Open House.

Tammy Baldwin, the first out lesbian ever elected to Congress, prepares for a new era of openness on Capitol Hill

Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin was sitting at home, watching her own victory party on television, when she finally realized she had made history by becoming the first out lesbian--and the first woman from Wisconsin--to be elected to Congress.

"I kept thinking there weren't enough results in for me to go over," says Baldwin, who had also been the first openly gay member of the slate legislature. "I wanted to practice both speeches."

But thanks to a phenomenal grassroots voter-turnout team--more than a dozen district voting booths actually ran out of ballots--Baldwin didn't have to give her concession speech. Instead she withstood a tough challenge from moderate Republican Josephine Musser to win by a decisive 53%-47% the seat held by retiring Republican Scott Klug.

"In a year of incredible cynicism, with scandals in Washington and negative ads in almost every, competitive district, all the messages were `Stay home from the polls, don't bother,'" says Baldwin, whose district boasted an unheard of 55% voter turnout, about 17 percentage points higher than the national average. "But [the campaign] was about people finding their own power ... figuring out that their vote, that their voices do make a difference."

For gay men and lesbians, Baldwin's victory means increased representation in Congress, which boasts only two openly gay representatives, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank and Arizona Republican Jim Kolbe. But unlike Frank and Kolbe--or the other two openly gay men ever to stove in Congress, Democrat Gerry Studds of Massachusetts and Republican Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin--Baldwin is the first gay representative to publicly acknowledge her sexual orientation before making the trip to Washington.

"You have to say that Tammy is a testament to how our society has moved toward understanding and acceptance of gay people as full and valued members of our society," says Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based gay lobbying group. It also signifies that at least in some areas, a candidate's homosexuality does not translate into a negative factor a political campaign must fight to overcome. "Regardless of sexual orientation, it's about the issues and what people want from their legislators," Stachelberg says.

Baldwin was one of a trio of lesbian candidates vying for a place in history November 3. Democrats Christine Kehoe of San Diego and Grethe Cammermeyer of Langley, Wash., lost their bids but performed well in their respective districts. Democrat Paul Barby, an openly gay Oklahoma City businessman, lost his second challenge to Republican representative Frank Lucas.

Kehoe, who raised more money than any other Democratic House challenger this season--some $1.25 million--held incumbent Brian Bilbray to less than 50% of the vote, closing a 10-point gap in the last few weeks of the campaign to lose 46%-49%. "We were energetic and committed right up until [the end], but there was not enough to put us over the top," says Kehoe, who will finish out her term on the San Diego city council but has yet to decide whether she'll make another run for Congress.

Cammermeyer also gained ground on her conservative Republican opponent, incumbent Jack Metcalf, who early in the campaign took issue with her sexual orientation. Going into the election, some polls showed Cammermeyer--a retired Army National Guard colonel who rose to national prominence after Barbra Streisand produced a TV movie, starring Glenn Close, about her 1992 military discharge and subsequent reinstatement--down by as much as 20 percentage points. She lost by 10, 45%-55%, but she said her campaign helped her get over her own lingering homophobia and put an end to her "apologizing for daring to be a candidate" for Congress.

"It's that perception that if you're gay, you're not good enough ... if you're gay, you have to convince others that your concerns about the environment, Social Security, health care, your kids are just as legitimate," says Cammermeyer, who has yet to settle on her future course.

"I knew [my concerns] were [as legitimate], but somehow I wasn't sure I could convince others.... And it was, to me, a huge sense of social movement when the district `got it' and I became" the Democratic challenger, she says. After that, "I could strut into the Rotary Club and say, `OK, guys, I'm the Democrat. Let's deal with the issues.'"

Brian Bond, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, an advocacy group that spent $750,000 this election cycle on gay candidates for local, state, and federal offices, says the trio of lesbian congressional candidates should have a lasting impact on the electorate. Combined, the media markets in Baldwin's, Kehoe's, and Cammermeyer's districts encompass about 5 million people, all of whom were exposed to positive images of lesbians working for a mass electorate. "When people are able to put a face on us and we're out there fighting for them on issues, it could turn a lot of this [antigay sentiment] around," Bond says. "It just takes time."

While Baldwin's victory was the undisputed high point of the election for gay rights groups, gay-supported candidates also did well. Ninety percent of the 190 candidates supported by HRC, which spent about $1 million on various campaigns, won their respective races. Although Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun's loss to conservative Republican Peter Fitzgerald in Illinois was a disappointment, U.S. Senate victories by Democratic incumbents in Wisconsin, Nevada, California, and Washington State gave gay groups something to cheer. "These are clear signals that there is a rejection of extremist candidates and a support for those senators who have supported the gay and lesbian community," Stachelberg says.

Religious political groups had a different interpretation of the election results, which put the entire national Republican Party in a state of disarray. Brandishing poll results showing that Christian-right voters did not turn out for Republicans like they did in 1994 when the GOP took over Congress, Christian Coalition executive director Randy Tate lambasted the Republican leadership for choosing to campaign on President Clinton's scandal instead of an issue-oriented conservative platform. "I can tell you, my ears are still ringing from the very loud warning that was shot across the bow of conservative leaders in Washington by grassroots activists," says Tale, who dismisses pundits' claims that the conservative reign in the nation's capital is over. "If the 106th Congress does not immediately take up pro-family, conservative issues and talk about them ... things will get worse [for Republicans] before they get better."

