Polling results in Miami and Key West Tuesday suggested gay Democrats strongly backing Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain, even though McCain used a last-minute anti-gay telephone message to voters to help put himself over the top in the Florida primary.
In overall statewide results, McCain won Florida's 57 delegates Tuesday by winning 37 percent of the Republican votes statewide; Mitt Romney came in second with 32 percent, followed by Giuliani with 15, Mike Huckabee with 14, and Ron Paul and others with 2 percent. Among voters in Key West's heavily gay precincts, 47 percent supported McCain, 20 percent Giuliani, 19 percent Romney, 12 percent Huckabee and 2 percent others. And in the 12 precincts that make up South Beach Miami's heavily gay 33139 zip code, 43 percent supported McCain, 33 percent Giuliani, 14 percent Romney and 10 percent others.
The results boosted McCain into the lead in the field of four remaining candidates for the Republican nomination. McCain now has 95 delegates to Romney's 67 and Huckabee's 26.
Although the Democratic primary voting did not provide the victor with any delegates toward the party nomination, almost as many Democrats turned out to the polls as did Republicans, making the primary at least somewhat of a barometer of Democratic sentiment in Florida. In overall statewide results, Hillary Clinton won 51 percent of that vote, followed by Barack Obama with 33 percent, John Edwards with 14 percent and 2 percent for others, several of whom were no longer running. Key West's 10 heavily gay precincts had results roughly mirroring the statewide Democratic primary, but 61 percent of South Beach precincts went for Clinton. And it appears most of that support came from potential Edwards supporters. While Obama won 31 percent—roughly the same as Democratic voting statewide—Edwards earned only 5 percent of South Beach's Democratic votes.
Both John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani indicated following the Florida results that they would drop out of the race. While that leaves McCain as the sole moderate in the four-man GOP field now, his campaign's actions in Florida diminished any possibility he could be seen as supportive of gays.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, the McCain camp unleashed a recorded telephone message campaign just before the primary, saying the country needs a president who cares about 'preserving the sanctity of marriage.' The phone message faulted Romney for telling 'gay organizers in Massachusetts he would be a stronger advocate for special rights than even Ted Kennedy' and then changing his mind.
Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, said that more than 500 volunteers worked outside polls throughout the state Tuesday to discourage voters from signing petitions to put an anti-gay constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage on the ballot there in November.
© Lisa Keen. All rights reserved.
