–> Just 10 days ago, California seemed on the verge of electing its first Chinese-American senator, Republican State Treasurer Matt Fong. But as one of the most-watched races in the country enters its final week, the momentum has swung back to incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer, at least for now.
After several polls gave Fong a slight lead over the incumbent, the most recent surveys indicate Boxer leads Fong by five points, in part because of hard-hitting TV ads charging that Fong would weaken abortion rights and block tough HMO reform — ads that have gone largely unanswered by Fong. The Republican challenger has also been hurt by the revelation that he contributed $50,000 in leftover funds from his 1994 state treasurer campaign to Rev. Louis Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian-right lobbying group, which could threaten Fong’s moderate image with voters. And the congressional impeachment mess, which was expected to help Republicans, might actually be hurting them with voters.
The campaign is expected to be tight through its closing days, though, as Fong begins to combat Boxer’s media barrage with one of his own. The likely photo finish has put a spotlight on one group of voters who have the power to make or break Matt Fong: California’s Asian-Americans. Although they’re 12 percent of the state’s population, they are only six percent of the California electorate, and they’ve been neglected politically because they tend not to go to the polls. In San Francisco, for instance, where Asian-Americans are 34 percent of the population, they are only 16 percent of the city’s registered voters.
But Fong’s candidacy has energized California Asian-Americans, particularly Chinese-Americans. Their sentiments have gone undetected in the major statewide polls. Unbelievably, the last Los Angeles Times poll measured white, Latino and African-American voters’ preference, but not Asians’, calling them “statistically insignificant” and citing language difficulties in accurately polling Asian voters. They’re significant enough, however, to be getting attention from both candidates in the race. And Fong could get help from an unlikely source — Asian-American Democrats, who are torn between their support for many of Boxer’s political stands and their desire to see their community taken more seriously by both political parties.
Many Asian-American Democrats still resent their party for abandoning Asian-American fund-raisers accused of soliciting illegal foreign contributions in the 1996 presidential campaign. The party then intensified the insult by investigating the citizenship status of Asian-surnamed donors, the vast majority of whom were U.S. citizens. The Boxer campaign’s financial-solicitation materials, several Asian-American Democrats noted bitterly, spell out she is accepting donations only from American citizens, leaving out legal permanent residents, who are eligible to contribute.
One longtime party activist, who asked not to be identified, said the fund-raising scandal showed “how vulnerable we were. Our entire community felt chastised by the party … Some traditional Chinese-American Democrats are now saying, ‘It’s time for one of us Chinese-Americans to get a high national political office, and if we have to sacrifice ideology and issues, so be it.’”
That’s the position of San Francisco attorney Bruce Quan Jr., a longtime Democrat who is supporting Fong. “Matt Fong is from my community,” Quan says. “Barbara Boxer has not been there for us. Boxer can’t point to any leadership on issues like immigration or anti-Asian violence. She hasn’t nominated Chinese-Americans for federal offices.” Quan sees today’s Democratic Party as “the party of black and white, not of brown and yellow.”
Rose Tsai is another Chinese-American Democrat supporting Fong. Tsai, who says she is a “lifelong Democrat,” is a candidate for San Francisco supervisor this November. “Matt Fong holds many of the values of the Chinese-American community — fiscally conservative, concerned with education. His candidacy is historic, an inspiration to the younger generation. We see Matt Fong as one of our own. When we call him, he returns our calls. What has Barbara Boxer done for us? We are sick and tired of being ignored. We will be loyal to the [Democratic] Party when it is loyal to us.”
Quan and Tsai may have a lot of company, according to June-primary exit polls. An exit poll conducted by political consultant Tom Hsieh Jr. in liberal San Francisco found that 74 percent of Chinese-American voters supported Republican Fong in the state’s open primary, while 81 percent of them chose a Democrat in the race for governor. In Los Angeles, an exit poll conducted by Vision 21, a nonpartisan Chinese-American political group, found that 83.7 percent of Chinese-Americans voted for Fong — including two-thirds of Chinese-American Democrats.
