Politico Pretty Sure NY Dems In Disarray Over Equal Rights Amendment That's Polling at 69 Percent

It's going to pass.

Nov 04, 2024

AOC desperately scrambling for your Yes on Prop 1 vote.

On Saturday, Politico’s Dems In Disarray train pulled into the station precisely on time with the story, “Trans issue muddies battle over New York ballot measure.” The theme was well captured by the subhed: “Dems scramble as GOP opposition paints Prop 1 as threat to girls’ safety and sports.”

City & State provided this summary of Prop 1:

Prop 1, referred to as the state Equal Rights Amendment, is a proposed state constitutional amendment that will be on the back of New Yorkers’ ballots when they vote early or on Election Day. It would change the state constitution’s Bill of Rights to expand the list of protected classes. Right now, the state constitution only explicitly prohibits discrimination based on race, color, creed and religion. If approved by the voters, the ERA would add ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and sex – including “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive healthcare and autonomy” – to the state constitution’s list of protected classes.

Given Republicans’ attacks on women and trans people are massive contributors to their fundraising efforts — and even possibly that some of these politicians actually deeply believe that they are making hard choices about what’s best for society (ha ha, we kid) — right wingers in the state are taking the possibility of Prop 1’s passage about as well as one might imagine. Siena College’s poll on the issue is typical, per Audacy and WBEN:

"69% of New Yorkers said they will vote yes on Proposition 1, while 22% say they will vote no," he said. There is a wide partisan divide. 89% of Democrats support it, as do 62% of Independents. But Republicans, by a 50% to 36% margin, say they plan to vote against it.

Republican leadership is responding typically, by screeching about sports and parents’ rights and trans kids non-consensually surgerized via court orders from unaccountable judges (we paraphrase). City & State New York reported that “billionaire megadonor” and Schlitz brewing heir Richard Uihlein gave $6.5M to the Vote No On Prop 1 campaign just before it released a media blitz making anti-trans messages the central theme of opposition.

“This is the most radical constitutional amendment ever proposed in New York,” said one speaker at a Vote No On Prop 1 rally in Amherst early in the campaign, before other speakers raised the specter of trans athletes stealing scholarships from more deserving cis students. The current No campaign’s TV spots keep up the same themes. Three are available on the Protect Kids NY website.

One uses a happy picture slideshow with vague language about different populations “united” against Prop 1 without making it at all clear why. The others are darker themed, telling stories of girls “continuing to be injured” by trans athletes and of children "ripped away” from parents’ custody without mentioning that custody was assigned to one of two parents in a custody dispute that wouldn’t be news except that one parent was trying to claim that they were being victimized for not supporting their trans kid. (We personally believe that it’s wonderful if every kid can have a great relationship with every parent, but if divorced parents are going to fight over custody, we’re perfectly happy with decisions granting custody to the parent who is actually more supportive of a child.)

Politico’s article accurately describes the opposition messaging as saying that Prop 1 is “a liberal ‘Trojan horse’ endangering the safety of girls in locker rooms, the sanctity of girls’ sports and parental consent for gender-affirming care.” The story adds

A primary anti-Prop 1 group is literally called the “Coalition to Protect Kids.” Battleground GOP Rep. Nick LaLota has distributed lawn signs that read “protect girls’ sports” in pink over his campaign logo. And Republican House challenger Alison Esposito has said, “As a member of the gay community, it’s not about LGBTQ+ rights. It’s about fairness in sports, security in locker rooms.”

Which, as far as it goes, is a perfectly fine description of what Republicans are saying.

The real trouble in the article isn’t its portrayal of the GOP message, but of Dems. This is typical:

Democrats have scrambled in the final stretch of the election to steer the conversation back to reproductive rights, their urgency fueled by gains the opposition has made through targeted ads, high-emotion rallies and a drumbeat of warnings about the liberal agenda. There’s a lot at stake for Democrats beyond the passage of the ballot initiative, which was initially viewed as an easy layup. The fates of Prop 1, House Democratic candidates and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s political clout are, after all, loosely tied together.

Except with the aforementioned 69 percent statewide support, it’s hard to imagine Democrats “scrambling”. While there have been pro-Prop 1 events, the Dems speaking up for the amendment hardly sound “forced” as Politico describes them. They also report that the entirely reasonable and very real fear that a measure with better than two-to-one support could fail is leading to dramatic drama behind the scenes that somehow is entirely invisible:

Democrats’ anxieties over whether Prop 1 could fail at the ballot box and anger over tactical errors has reopened fissures and prompted preemptive finger-pointing behind closed doors. But they’re presenting a united front in public, including with rallies attended by dozens of elected officials — both progressive and moderate — to champion the straightforward cause of enhanced civil rights

While Politico does include a link to a separate story on how the Yes campaign spent a much greater share of its money on polling and consultants compared to some other referendum-related campaigns, that story also details that the expected fundraising and ad buys were reduced because a credible threat to Prop 1 never materialized. As a result, money that might have been raised and spent in New York was diverted to support reproductive rights measures in other states. In other words, the overhead costs would probably have been in line with other campaigns if New Yorkers were buying what Vote No On Prop 1 and the Coalition to Protect Kids were selling.

Gearing up for a heavy campaign and finding out that cis voters don’t actually care about trans issues one way or the other should be more relief than criticism. But for Politico (and a number of other outlets) not spending money to support a measure that’s going to pass with broad support anyway is somehow a bad thing. We don’t buy what Politico is selling either. It was reasonable for Dems to gear up to defend Prop 1 against expected attacks, it was reasonable for Dems to shift money to other states where it could do more good, and most of all it was reasonable to defend the rights of every New York resident to equal protection and reproductive freedom.

Prop 1 is going to pass, and for all the best reasons.

[City & State]

PREVIOUSLY IN NEW YORK DEMOCRATS!