Seeing an Obama Army in Gay Pride Legions

But to Aaron Levine, a 19-year-old, clipboard-toting volunteer sent there by the Obama campaign, everyone was a potential get. A group of twenty-somethings huddled in the shade under a Starbucks awning trying to stay cool: “They’re perfect,” he said. The long line outside the Duplex, a nightclub with views of the parade route: “They have nothing else to do now but sign up. It’s great.”

Mr. Levine was one of hundreds of Obama field staff members and volunteers who fanned out at a dozen gay pride celebrations across the country over the weekend with a meticulous set of marching orders from the Chicago campaign headquarters: Get names, cellphone numbers, and e-mail and home addresses. But most important, get commitments to volunteer.

At times, the parades could have been confused for Obama campaign rallies. In Chicago on Sunday, 300 of his campaign staff members and volunteers marched down Halsted Street through the heart of the gay district to chants of “Four more years! Four more years!” Along Fifth Avenue in New York, a group of about 200 Obama supporters who walked the parade route were cheered by crowds waving powder-blue “L.G.B.T. for Obama” placards, referring to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. “Obama! Obama!” the onlookers cried.

While gay men and lesbians have been one of the most reliable Democratic voting blocs, supporting Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of about three to one in recent elections, the Obama campaign is capitalizing on what its strategists say is a perfect election-year opportunity. Just over six weeks ago, Mr. Obama declared his support for the right of gay couples to marry, which strengthened his political potency among gay people. Before the marriage announcement, even many of Mr. Obama’s top gay donors had questioned his commitment to their issues.

Now, campaign officials and other top Democrats said this was their best chance yet to convert enthusiasm among gay men and lesbians for Mr. Obama into more than just votes.

“It’s like shooting fish in a barrel this year,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic consultant who supervised the field operation for Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign in several battleground states. “I think this year you’ll have not only people who say they will vote for him, but you will get a higher percentage of people who will actually be willing to do something for him. I think people are just tremendously grateful.”

Over the coming weeks, the campaign will begin contacting those who signed its commitment forms to try to recruit them for any number of jobs like making phone calls or getting on a bus for a day trip to swing states like Pennsylvania.

Gay pride marches are the Democratic Party’s equivalent of Tea Party rallies. There are few places this year where the Obama campaign is likely to find more motivated and supportive voters. “Pride is probably the best opportunity to engage the community in large, concentrated numbers,” said Jamie Citron, the national L.G.B.T. vote director for the Obama campaign.

The campaign’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender outreach is a vast undertaking that includes not just cities with large gay populations like New York but less obvious places like Council Bluffs, Iowa; Durango, Colo.; and Dayton, Ohio.

When gay and lesbian leaders in Columbus, Ohio, were planning their event for this month, the Obama campaign called them to ask if they could play a taped message from the president.

“They wanted to know if we had the ability to put it up on a big screen,” said Karla Rothan, executive director of Stonewall Columbus. Ms. Rothan did not have a big screen to offer, but she did have a booth in her festival and a spot in the parade for Obama volunteers, and the campaign jumped at the opportunity.

On the parade route in Cleveland on Saturday, Obama workers in a tent in Voinovich Park registered hundreds of people to vote.

Reporting was contributed by Ethan Bronner from New York, Dustin Franz from Cleveland, and Joshua Lott from Chicago.

View the original article here

State Senator Adriano Espaillat Runs for the House on Pride and Energy

Tired?

“Nah, I’m feeling good,” he said. “I just had a Power Bar.”

Mr. Espaillat, a Democratic state senator from Washington Heights, was on the last leg of a day that began inside an uptown subway station, asking commuters escaping the rain for their votes. He snatched a quick breakfast (a bagel with cream cheese and lox), shot downtown for a meeting, rode up to Albany while making campaign calls, and met lobbyists and legislators at the Capitol before returning to New York City to speak to constituents and check in at his office.

It is this combustible pace that Mr. Espaillat, 57, has been trying to sell as his greatest advantage over the four-decade incumbent, Representative Charles B. Rangel, in next week’s Democratic primary for Congress.

While Mr. Rangel, 82, has been arriving at campaign stops with the help of a walker and maintaining a relatively relaxed schedule, Mr. Espaillat has been feverishly bouncing around the Upper Manhattan and Bronx district, articulating a vision that focuses heavily on immigration reform, job creation, affordable housing and access to higher education.