“Matt Fong will probably get some crossover votes from Asian-American Democrats,” concedes Rose Kapolczynski, Boxer’s campaign manager. “But Barbara will get some support from Republican women” who disagree with Fong’s support for more restrictions on abortion. She said the campaign has formed an “Asian-Americans for Boxer” group. “We’re working hard to reach Asian-Americans,” Kapolczynski says, touting Boxer’s record of Asian-American federal judicial nominations and support of other issues of interest to Asian-Americans such as Japanese-American reparations, Filipino-American veterans’ benefits and family reunification provisions of immigration laws.
Alicia Wang, vice chair of the California Democratic Party, says, “Matt Fong is the first major Chinese-American candidate for the U.S. Senate from California, so it is perfectly understandable that people in the Chinese-American community will feel pride in his candidacy. But that doesn’t mean we should not apply the same standards we apply to other candidates. What is his track record on issues that matter to me, like affirmative action, immigration, education? Barbara Boxer has been there for us on those issues.” Wang notes that Fong supported Propositions 209 and 227, the California initiatives that abolished affirmative action and bilingual education programs, respectively.
Asian-Americans make up almost 4 percent of the nation’s population — up sharply from less than 1 percent 30 years ago — and about 40 percent of the nation’s 10 million residents of Asian descent live in California. Their voter turnout is the lowest of any major racial group in the nation.
California’s Asian-American voters are a hard group to characterize politically. Like Fong, they supported Prop. 227, which abolished bilingual education, and which most Democrats opposed. But they opposed Republican-backed Prop. 209, which did away with affirmative action. According to the Field Poll, the state’s leading public-opinion survey firm, California Asian-Americans are 45 percent Democratic, 35 percent Republican and 20 percent independent or “other.”
According to the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, San Francisco’s Asian-American voters are 43 percent Democratic, 20 percent Republican and 37 percent independent, other or “decline to state.” In Monterey Park, just east of Los Angeles, known as “the first suburban Chinatown,” Chinese-American voters are virtually evenly split among Democrats, Republicans and independents, according to Don Nakanishi, director of the University of California-Los Angeles Asian American Studies Center.
Some analysts expect the Asian-American vote to get more conservative. As the number of Koreans and Vietnamese rises — two groups that tend to vote Republican — the proportion of traditionally Democratic Japanese and Filipino Americans is going down. The Fong-Boxer race is expected to break down the same way, with Koreans and Vietnamese-Americans going for Fong, Japanese- and Filipino-Americans going for Boxer, and Chinese-Americans — the largest single Asian ethnic group — supporting Fong.
On balance, California’s Asian-American voters tend to line up right in between whites and Latinos politically, and are usually much closer to white Californians than to black Californians, according to Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.
Until recently the affable Fong has made it easy for moderates of every ethnicity to support him. The son of California’s longtime Democratic secretary of state, March Fong Eu, he comes across as a bland but likable middle-of-the-roader, not the right-wing conservative that Boxer has said he is. During the campaign, in debates and on the stump, Fong has presented himself as a moderate on issues such as the environment and abortion rights. He has cultivated ties to the business community and avoided the right-wing appeals on abortion, crime and gay rights that have seemed to hurt conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Lungren, who is trailing Gray Davis in recent polls.
He benefits from the contrast with Boxer, who stands solidly on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and alienates many moderates with a strident image. “Matt Fong is a moderate, not a flaming right-winger,” stresses Democrat Quan. “We have no extreme philosophical differences.”
That’s why Fong’s $50,000 contribution to the right-wing Traditional Values Coalition could damage him with Asian-American Democrats and others considering a crossover vote. It might not sway Asian-Americans who are emotionally invested in his candidacy for ethnic-pride reasons — just as Republican women crossed over to Boxer in 1992 despite ideological reservations. It will likely hurt him most with moderate female supporters who believe in abortion rights.
And Fong may also suffer from an unexpected impeachment backlash. In a September Los Angeles Times poll, 14 percent of registered voters said the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal made them more likely to vote, and two-thirds of those voters were going for Fong. But in the Times poll released last week, 26 percent of voters said they were driven by the scandal, and half of them went for Boxer, 44 percent for Fong.
