Cover Story: Shame on us

On the morning of March 30, state House Speaker Terry Coleman, D-Eastman — the conservative, white-haired, 16-term lawmaker and the most powerful Democrat in the General Assembly — made an unusual appearance at Rep. Calvin Smyre’s morning Rules Committee meeting. Despite the surprise of the visit, there was no confusion over why Coleman was there: He’d come to pry the anti-gay marriage resolution from the committee.

Smyre, D-Columbus, a prominent black leader and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, had for weeks been more than content to keep the controversial resolution bottled up. But Coleman’s presence made it clear that Smyre would have to release the dreaded thing to the full House before the end of the 40-day session. The decision would come the following evening, on day 38.

The House had actually voted on the gay marriage ban before — a month earlier. That time, the resolution had fallen three votes shy of the requisite two-thirds majority needed to put the issue on the November ballot in the form of a constitutional amendment. (The GOP-heavy Senate had had no problem passing the vote on its first attempt, 40-14, on Feb. 16.)

This time around, things would be different in the House.

The lobbying following Coleman’s visit was intense. Whenever anyone bent on defeating the resolution — gay-rights lobbyists, for the most part — would corner a legislator, his or her cell phone would start ringing with calls from supporters of the gay-marriage ban — the Christian Coalition and its allies — pulling the lawmaker back to the flock.

Around 4:30 p.m. on March 31, the debate on the bill began. Roughly two hours later, four members of the Legislative Black Caucus — LaNett Stanley-Turner, D-Atlanta; Sharon Beasley-Teague, D-Red Oak; Randal Mangham, D-Decatur; and Carl Von Epps, D-LaGrange — broke ranks and voted for the ban. The first three had skipped the vote the first time around while Epps had voted against the ban.

That change was enough to get the resolution passed.

But don’t rush to blame the Not-So-Fab Four. They never would have gotten the chance to swing the vote if it weren’t for another foursome: Coleman, Smyre and the other Democratic leaders — Majority Leader Jimmy Skipper, D-Americus, and Speaker Pro Tem DuBose Porter, D-Dublin.

Yeah, yeah. There was some pressure on those House leaders from other rural Dems, who were scared they’d be run out of office come November for failing to give their constituents what they wanted: to have their say on gay marriage. But this sad saga isn’t a story of backroom deals and arm-twisting. It ain’t the well-orchestrated, intrigue-filled tale that former Gov. Roy Barnes engineered in 2001 to change the state flag.

During the session, the Fearful Foursome’s problem was that they lacked the ability to conduct so much as a fifth-grade chorus. They never had a game plan to deal with issues thrown at them by Republicans. Everything from the agenda to the schedule was largely dictated by the minority GOP.

“Believe me, it was pushed and pushed that we develop a strategy to deal with it, but it was ignored,” says a prominent House staffer, who spoke to Creative Loafing on condition of anonymity.

“There’s not a decision-making process around here that works,” says a high-ranking representative. “Everything’s fluid and it changes based on the last person [Coleman] talks to” — usually Skipper, his closest ally and a fellow Republican in Democrat’s clothes. “The honeymoon has long since ended with this caucus leadership.”

If the party loses seats and its majority in November — which is a distinct possibility given that the gay-marriage referendum will push conservatives to the polls in droves — the Dems will have Coleman and Co. to thank.

Coleman and Skipper were the two lawmakers grinding the organ for much of the legislative monkey business this session: anti-consumer tort reform bills, legislation that prevents counties and cities from passing living wage laws, and the sacking of liberal Judicial Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Bordeaux, D-Savannah. Gay marriage was just the topper.

Porter, who comes across as the most neutral character of the four Democratic honchos, made it clear he didn’t care whether the ban made it out of Smyre’s Rules Committee, but that he would vote for it if it did. That’s bad, because he’s one of the few lawmakers whom progressives counted on to stay on their side — or at least to act as a moderate bridge between them and Coleman and Skipper.

Smyre, on the other hand, did oppose the resolution. But he lacked the will to stop the downstate conservative Democrats hell-bent on its passage.

According to a number of longtime Capitol players, the strength of former House Speaker Tom Murphy of Bremen was his uncanny ability to find compromises to caucus-splitting issues that might have severed the group along rural/urban, white/black fault lines — just where it’s cracking now.

Those days are gone.