“I’m going to bring a fresh new view and voice to the 13th Congressional District that I think is entirely needed,” Mr. Espaillat said. “New ideas, new energy.”

Mr. Espaillat, who is seeking to become the first Dominican-born congressman and expresses unabashed ethnic pride, is widely seen as Mr. Rangel’s most serious challenger since he won office in 1970 because the district is, for the first time, a majority Hispanic.

Until recently, Mr. Espaillat had avoided sharply criticizing Mr. Rangel in public. But during a televised debate with Mr. Rangel and the three other candidates last week, Mr. Espaillat took aim at the ethics charges that led to Mr. Rangel’s censure two years ago.

“As a result of that, we lost 60 Democratic seats in the Congress, and the Tea Party radicals invaded Congress and are pushing back on Obama,” Mr. Espaillat said. “So he became the poster child for dysfunction in Washington.”

Mr. Espaillat’s critics have accused him of overzealous campaign tactics. Moises Perez, Mr. Rangel’s campaign manager, said supporters of Mr. Espaillat had branded Mr. Perez and other Dominicans supporting Mr. Rangel as traitors. “That’s a very heavy-handed style of campaigning that turns people off,” Mr. Perez said.

And last month, Mr. Espaillat said he would not refuse the support of an anti-incumbent “super PAC” that is mostly funded by businessmen who back conservative causes. Asked to explain his position last week, Mr. Espaillat offered a different stance: he said he was “rejecting any super PACs from getting involved in this campaign.”

With a public-service career that started as a community organizer and crime victims’ rights advocate in Washington Heights, Mr. Espaillat has long held high political ambitions. He often invokes personal experiences when advocating for a cause or bill, supporters say.

“When he locks into an issue, he locks into an issue and he doesn’t let go until he gets resolution,” said Senator José Peralta, a Democrat of Queens.

Assemblyman Phil Ramos, a Democrat from Long Island, said that Mr. Espaillat taught him the art of compromise.

“He said that, as an elected official, if we can win 80 percent of what we want, then next year we live to fight for only 20 percent,” Mr. Ramos recalled. But if you “go for 100 percent, the end result could be that our community ends up with nothing.”

Mr. Espaillat says he is a descendant of one of the Dominican Republic’s most notable political figures — Ulises Francisco Espaillat, who held the presidency for about five months in 1876.

The family moved to Washington Heights in 1964, when Mr. Espaillat was 9, and one of the first things he did on American soil was to touch the snow on the airport tarmac. His father purchased a gas station in East New York, Brooklyn, where Mr. Espaillat helped out.

Mr. Espaillat was introduced to politics through a summer youth program run by a Baptist preacher. After graduating from Queens College, he worked in criminal justice, first for the city and then as a liaison between his community and the police.

“I remember Adriano walking up on the corner and talking to gang members and telling them to stop doing what they were doing,” said Roberto Lizardo, who worked closely in community activism with Mr. Espaillat.

Mr. Espaillat lost two races for City Council; the second, in 1991, was won by Guillermo Linares, who became New York’s first Dominican-born elected official. In 1996, he won election to the Assembly, and became the first Dominican to hold office in Albany; he was elected to the State Senate in 2010.

Mr. Espaillat, who dances bachata and merengue, decorated his Albany office with paintings from the Dominican Republic, including one of a twin-steeple church in Santiago and another of a broad-shouldered marchanta balancing a basket of flowers on her head. Two glittery, horned Carnival masks that Mr. Espaillat made hang from a wood-paneled wall.

He has been “very aggressive about Dominican pride, very aggressive about furthering the Dominican people, very aggressive about putting a focus on making sure that Dominicans get their fair share,” said Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, who has endorsed Mr. Rangel.

He also became a die-hard Yankees fan; so much so that years later, as a lawmaker, he put on a Yankees hat and professed his love for the team while he and other legislators were presenting a Mets player with an award.

Gregarious and blunt, Mr. Espaillat balances his days of nonstop politicking with levity.“How come you’re looking sad today?” Mr. Espaillat sang at a tollbooth agent (he refuses to get an EZ Pass).

There were also quiet moments, like when Mr. Espaillat made the sign of the cross when he got behind the wheel, or when he mumbled a song coming from the radio: “In the midnight hour, she cries more, more, more.”

View the original article here