Whatever the result, Fong’s candidacy is inspiring activism among Asian-Americans, and especially Chinese-Americans. “Both parties give our community a lot of lip service,” observed political consultant Hsieh. “In reality, neither party has done a very good job of courting our vote … Our voting community has a way to go for full maturity. We are beginning to show the first signs of adolescence. We are starting to come out to vote.”
Adam Hanft dissects and deconstructs political advertising at Spin Season, where this originally appeared
Somebody’s been spending some time researching Google images and the bleak 1930s iconography of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans.
Carly Fiorina’s new attack on Barbara Boxer goes for the depression jugular, with a stark series of graphic, high-contrast black-and-white shots that paint a eschatological picture of California. One photograph, depicting the liquidation of a retail store, could have been lifted from a Walker Evans retrospective at the San Francisco MOMA
Check out that opening scene. Grim-faced farmers standing on a barren field, a Grapes of Wrathian image if ever there was one. During this, the equally ominous announcer intones:
“After 28 long years of Washington partisanship, this is Barbara Boxer’s California. Trillions in reckless wasteful spending. Destroying small business. Killing jobs. Crushing hopes.”
It’s a calculated effort to move people by activating the neural circuits that exist in their brains. We all have imprints of the calamity of the Great Depression, and this spot seeks to summon them up and pin them on Boxer. As Drew Westen, who wrote “The Political Brain” puts it:
“Electoral success is about shaping and activating voters’ networks of association — bundles of thoughts, feelings, sounds, and images that become linked in the brain. Political campaigns are about activating and shaping networks through stories and images.”
Will the spot succeed? For it to work, there needs to be an existing network of imprints about Boxer that can be stimulated by the imagery we’re seeing. You need to connect with a fundamental impression to be able to amplify and harness it. I don’t think that’s the case here.
Yes, Boxer is seen as a dogmatic liberal, a big spender, and somewhat self-righteous. But the commercial pushes too far past the boundaries of Boxer’s perceptual map. Voters just won’t emotionally accept the argument that the economic wreckage they see around them is “Barbara Boxer’s California.” They recognize, on some equally deep level, that the responsibility for California’s condition is spread wide. The exaggeration doesn’t fit the crime.
By contrast, Boxer’s new spot is positively chirpy, with upbeat music and a string of her accomplishments, from veteran’s benefits to after-school centers to “fighting for new jobs.”
But the commercial is a dud. Just as Fiorina overstates Boxer’s culpability, this spot feels blithely detached from the immediate and profound crisis California is facing. What Senator couldn’t dredge up and string together a few one-off accomplishments after decades in the Senate?
Boxer’s previous spot, vilifying Fiorina for layoffs and shipping jobs offshore when she ran HP, were negative but far more effective, because they tapped into another set of neural circuits – that Fiorina is cold and calculating.
So as far as this round of spots goes, it’s Fiorina’s landscape of destruction versus Boxer’s landscape of denial. Boxer is slightly ahead in the polls, and Fiorina’s shout-out to John Steinbeck might actually widen the gap.
Creating the universal premonition of Democratic doom is always among the most useful elements of Republican strategy. A broad feeling of foreboding demoralizes the party base, repels independent voters who prefer the winning side, and strikes emotional chords that are at least as important in electoral behavior as ideologies and issues. So Republican leaders and pundits regularly issue outlandish predictions of crushing victory, echoed across the media spectrum until they become self-fulfilling.
This year’s real conditions for Democrats are certainly threatening, but there are indications that the impending repudiation will not be as devastating as suggested by the current narrative. Whatever ultimately happens in the House, where a Republican takeover appears likely if not inevitable, the Senate will probably remain under Democratic control — despite enormous spending by “independent” groups such as the Club for Growth, the voice of Wall Street conservatives; American Crossroads, the Karl Rove outfit; and the Chamber of Commerce.
At least that is the view of Scott Rasmussen, the pollster whose survey techniques and conservative predilections have often provoked suspicions of Republican bias in his results. As of last Friday, Rasmussen’s latest “Midterm Election Update” said that “a Republican takeover of the Senate appears unlikely,” with Democrats predicted to hold at least 51 seats, Republicans at least 45, and four races (in Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin and Illinois) rated as tossups. Today Rasmussen marginally revised that estimate by moving West Virginia into the “Toss-up” column when a new poll showed popular Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin slightly behind Republican businessman John Raese in the Senate race.
