All Politics Is Local

1,536. That’s the number of days since Sen. Barack Obama has spoken to the local LGBT press, according to the April 18-24, 2008, cover of the Philadelphia Gay News.

During my interview this month with Senator Obama, he said, “The gay press may feel like I’m not giving them enough love. But basically, all press feels that way at all times.” That is true. Even reporters from some large mainstream outlets have long-standing interview requests with the senator that haven’t come to fruition.

Then Senator Obama added, “We tend not to do a whole bunch of specialized press. We try to do general press for a general readership.” Upon review, the LGBT press is running at a deficit in terms of access to Obama relative to other interest-group media. In combined print and broadcast, Senator Obama has done at least eight interviews with African-American outlets and at least five interviews with the Spanish-language press (a listing is included at the end of this article). To date, he has done two interviews with LGBT media.

Regarding Senator Obama’s greater visibility in other specialty press, his spokesman Ben LaBolt said, “Our campaign has built an aggressive LGBT outreach program that has helped us rack up victories in cities with large LGBT populations like San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and Columbus, and has included two interviews with The Advocate, two op-eds in LGBT papers, and print advertisements that directly appealed to the LGBT community.”

LaBolt echoed Senator Obama’s comments from our interview that the campaign has made a point of not “segmenting the electorate into different demographic groups” but instead uniting people across a spectrum. “In addition to speaking with supportive groups, Obama has taken a message of equal rights for LGBT Americans to audiences that are less receptive, challenging homophobia time and again,” said LaBolt. “Our campaign has and will continue to be in continuous contact with the LGBT press, and expect to conduct additional interviews with them in the coming months.”

Though Senator Obama’s interaction with the LGBT media is perhaps one measure of how he prioritizes the community, the fundamental question many are asking is, Which candidate, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, would more fully incorporate LGBT people into their administration and advance our cause? While it’s impossible to answer that question without a crystal ball, looking at a combination of their outreach efforts, political team, and press availability yields some nuanced insights that may have as much to do with their standing in the race as it does with their commitment to queer issues.

First off, both candidates have out LGBT people in the upper echelons of their campaign: Steve Hildebrand, Senator Obama’s deputy national campaign manager, is often referred to as simply “Obama’s number 2.” On Senator Clinton’s side, Guy Cecil, former political director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, serves as the campaign’s national political and field director.

In terms of their outreach efforts, the two candidates have taken separate paths. Mark Walsh, Clinton’s LGBT outreach director, was hired about a year ago by the New York senator to head up her LGBT steering committee. For Senator Obama, LGBT efforts are juggled between several people -- Tobias Wolff, Stampp Corbin, Eric Stern, and Matt Nosanchuk -- all of whom volunteer their time to the campaign.

This typifies the initial approaches of both campaigns. Clinton took a highly proactive top-down management approach to attracting gays and lesbians to her campaign, committing a portion of her campaign funds to the concept of having one person steward that process. Meanwhile, Obama employed more of a grassroots philosophy -- get people involved from the bottom up and imbue them with the power to make things happen.