RELATED ARTICLE: For bitter or for worse

Have voters in Hawaii and Alaska killed any chance to legalize same-sex marriage?

A landslide vote against same-sex marriage in Hawaii could spell the beginning of the end of wedding plans that gay men and lesbians have been making for the past five years. The loud-and-clear rejection of same-sex unions by a better than 2-to-1 ratio opens the way for the state legislature to amend the Hawaii constitution to prohibit gay marriage, thus circumventing any legal victories that gay activists still hope to claim in the courts.

The ballot initiative, which changes the state constitution to allow the legislature to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples, was written to undermine a likely positive ruling on Baehr v. Miike, the case currently before the Hawaii supreme court in which three same-sex couples are seeking the right to marry. The court is expected to rule by the end of the year that the state has no interest in prohibiting gay marriages--a decision that is now in danger of being reversed by the newly empowered legislature.

"The right wing succeeded in putting another major hurdle in our path," says Evan Wolfson, director of the marriage project at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and co-counsel in the Hawaii case. "But it did not stop us. There are still many twists in the road ahead. The case continues in Hawaii."

As does a similar case in Vermont, where arguments were scheduled to begin before the state supreme court in mid November. Wolfson says the Hawaii results showed it is critical that gay men and lesbians engage non-gay people to elicit their support and persuade them that gay unions are not threatening, as conservatives purported in Hawaii. If activists fail in that effort, says Wolfson, "then, and only then, we will have allowed ourselves to be defeated."

The Human Rights Campaign and several other gay groups spent about $1.4 million to combat the Hawaii initiative, but they could not outdo religious groups such as James Dobson's Focus on the Family and the Mormon Church--which altogether spent $2.2 million to promote the antigay initiative.

"We've opened up a new front on the long-term struggle for equal rights because this is the first time we've seen a church engage in changing public policy to this extent," says HRC communications director and senior strategist David Smith, who worked with the Hawaii group Protect Our Constitution to oppose the initiative.

Smith says some of the most "disgusting" ads from the campaign emerged during the last few weeks, when religious groups got an extra infusion of cash. One ad contended that gay marriage would make Hawaii the "homosexual honeymoon capital of the world" and lead to a drop in tourism from Japan. Other ads, he says, equated gay marriage with pedophilia and bestiality. "There is a deeply rooted fear of same-sex marriage [in Hawaii], and the fear was exacerbated by the campaigns mounted against us," Smith says.

Smith also blames Hawaii politicians--many of whom were in political trouble thanks to a flagging state economy--for the defeat, as practically every incumbent and major candidate endorsed the initiative. As a slight consolation, Hawaii Democratic governor Benjamin Cayetano, who squeaked out a narrow victory of his own, said the morning after the vote that he would push the state legislature next session to enact domestic-partnership laws.

Cayetano had supported the ballot question, but he felt that the "debate got out of hand" and showed a "great deal of intolerance toward gays," his spokeswoman, says. Cayetano wants to "restore Hawaii's image as a tolerant state," she adds.

A similar scenario played out in Alaska, where, as expected, voters by a 2-to-1 ratio supported a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Alaska's ballot question does not have the far-reaching impact that the Hawaii initiative does, however. In Hawaii everything is in place for gay marriage to become a reality, but Alaska has had only a preliminary state superior court ruling in favor of two gay. men who challenged the state ban on same-sex marriage.

Gays fared no better in Colorado, where voters in 1992 approved a controversial antigay rights measure only to see it overturned by the Supreme Court in 1996. This year voters in Fort Collins--where Matthew Shepard died--rejected by a 2-to-1 ratio a measure to prohibit discrimination against gays in housing, employment, and public accommodations.

In Maine, where voters repealed statewide protections for gays earlier this year, the results were mixed for two local antidiscrimination initiatives. South Portland embraced its ballot initiative, but in Ogunquit, a resort town popular with gay and lesbian tourists, a pro-gay measure lost by nine votes out of the 757 cast.

RELATED ARTICLE: Winners take all

Gay men and lesbians made significant gains in other state and local races. Among the highlights:

ARIZONA: Steve May--the only openly gay Republican in a statehouse anywhere in the country--joins openly gay Democrat Ken Cheuvront in the Arizona house of representatives.

CONNECTICUT: In "one of the most vicious races in the country," according to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund's Brian Bond, Democrat Evelyn Mantilla survived a pummeling from a Hispanic religious group to win a seat in the Connecticut house of representatives with 88% of the vote.

MASSACHUSETTS: Massachusetts has already sent two openly gay men to Congress, but this year its state legislature will boast its first openly gay man, Democrat Jarrett Barrios, Democrat Liz Malia also won her election. Republic Michael Duffy, however, lost his bid for state auditor.

NEW YORK: The chances for a hate-crimes bill moving through the New York senate, where it has traditionally been tangled up after passing the house, should be boosted by the election of Democrat Tom Duane.

UTAH: Democrat Jackie Biskupski overcame opposition from the Utah Eagle Forum and the Mormon Church to win a seat in the state house of representatives, becoming the first openly gay member of the state legislature.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Republican David Catania, who won a special election to the D.C. city council in December, was reelected despite the city's huge Democratic base. Democrat Jim Graham also won a seat on the council.

WISCONSIN: Openly gay Democrat Mark Pocan won the seat in the Wisconsin state assembly formerly held by Congressman-elect Tammy Baldwin.

Ghent is a reporter for Legi-Slate, an on-line service of The Washington Post Company.