Subject: TC Take on MN Elections
From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 11:56:56 -0500

Dear On-Line Friends:

Here's my take on Minnesota elections.

If  you are an editor, please consider the following article 310 word article
for publication in your newspaper.  I am a freelance writer and will be happy
to accept your standard fee for an article of this length.  Contact me ASAP
is you want exclusive rights in your area.  Thanks.

Tim Campbell
2103 Pleasant Ave South, Minneapolis, MN 55404
(612) 872-9692  E-Addres [email-masked]
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MINNESOTA ELECTION HIGHLIGHTS
Gay Marriage Supporter in Minnesota Garners 7%, Insures Future Debate

By Tim Campbell
© November 7, 1996

Dean Barkley (Reform Party), the small party candidate for senate in
Minnesota who showed up incumbent Senator  Paul Wellstone (Dem) and former
Senator Rudy Boschwitz (Rep) on gay issues by supporting both the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and gay marriage, took seven percent (7%) of
the vote in Minnesota elections November 5. By contrast, Wellstone and
Boschwitz supported ENDA but oppose gay marriage. 

Back in 1992, Barkley's Reform Party garnered just five percent of the vote
in Minnesota.  Although Barkley's total represents only  a two percent
increase by comparison to the total vote in Minnesota, it represents a forty
percent growth in the size of the Reform Party vote itself.

Any vote total over five percent  insures that Barkley will qualify under
Minnesota law for public funding for campaigning next elections and that he
will again be included in major public debates and charts comparing the
candidates here.

Perhaps more importantly, political analysts and Democrats here, will
undoubtedly conclude  that gay voters or gay and lesbian voters account for a
significant part of the growth in Barkley's vote.  That's because a few days
before the election, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the state's largest daily
newspaper, prominently featured a chart that compared Barkley, Boschwitz, and
Wellstone specifically on their stands on ENDA and gay marriage.  The chart
also included several other "hot point" issues like abortion and gun that
sway some voters one way or the other.

Heavy lesbian-feminist attendance at an October 23 rally for Wellstone here
featuring Candace Gingrich and Gloria Steinem may indicate that the gay male
vote here was  more negatively  influenced by Wellstone's oppositon to gay
marriage than was the lesbian vote.

PAUL WELLSTONE retained his seat in the U.S. Senate taking fifty percent of
the vote compared to Rudy Boschwitz' forty-one percent and Barkley's seven
percent.

-30-

Tim Campbell is a freelance writer and computer software consultant living in
Minneapolis.  He published the gay GLC Voice newspaper there from 1979 -
1992.