Fight Back New York

REPORT

In March 2010, a group of donors and activists created Fight Back New York – what would become the first-ever public campaign to identify and replace anti-marriage legislators through aggressive, strategic electoral work. Fight Back NY ensured three new marriage votes through constant direct communication with voters in special, primary, and general elections. With supporters who donated over $790,000, our bipartisan effort sent a clear signal to Albany: New Yorkers are fighting back against those who stand in the way of equality – and we’re winning. For details on each target race, click on the “More Results” section on the right.

Fight Back New York won every race we entered and taught us some critical lessons as we look ahead to winning equality in Albany and across the country:

• Because it wasn’t necessary or feasible to target all 38 senators who voted “no,” we knew our best chance at getting to 32 “yes” votes was to focus on the most vulnerable opponents of equality. Defeating a few would send a powerful message. We conducted polling and research to determine our targets, focused our resources to maximize our impact, and stuck to the issues and messages that would drive the largest number of likely voters to the polls to vote against a target.
• As detailed in the attached chart, we kept overhead at a minimum and focused donations on communicating directly with voters. We organized a limited number of low-overhead fundraising events, and with the help of celebrity supporters like Cynthia Nixon and Alec Baldwin, attracted hundreds of donors through online activism.
• Based on our polling and research, we knew that attempts to use a candidate’s support for marriage equality in a negative way to curry favor with voters would backfire. This meant we could play a significant role in target districts without fear of negative repercussions linked in the past to “gay donor support.”

• Our approach assumed that the pro-marriage candidate would broadcast their own positive messaging, which would allow us to focus on the anti-gay candidate’s negatives. The significant extra resources we could drive into a race would help push pro-marriage candidates over the top to win their campaigns.
  
  
Winning
On Election Night, we tallied up our victories – four races, over $790,000 raised, and four victories to help us get three new “yes” votes for equality legislation. In each of the races, we were a significant force in keeping an anti-marriage vote from returning to Albany. Hiram Monserrate lost his race by 39 percentage points, and Bill Stachowski lost his by 37 percentage points. Both were defeated by outspoken pro-equality candidates. Fight Back NY’s expenditures totaled at least a quarter of the overall amount spent by both pro-equality challengers.

In the general election, the vote margins were closer, meaning that our investments played even more of a significant role in the final outcome. Pro-marriage candidate Tony Avella beat Frank Padavan by six percentage points, and Tim Kennedy beat Jack Quinn by just three percentage points.



Bottom line—our overall contribution to each race was considerable and our impact was noticeable. Our message-tested ads and mailings – which can be found to the right, "More Results" – proved to be effective and forceful. New York political media outlets pronounced Fight Back NY as an overall winner in our electoral approach, citing our smart targeting and aggressive tactics. In the end, campaign finance reports showed that Fight Bank NY was the largest independent expenditure campaign focused on state senate races.



Our impact – in New York and beyond

Fight Back NY’s impact goes beyond the borders of the Empire State: by demonstrating that the LGBT community can wage aggressive electoral campaigns against elected officials who oppose our equality, we become more than just political donors—we become a force to be reckoned with. In doing this, Fight Back NY supporters helped add another commanding tool to our collective efforts to advance equality – the knowledge that a “no” vote on equality legislation could cost an elected official their seat. We helped set a powerful precedent—one that will undoubtedly be in the minds of any future legislator who considers voting against equality.