Meanwhile the revision of Republican expectations of glory is fully underway in California, where Sen. Barbara Boxer was once among the GOP’s prime targets. Now the incumbent Democrat is starting to pull ahead of Republican Carly Fiorina, despite a wave of negative ads bought by the Chamber of Commerce and other third-party opponents. (Last week Rasmussen revised its assessment of the race from Toss-Up to Lean Dem.) Even more notable is the surge of Attorney General Jerry Brown, the Democrat running for governor against former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, billionaire darling of the Republican right, whose record campaign expenditure of $120 million (and climbing) is expected to be four or five times more than that of her opponent. That massive spending imbalance, with thousands of anti-Brown commercials flooding the state’s airwaves on her behalf, has itself become a symbol of Whitman’s distance from ordinary citizens.
Other signs of life on the Democratic horizon include the surprising polls showing that Kentucky Democratic Senate nominee Jack Conway is roughly tied with Republican Rand Paul, the Tea Party’s favorite loony until the advent of Christine O’Donnell. If Conway had enough money to match the third-party expenditures on Paul’s behalf, he might even have a chance to win.
Democrats elsewhere could learn from the examples of Brown and Boxer — and even Conway — who haven’t hesitated to strike back hard or behave like winners. What those races show is that monetary advantage need not always determine outcomes. If Democrats stop ducking and cowering — and offer an aggressive “closing argument” — they may still escape the worst possible debacle in November.
In the turbulent year of the tea party, Republican Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware set out to jangle no nerves as he ran for a Senate seat long held by Vice President Joseph Biden. It’s the way Republican strategists originally envisioned 2010, a roster of seasoned politicians pointing the party toward significant gains in the Senate.
“He brings our style of civility and independence to Washington and works to develop solutions,” is the soothing, even quaint message on the 71-year-old lawmaker’s campaign website, which shows him in a suit and tie, working alone at his desk. Experience “is hugely important,” he said in an interview.
After two terms as governor and nine as the state’s lone congressman, Castle appears better positioned than other veterans who faced a tea party-backed challenge this year. If he prevails over Christine O’Donnell on Sept. 14 — he and GOP officials have launched a fierce counterattack — he would join more than a half-dozen other veteran Republican officeholders on the ballot in Senate races.
In matters of style as well as policy and political experience, they are the polar opposite of Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sharron Angle of Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado. Those three tapped into an anti-government sentiment, espouse politically risky positions, won primaries over establishment candidates, and now face difficult races in the fall.
No matter the blend of candidates that Republicans end up with, a persistently weak economy and voter anger add up to enough competitive races to give them at least an outside chance of winning Senate control. Already, a constellation of outside groups is spending heavily on television in Senate races, including more than $5 million this summer for two groups backed by former George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove.
Republicans need to capture 10 seats to win a majority, and as many as a dozen held by Democrats appear competitive, as well as at least five currently in the hands of the GOP.
Ironically, as the primary season draws to a close and the fall campaign dawns, both parties try to straddle politically inconvenient facts that underscore broader trends.
Democrats are loath to concede their majority is at risk. “I don’t think there are” enough competitive races for that to happen, said Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, head of the party’s Senate campaign committee. Yet the party’s strategists issue a stream of statements saying that many tea party-backed challengers in tight contests are “too extreme” and will cost the GOP its chance of gaining control.
The committee is making a quick check to see whether it has a late, low-budget opportunity in strongly Republican Alaska, where tea party-backed challenger Joe Miller defeated GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in a recent primary.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other lawmakers in his party tried repeatedly to defeat tea party-supported challengers in Kentucky, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and elsewhere in recent months, privately expressing fears they would prove unelectable.
Now, after compiling a mixed record in the primaries, the campaign chairman, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, says the fall is “an opportunity for Republicans, independents libertarians and disgruntled Democrats to come together around a fiscal responsibility message and one that says the government can’t grow itself out of this problem.”
There was never any doubt that GOP strategists wanted Castle on the ballot. Arguably the most moderate Republican in the House, he also was viewed as the only contender with a chance to win the seat at a time when Beau Biden, the state attorney general and son of the vice president, seemed likely to run.
