The winning ticket - Margo Frasier, gay sheriff of Travis County, Texas

A newly elected lesbian sheriff in Texas proves that sexual orientation was not a big issue for all gay candidates in 1996

Margo Frasier wasn't hiding anything when she ran for sheriff of Travis County, Tex. Her history as a lesbian activist in Austin, Tex., was well-known, at least to other gays and lesbians in her hometown. But others in Austin may not have known about Frasier's sexual orientation on November 5, when they made her the top law officer in Travis County. Some may have known her simply as a lawyer who had represented law enforcement agencies around Texas, a captain in the sheriff's office, and a jailer.

For the most part Frasier successfully managed what the public knew about her. Frasier and her opponent, Alvin Shaw, agreed to keep their private lives off-limits while on the campaign trail. She met with a prominent religious conservative leader and got the local minister's pledge to keep quiet. She decided against seeking help from the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based group that endorses and gathers contributions for gay candidates.

Even Austin's media, which pointed out that Frasier would become Austin's first female sheriff or that Shaw would become its first African-American one, made no mention of her sexual orientation. I think a casual reference in no particular context is irresponsible," says Richard Oppel, editor of the Austin American-Statesman. "It would be like raising a red flag and saying, 'Hey, she's a lesbian - line up and vote against her.' And I'm not going to do that." The only place the word lesbian got used was on radio talk shows, but even then the topic fizzled.

"Sexual orientation should not be an issue," says Frasier, clearly comfortable now in the wake of her win talking about the intersection of her public and private lives. "It shouldn't be used to say, 'You ought to vote for me,' and it shouldn't be used by the opposition to say. 'You shouldn't vote for her?'"

Frasier's creed is echoed by virtually every other gay and lesbian candidate who runs for office. "Candidates don't want to be known as the 'gay candidate.' They want to be known as the candidate who happens to be gay," says Bob Meadow, a Washington, D.C., political pollster who has done work for a number of gay candidates. "They're running on their merits instead of making a symbolic stand." The distinction is important, according to Meadow, because the fact that a candidate is gay will always cost that person three to four percentage points on Election Day.

With each election the number of openly gay and lesbian candidates grows, as does the number of gays and lesbians actually elected. Prior to the 1996 elections, the nation had 115 gays and lesbians serving openly in elected office, says the Victory Fund. Now the number has increased, and in 1997 there will be 127 openly gay and lesbian elected officials.

But drawing national conclusions about gay politicians or identifying overall trends from these results is difficult. The old adage that all politics are local is especially true when it comes to gay candidates playing in mainstream politics. After all, Frasier ran in Austin - one of the most liberal cities in a conservative state and one that already has elected a gay person to public office, state representative Glen Maxey. If Frasier had been running for office in, say, the Texas Panhandle city of Amarillo, it's doubtful that her attempt to keep her sexual orientation quiet would have succeeded.

Paul Barby encountered that difficulty himself in Oklahoma. A well-known figure in state education and oil issues, Barby ran as a Democrat for Oklahoma's sixth congressional seat against incumbent representative Frank D. Lucas. To avoid any surprises, Barby outed himself, but from then on Barby couldn't shake the classification.

"Gay was the major issue in my race. But it was not my agenda," Barby says. It seemed that whenever newspapers wrote about his race, the reports mentioned that he's gay. Even though Democratic Party leaders were firmly behind him, elected officials from the party didn't do much to help - "They were scared to death," Barby says. On Election Day, Barby captured 37% of the vote, a better showing than Lucas's 1994 opponent made but still a long way from victory.

Several other losing gay candidates - whose sexual orientation, like Barby's, had been well publicized - refused to blame the disclosure for their losses. Randy Kottwitz, for example, had gained a reputation as a leader in the effort to oust the antigay majority of the school board in Merrimack, N.H. This year he ran for the state house, but he and the other seven Democrats competing in his region lost to the eight Republicans running. "In many ways it's a victory," Kottwitz says, noting that his sexual orientation didn't become an issue and that he placed fourth in vote totals among the group of Democrats.

David Curtis, a candidate for the Vermont senate, came out to voters in his district not only as a gay man but also as a person with AIDS. Curtis went public with his health status because a significant part of his platform involved health care reform. Even though Curtis lost he was pleased with his showing - with six seats up for grabs, he came in eighth out of a field of 12. Plus, voters statewide elected Ed Flanagan, an openly gay man, to be Vermont state auditor, so Curtis is confident that his defeat was not due to antigay bias.

