by Rex Wockner [Photos]
[story filed Sept. 23, 2007]
SAN DIEGO --
Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders abruptly changed his position
on gay marriage
Sept. 19, announced that his daughter is a lesbian, and
signed a City
Council resolution adding San Diego to a friend-of-the-court
brief that urges
the California Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage.
The court is
expected to rule on a same-sex marriage case early next
year.
"Two years ago,
I believed that civil unions were a fair alternative,"
Sanders said.
"Those beliefs, in my case, have changed. The concept of a
'separate but
equal' institution is not something I can support.
"I have close
family members and friends who are a member of the gay and
lesbian community,"
Sanders continued, fighting back tears. "Those folks
include my daughter
Lisa, as well as members of my personal staff. I
want for them
the same thing that we all want for our loved ones -- for
each of them
to find a mate whom they love deeply and who loves them
back; someone
with whom they can grow old together and share life's
experiences.
"In the end,"
the mayor said, "I couldn't look any of them in the face
and tell them
that their relationship -- their very lives -- were any
less meaningful
than the marriage I share with my wife Rana."
Very few San
Diegans, gay or straight, knew that Sanders' daughter Lisa,
24, is gay,
and she has declined all requests for interviews since the
big announcement.
This reporter did, however, snag a moment with her
Sept. 20 at
the kickoff event for Mayor Sanders' re-election campaign.
"I'm just very
proud of my father," Lisa Sanders said. "And to be a part
of this. It's
about equality, and he's doing the right thing, and I'm
very confident
in him."
Openly lesbian
City Councilmember Toni Atkins, who steered the
resolution through
the council, was ecstatic at Sanders' startling
about-face,
especially given that he had announced just a day earlier
that he would
veto the measure.
"I thought we
were going to have to go through a veto override, and that
would have been
tough," Atkins said in an interview. "We'd have had to
hurry, as we
would have been on a very tight timeline. The fact that he
did this --
it stopped me in my tracks in the most pleasant way.
"We're not used
to that in politics," Atkins said. "We're used to being
stopped in our
tracks and it's not pleasant. My focus was go go go, and
let's get this
done, and let's not give an inch -- and so, to get that
statement from
the mayor, I was stunned.
"All I could
do was look at him [when he told me]. It seemed like for
infinity. You'd
expect a profound word to come out of my mouth, but when
I finally did
speak, all I said was, 'Wow!'
"I was bowled over and I hugged him."
Atkins said the
mayor's office has received a lot of positive e-mail and
flowers of thanks.
"I know he's
getting some pushback from the other side as well," she
said. "But I
believe it's more positive than negative at this point."
Indeed, at the
Sept. 20 campaign-kickoff event, Sanders received
applause and
cheers when he said: "I wanted my family up here [onstage
with me] because
over the last couple of years their family life has
changed fairly
dramatically. Some more than others. Some in the last day
or so."
RISKY POLITICS?
It remains to
be seen whether Sanders' championing of same-sex marriage
will affect
his fortunes in next June's nonpartisan primary election.
Analysts say
he may lose some votes from right-wing Republicans, while,
at the same
time, picking up support from liberals and the city's
sizable gay
community, where he already was well-liked. The city's
weekly gay newspaper
named him and Police Chief William Lansdowne
"Persons of
the Year" in 2006.
One likely Republican
candidate, Steve Francis -- who finished 3.5
percentage points
behind Sanders in the June 2005 primary -- would run
to the right
of Sanders, but even he supports same-sex civil unions.
Possible Democratic
candidate Denise Ducheney, who is now a state
senator, supports
same-sex marriage and is politically to the left of
Sanders.
In one scenario,
Sanders' support for gay marriage could push some
percentage of
conservatives toward Francis while Ducheney could draw
much of the
liberal vote, leaving Sanders squeezed in the middle. In San
Diego's nonpartisan
primary, if no candidate gets 50 percent of the
vote, the top
two vote-getters advance to a runoff election.
San Diego has
224,397 registered Democratic voters, 190,647 registered
Republican voters,
141,090 registered voters who "decline to state" a
political affiliation,
and 27,000 voters registered with minor parties.
Still, Republican
Sanders captured 53.6 percent of the vote when he was
elected, beating
maverick, left-wing Democrat Donna Frye, who got 46.1
percent of the
vote. Frye is currently a city councilmember.
Sanders' gay-marriage
position also might make no difference at all. San
Diego is no
longer the conservative city it once was. The nation's
eighth-largest
city has a lesbian city councilmember and a lesbian state
senator. The
fire chief is a lesbian. The Republican district attorney
is a lesbian.
Two superior court judges are gay. Mayor Sanders' press
secretary is
a gay man. So is his deputy press secretary.
As the alternative
weekly CityBeat newspaper put it in a July 18
article, "Forget
'Don't ask, don't tell.' In millennial San Diego, the
motto these
days is, 'Who knows, who cares?'"
Sanders' tearful
speech in which he embraced gay marriage and outed his
daughter (video
at tinyurl.com/2wa5a3) made national
news, and made the
head of the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force cry.
"Sanders' emotional
statement brought me -- and I know millions of other
gay and lesbian
people -- to tears," said Executive Director Matt
Foreman. "Mayor
Sanders will go into the history books as a profile in
courage and
conviction."
If that's how
San Diego voters see it as well, Sanders' decision "to
lead with my
heart ... to do what I think is right and to take a stand
on behalf of
equality and social justice" may turn out to have been a
good political
move as well.