When the younger Biden opted not to run, enter Chris Coons, a lawyer now in his second term as executive of the largest of the state’s three counties.
Other veteran Republicans on Senate ballots this fall include Rep. John Boozman of Arkansas, whom party officials say needed some coaxing to run. Now he leads Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln by significant margins in public and private polls.
Already, Democrats have tacitly written off a seat in North Dakota, where former GOP Gov. John Hoeven, initially a reluctant candidate, is favored to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan.
Former GOP Sen. Dan Coats is ahead in the polls as he tries to win back an Indiana seat he voluntarily gave up a dozen years ago.
Next door in Illinois, Republican Rep. Mark Kirk is in a tougher race with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias for the seat President Barack Obama once held. Kirk, too, was courted heavily by Cornyn and others.
Republican veterans also are on the ballot in important Midwestern races where GOP senators are retiring. In Ohio, former Rep. Rob Portman, who served in two Cabinet-level positions in the Bush administration, polls ahead of Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher and had a multimillion-dollar cash-on-hand advantage in the most recent fundraising report.
Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt, a former member of the House Republican leadership, is in a competitive contest with Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan for an open seat in GOP hands.
In other races that are tight heading into the fall campaign, the political pedigree of the Republican is mixed.
In Florida, former House Speaker Marco Rubio is a rarity, a tea party favorite who is also an accomplished politician. The three-way race with Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek and Gov. Charlie Crist, a former Republican running as an independent, is one of the most unpredictable in the country.
In Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, a former congressman and ex-head of the conservative Club for Growth, is running against Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak. Sestak defeated Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary.
Republicans got the recruit they wanted in Washington state this summer, and Dino Rossi is challenging Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.
In Wisconsin, California and Connecticut, where veteran Democrats are on the ballot, it’s the size of a candidate’s checkbook as much as ideology that mattered keenly to Republican recruiters.
Millionaire Ron Johnson, a political novice, is challenging Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. In Connecticut, where Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd is retiring, Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, spent millions of her own money to win the primary and has pledged to spend millions more against Democratic Attorney General Dick Blumenthal.
In California, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is challenging three-term Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in the costliest campaign state in the country.
In a difficult environment, Democrats also cite opportunities to pick up a seat.
High on the list is Missouri, followed by Kentucky, where Attorney General Jack Conway is running against Paul, and the complicated three-way Florida election. In Louisiana, Democratic Rep. Charlie Melancon is challenging Republican Sen. David Vitter.
Their claims have been more muted about the Delaware race, although the vice president is expected to make at least two more appearances in the state this fall.
Coons says he successfully restored his county to financial health and is ready to do the same for the federal government.
Treading carefully, at least for now, he says Castle is a “decent and likable man” but one who votes more and more like a conservative Republican while Delaware grows increasingly Democratic.
“He has lost or forgotten the courage to stand up to the increasingly conservative bent of his party,” Coons says, pointing to the congressman’s votes against the Obama administration’s economic stimulus legislation of 2009 as well as the landmark health care bill.
On the other hand, as an outsider, Coons complains that Castle voted for the financial bailout of 2008, adding it lacked accountability.
Castle’s rebuttal skips past any political implications of his votes in Congress.
The stimulus did little beyond creating temporary construction jobs, he says in an interview, and the administration lowballed the cost estimates for the health care bill. “Most of the banking (bailout) money has been repaid with interest.”
A Republican in a Democratic state, and a longtime moderate in a conservative party under pressure from the tea party movement, Castle talks of government and civility, not politics.
“Once we are elected I think we have a responsibility to sit down and work out our differences,” he said.
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Online:
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: http://www.dscc.org/
National Republican Senatorial Committee: http://www.nrsc.org/
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who twice vetoed legislation that would have legalized same-sex marriage, has surprised gay rights supporters by urging a federal judge to allow gay couples to resume marrying in the state without further delay.
Lawyers for Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Jerry Brown, two gay couples and the city of San Francisco all filed legal motions Friday asking Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker to implement his ruling striking California’s voter-approved same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional.