Perhaps the most prominent gay candidate who was not an incumbent in 1996 was Rick Zbur, a Democrat from Long Beach, Calif., who ran for U.S. Congress. Zbur lost to Rep. Steve Horn, a Republican who has been supportive of gay rights. While Zbur encountered some antigay campaigning - pollsters called voters in the district to remind them that Zbur is gay, and conservative activists went to supermarkets to pass out fliers making the same point - he attributes his loss to low voter turnout and Horn's success in appearing moderate.

Still, Zbur acknowledges that he worried at times about voters' viewing him as a single-issue candidate because of his sexual orientation. Therefore, he let the attacks against him go unanswered. "The last thing you want as an openly gay candidate is to have the dialogue in the campaign be whether or not homophobic activities are occurring," Zbur says, explaining that it obscures the message the candidate is trying to send. But, he adds, "it takes a lot of restraint."

In Nevada, David Parks survived a last-minute barrage of negative mail to become the first openly gay member of the state assembly. The mailings included a news clipping about a 10-year-old boy accused of raping two younger boys that was positioned adjacent to a reprint of an endorsement of Parks by a gay newspaper. The upside to this incident was the reaction it provoked from Gov. Bob Miller, who, like Parks, is a Democrat. "It makes my stomach turn to think that somebody would campaign on the basis of discrimination and the basis of suggesting that his or her opponent's lifestyle de facto makes them criminal," Miller told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Even though she ran unopposed for her seat in the Montana house, Democrat Diane Sands agrees with other openly gay candidates who say that sometimes there's no escaping their public personae as gay people. "The Christian Coalition once named me and my 'evil agenda' as the reason they formed in Montana," says Sands. Sands is well-known in Missoula, her hometown, and Helena, the state capital, as an activist for women's and children's issues. She also was a founder of Pride! the state's gay and lesbian civil rights organization. Being gay or lesbian "is an issue, and in that sense it has to be managed, and you have to think through how to present yourself," says Sands.

One similarity in the races of Sands, Parks, Curtis, and Kottwitz is that all their bids received support from the Victory Fund, which first started its endorsement program in 1990 when it backed a handful of candidates. In November the Victory Fund backed 32 gay and lesbian candidates and saw 22 of its candidates win. The Victory Fund does not endorse every gay candidate who walks in the door, however. Officials look at the candidate's credentials, campaign capabilities, and chance of success before offering their blessing.

Frasier, however, stayed away. "I guess I didn't see why the Victory Fund should care who is sheriff of Travis County," she says. Barby wanted help not only from the Victory Fund but also from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's biggest gay fights lobby, but didn't get it from either group. During the Democratic convention in Chicago, for example, HRC officials did their best to highlight Zbur's candidacy but did little to promote Barby. "We're in the battleground here in Oklahoma," Barby says. "If there ever was a place to take a stand, it's here."

The Victory Fund generally maintains a policy about not commenting on races in which it does not offer an endorsement. But Kathleen DeBold, the group's deputy director, says of candidates like Frasier: "There are 511,000 elective offices in this country. One strategy isn't going to work with all of them." DeBold suggests as well that some candidates may worry about affiliating themselves with any political action committee. "When you take PAC money, you could open yourself up for attack," she says.

But gay candidates sometimes have more to worry about than just their opponents' trying to define them as single-issue politicians. The flip side to the problem is when ordinary gay Americans or representatives of gay fights organizations - especially those that operate nationally or outside the candidate's district-look to the candidate as a spokesperson for their issues.

"The gay community is going to be sorely disappointed if that's where they're looking for the leadership to come from," says Meadow. Pushing a gay candidate or elected official to take the lead on gay rights issues could backfire because "it helps to marginalize gay and lesbian public officials who need not be marginalized," Meadow says.

But while gay and lesbian politicians say their first priority is to watch out for the needs of their own varied constituencies - from fixing potholes to pushing for tax breaks - they also acknowledge that they have a special responsibility to gay America. Frasier, for one, says it would be naive for her to think that people won't see her as a role model. And she does want gay and lesbian youth to see an important message in her victory: "Don't ever let anybody tell you what your limits are. Don't let anybody steal your dreams."

COPYRIGHT 1997 Liberation Publications, Inc.
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