Quote from: Cindi Jones on March 28, 2008, 03:23:54 PM
We need to get out the vote in Florida to defeat this and the Republicans.
Cindi
The problem is, no one strategy will work throughout the state. First of all, the northern 1/3 of the state is primarily redneck and a lot of them are going to vote Republican no matter what. But even those voting Democratic in North Florida will generally vote for anything limiting GLBT rights ("them thar ->-bleeped-<-gots is gettin uppity"). By the way, "uppity" in redneck speak means someone different from you is demanding the same rights as you. But of the remaining portion of the state, you have a large number of Yankee immigrants along with a very large Cuban population. The Yankees will range all over the place from extreme liberal to psuedo nazi conservatives depending on religious background and geographical origin. Finally most of the people of Cuban descent, and they are an enormous voting block, will tend toward Roman Catholic and, although they will generally vote Democratic, they will also tend to vote conservative on social issues such as this amendment. So just a get out the vote campaign among Democrats will not work here because a large number of Florida Democrats are not necessarily social liberals. It would take a concerted effort of commercials aimed at specific socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds to even start making a dent.
I forgot to add this in earlier. As is says on Pam's, many of the elderly retired people in Florida actually exist in a domestic partnership. What happens is a widow and widower will live together but not marry because one will lose social security benefits if the do marry. So each one retains their social security while sharing the cost of living. This is the big hope to defeat this amendment...that the various associations for these elderly citizens will get out the word that the amendment will also ban benefits for domestic partners.
Beverly