“The Administration believes the public interest is best served by permitting the court’s judgment to go into effect, thereby restoring the right of same-sex couples to marry in California,” the Republican governor’s lawyers said on his behalf. “Doing so is consistent with California’s long history of treating all people and their relationships with equal dignity and respect.”
In his 136-page decision overturning Proposition 8 Wednesday, Walker said he was ordering the state to cease enforcing the 22-month-old ban. But he agreed to suspend the order until he could review the briefs submitted Friday.
The measure’s sponsors have asked the judge to keep the ban in effect until their appeal of Walker’s ruling invalidating Proposition 8 is decided by higher courts.
They argued in court papers filed earlier this week that resuming gay marriage now would cause legal chaos if the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or U.S. Supreme Court eventually reverse Walker’s ruling.
It was unclear when the judge would decide whether to grant a stay that would prevent marriage licenses from being issued to gay couples during the appeals process.
If he does clear the way for same-sex couples to wed, lawyers for sponsors of Proposition 8 said Friday they would seek an emergency order from the 9th Circuit to prevent that from happening.
The governor and attorney general almost always defend state laws when they are challenged, regardless of their personal views. But in this case, both Schwarzenegger and Brown refused to participate in fighting the lawsuit aimed at overturning the ban, even though they both were named as defendants.
That left the job of defending Proposition 8 to its backers, a coalition of religious and conservative groups known as Protect Marriage.
Although Schwarzenegger opposed the ban when it appeared on the November 2008 ballot and said after the election that it he hoped a court would overturn it, he officially took a neutral position in the lawsuit.
During the year it was in Walker’s courtroom, the judge several times pointedly asked the governor’s lawyer he was interested in knowing Schwarzenegger’s position on the case. His Friday motion was his boldest pronouncement on the issue.
“His support today and at other critical junctures in our struggle against this discriminatory measure goes a long way in helping us realize our ultimate dream of achieving full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Californians,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, the state’s largest gay rights group.
In 2005, Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill approved by the Legislature that would have legalized same-sex marriage. At the time, California had a law passed by voters in 2000 limiting marriage to a man and a woman. The governor said in his veto message he thought it was wrong for lawmakers to overturn a popular vote. He took the same position when the Legislature passed a second gay marriage bill two years later.
In May 2008, the California Supreme Court overturned the 2000 law and same-sex couples were allowed to wed. But Proposition 8 overrode the court’s decision by amending the state Constitution.
Brown, the Democratic nominee who is seeking to replace Schwarzenegger when he is termed out of office this year, was more active than Schwarzenegger in supporting the lawsuit that led Walker to invalidate Proposition 8, submitting legal papers calling the ban unconstitutional.
He also said Friday that it’s time for gays to begin marrying again.
“While there is still the potential for limited administrative burdens should future marriages of same-sex couples be later declared invalid, these potential burdens are outweighed by this court’s conclusion, based on the overwhelming evidence, that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional,” Brown said in his legal filing.
The legal team of David Boise and Ted Orson, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of two gay couples that led to Walker’s ruling, also submitted a motion in conjunction with the city of San Francisco, another plaintiff.
They all argued that since the judge declared Proposition 8 to be illegal, gay couples should be able to marry now.
Boise and Orson said gay couples “will continue to suffer irreparable harm if Proposition 8′s irrational deprivation of their constitutional rights is prolonged.”
Santa Cruz County Clerk Gail Peelers, president of the California Association of Clerk and Elected Officials, said county agencies that issue marriage licenses will be ready to serve same-sex couples whenever they get the green light.
During the window in 2008 when same-sex marriage was legal in California, the state changed its marriage license applications to be gender-neutral so applicants only had to check boxes indicating “bride” or “groom” if they chose to.
At the same time, Peelers said local officials do not want to be in the position of being asked to issue licenses if Walker enforces his decision only to have an appeals court later impose a stay. It would be better for all involved to have the process be unambiguous, she said.
“We don’t want to issue a couple who are in love and want to get married a $75 license and then turn around a minute or a week later and say that license is no longer valid,” she said. “We don’t want anyone to be in the position of being led down that path.”
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Associated Press Writer Lisa Elf contributed to this report.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway. 