Coleman and his brain trust have managed to alienate the majority of the Democratic Caucus while at the same time fostering an “anything goes” atmosphere under the Gold Dome. Members of the party, including powerful Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Buck, D-Columbus, talked openly about becoming Republicans. Other House leaders, like Rep. Mike Snow, D-Chickamauga, attended a Republican fundraiser in January to have their pictures made with President Bush.

“[Murphy] would have cut those people off at their knees as quickly as he could get to a phone,” Rep. Bob Holmes, D-Atlanta, says.

Sure, four members of the House black caucus caught most of the flak for tipping the vote in favor of the ban, and they deserve the derision, as do legislators who promised they’d “take a walk” on the vote but voted “yea,” anyway.

Not to completely excuse their actions, but for many lawmakers, the gay marriage ban was a tough political call. For instance, the black caucus’s deserters could have bucked the influential ministers back home and voted against the discriminatory ban — or taken the easy road, riding on prevalent anti-gay feelings in the black community. None of the four black legislators who tipped the scales returned calls requesting comment.

But lawmakers in right-leaning districts, such as Rep. Jim Stokes, D-Covington, make it clear how important a little leadership from the top might have been to give wavering legislators some backbone. Stokes’ story, even though he’s a white moderate, helps explain the four swing voters’ actions.

A day after the vote, Stokes’ body language was all hangdog guilt, slumped shoulders, sighs and head-wagging. Stokes, according to lobbyists who worked the gay-marriage issue, had promised to sit out the vote. The legislator himself says the resolution is full of legal problems that will make it a target for judicial defeat, and Georgia law, which already defines marriage as a bond between a man and a woman, is clear enough. What’s more, he knows the issue is a no-win scenario for Democrats.

“I still believe that the people behind the amendment ... want this kind of issue on the ballot to drive [GOP] turnout,” Stokes says.

But in the end, polling in his district showed more than 80 percent of his constituents favored the gay-marriage ban. Stokes represents parts of Newton and Walton counties. Between the two, they have one Democratic county commissioner, and he’s a black representative in a majority black district.

Stokes felt he couldn’t ignore numbers like that and hope to get re-elected, even if the issue will turn out more conservatives.

“I had these conversations with constituents,” he says. The legal explanation of the ban’s shortfalls “seemed to be an explanation that people just didn’t buy.”

But even Stokes has it better than Snow. Snow’s new district is just 42 percent Democratic. Snow says although he opposes gay marriage, he didn’t want to vote on the ban because he knows what it will do for turnout in November. But he figured a “yea” vote was his only hope for political survival.

“I’m one ... who doesn’t like to change the state or the federal Constitution,” Snow said the day after the vote. “But there’s a lot of fundamentalist Christian people who live in my district. If I hadn’t voted for that thing yesterday, my political career would have ended yesterday. It might end, anyway.”

If Snow and other rural Georgia Democrats lose their seats in November, they’ll have Coleman — and his March 30 visit to Smyre’s Rules Committee — to blame.

“It was a foolish move. Aside from principle, just the pure politics of having that thing on the ballot is going to be very similar to having the Confederate flag on the ballot,” says the senior House staffer. “They’re only thinking about their own seats. They have developed this mindset that if they keep acquiescing and backing down and adhering to the demands of the right wing, it’ll somehow go away. But, in fact, it only gets worse.”

Indeed, even after Coleman got the chamber to take a vote on gay marriage, Christian conservatives ran anti-abortion ads against him back home in Eastman, the staffer says.

After the sellout on gay rights, it seems extremely unlikely that Coleman, Skipper, Smyre and Porter will be re-elected to their leadership positions — if it’s Democrats they expect to count on, anyway. After empowering anti-gay-marriage-hungry Republicans, the four likely have sealed their undoing by pissing off the majority of Democrats.

“There are certainly people who will never again vote for the slate that’s in there now,” says the Democratic representative. “I know that.”

Most importantly, the four will be the folks gays can pat on the back for adding discrimination to the state’s constitution in November. (The gay-marriage ban is expected to pass easily.) And they’ll surely be the ones ultimately responsible for any violence that comes from the decision to send the measure to voters. A number of activists already worry about gay bashing that could occur as people from both sides of the issue gear up to fight the proposed amendment.

The blood will be on their hands.

kevin.griffis@creativeloafing.com