Straight talk wins in Arizona: want to get straight people to vote against an antigay ballot initiative? Make it all about them.

Margaret Cramer couldn't stay up late enough to watch her political efforts pay off. The Arizona election results were due in way past her bedtime.

Cramer, 7, wanted to know. She had spent Election Day at the polls, standing alongside her two mommies. She boldly encouraged voters to reject an amendment that could nullify her parents' few relationship rights.

So early the next morning, the little girl bounced out of bed and ran right to one mother asking, "Did we win? Did we win?"

They did.

Arizona gay rights advocates--Margaret's mothers, Amelia Craig Cramer and Amy Cramer, among them--had waged the first successful campaign in the nation to defeat an anti-same-sex marriage amendment, convincing voters to reject Proposition 107 by 51% to 49%.

The result marked an important point in the history of the gay rights movement, especially as it happened in a state that many have described as the birthplace of modern conservatism. Before Arizona, every state constitutional marriage ban placed on a ballot had passed. On November 7, South Dakota, Virginia, Idaho, Colorado, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin joined 20 other states that have written antigay language into their state constitutions.

So how did gay rights advocates win in the red state of Arizona? By running two parallel and completely different anti-amendment campaigns, that's how. And now political pundits are praising the strategy as a winning formula in the fight against future amendments.

The first campaign--No on 107--was a traditional grassroots effort run by gay activists and based in liberal Tucson. Cindy Jordan, chair of the campaign, says No on 107 didn't have much money but raised enough to fund radio ads on 14 stations featuring local leaders talking about how harmful Prop 107 would be. "Our tactics wouldn't necessarily work everywhere, but they galvanized people here," Jordan says.

Prop 107 had strong support from Arizona's Catholic leaders and even from U.S. senator and Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. McCain voted against a federal anti-same-sex marriage amendment but appeared in commercials advocating for Prop 107. (Repeated calls by The Advocate to McCain's office seeking comment had not been returned as of press time.)

It was McCain and other straight people publicly advocating for discrimination against gay people that got Kyrsten Sinema thinking. As chair of the second anti-amendment campaign--Arizona Together-she decided to fight fire with fire. "We could have run this campaign two ways," she says. "Either we used Prop 107 just to educate voters this time around without expecting to beat it. Or we could run to win. Our community told me they wanted the whole enchilada. They wanted to win."

So Sinema enlisted straight people to do most of the talking. Proposition 107 didn't just define marriage as a union between one man and one woman--it eliminated any marriage equivalent. Same-sex marriage is already illegal in Arizona, but some cities have domestic-partnership registries used by gay and straight couples. The amendment would have wiped those out.

Straight couples like Al Breznay and Maxine Piatt became the most effective, albeit the most unlikely, gay rights poster children. "Who would have thought I would be a part of this," says Breznay, a 79-year-old retired auto mechanic who moved from the Midwest and collects photos of outhouses. His partner, Maxine Piatt, 75, is a former bank teller who collects clown memorabilia. Arizona Together called them after finding the couple on Tucson's domestic-partnership registry.

The two have been together eight years but never married because Piatt would lose Social Security benefits from a past marriage. Instead, they formalized their relationship through the domestic-partnership registry. "Because we're domestic partners we could take care of each other," Breznay says.

When Arizona Together told the couple about the proposed amendment, Breznay says he knew their story would resonate with Arizonans. Many are retired snowbirds just like themselves. "Going door-to-door, we met a lot of people who were unaware of what Proposition 107 meant. They thought it was just an antigay thing," Breznay says. "So we would explain how this would hurt Maxine and me. Once we did, they said they'd vote against it. They didn't even hesitate."

While some gay people criticized Arizona Together for relying so heavily on straight people in its ads, the strategy didn't bother Amy and Amelia Craig Cramer, who volunteered for both anti-amendment campaigns. "Enough GLBT people were running the campaign," says Amelia Craig Cramer, an attorney who helped write the law establishing Tucson's domestic-partner registry. "The important thing was to have the proposition defeated."

Sinema and her fellow campaigners didn't just bank on straight couples to win. They hired experienced campaigners and well-respected Democratic pollsters. "We were disciplined and we shared our message over and over again," says Sinema. "We polled like crazy. That's how we won."

Christensen is an investigative field producer at CNN.