates run in a district-only primary but the two top finishers run in a
citywide general election. When this system was in place for the San Diego City
Council, it made it excruciatingly difficult for progressives to win Council
seats, so a progressive coalition organized in the 1980’s and got the City
Council changed to district-only elections. But they left the school board
alone for fear religious-Right “stealth” candidates might be able to take over
the school board if they could run in district-only elections. “We want to
guard against being third in the primary,” Beiser explained. “When we go
outside the district, [the electorate] is much more Democratic.”
The meeting
began with a presentation from newly elected county party chair Francine Busby,
who began by lamenting the failure of legislation expanding background checks
for gun buyers to pass the U.S. Senate — “It’s terrible to think the National
Rifle Association is running this country,” she said — but then gave an upbeat
presentation about the present and future of the San Diego County Democratic
Party.
“We have the
first Democratic Mayor in San Diego in over 20 years, the first
Democratic-majority Congressional delegation, and the first openly Gay
Democratic County Supervisor — with five kids,” Busby said. “But you may not
know that 71 percent of our endorsed candidates won throughout the county. Our
candidates for the Vista city council and Poway school board came in first.
Solana Beach has five Democrats on the City Council, and in Encinitas we got
two Democrats and an allied decline-to-state [someone who isn’t registered with
a political party] and took over the majority on the city council in the city I
live in. We defeated Jerome Stokes, who was the head of SANDAG (the San Diego
Association of Governments), and replaced him with Bob Filner. In Escondido we
defeated a charter-city amendment and Olga Diaz is running for mayor.”
Busby paid
tribute to her predecessor, Jess Durfee — who served as the president of San
Diego Democrats for Equality before
his 8 ½-year tenure as party chair — for helping expand the party’s
grass-roots activity as well as its ability to fund its candidates’ campaigns.
In 2012, she boasted, “we had 1,000 GO Team volunteers reaching 100,000 voters
at their doors and making another 100,000 phone calls. This last election
season we had seven offices, from Fallbrook to Chula Vista to East County. We
sent out 375,000 copies of 16 geographically targeted slate mailers in multiple
languages. In 2004 the party had $9,000 to spend on candidates. For 2012 we had
$2.5 million. A month before the
election, the California Secretary of State brought on online voter
registration, and we picked up 20,000 new Democratic voters.” Today, she said,
Democrats outnumber Republicans by 85,000 to 90,000 in the city of San Diego,
and 22,000 countywide.
Among her
priorities for future progress are doing even more voter registration and
“increasing communications between our party’ elected officials. She also said
that a lot of “disaffected Republicans” are re-registering as Democrats because
“we are the ones who stand for equality,
justice, rights and opportunities for all.” She’s also hoping that younger
voters and voters of color — including Latinos, who represent 30 percent of San
Diego County’s population; and Asian-Americans, who are 11 percent — will
continue to favor the Democratic over the Republican Party. “The trends are
continuing in our favor,” Busby concluded, “and we’ll work hard to turn the
city and county of San Diego into a very progressive model.”
