Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual State Legislators in the United States
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Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual State Legislators in the United States Developing A New Database Charles W. Gossett Department of Public Policy & Administration Department of Government California State University Sacramento [email protected] (Please consult author before citing) A paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Conference of the Western Political Science Association, Seattle, WA, April 16-20, 2014 2 “Representation” is a perennial topic of study in political science, both from theoretical perspectives and as an empirical factor that may or may not have specific consequences for political outcomes. One of the major lines of research about representation concerns the demographic characteristics of the representatives themselves. Three basic types of research questions predominate in this area: 1) to what extent is a particular demographic group represented in an elected body (descriptive representation); 2) to what extent does a particular demographic characteristic correlate with voting behavior or a representative’s policy priorities (substantive representation), and 3) does the level of group representation have any impact on overall policy outcomes. In recent years, there have been numerous studies generally focused on these specific questions, primarily with respect to women and historically underrepresented minority groups, notably African Americans and Latinos. Whether or not the findings of studies on other groups apply to questions of representation of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB)1 Americans has begun to be studied, as well. However, unlike those studies of other groups, the study of LGB political representation has a more difficult time in identifying the answer to the first question, namely: What is the extent of LGB representation? Before one can get to the systematic study of the second two questions, one has to know the extent of LGB presence in any specific legislative body. The goal of this project is to develop a database of GLB state legislators that can be used by different researchers, thereby creating a common database that will allow the work of one scholar to be replicated by another. The purpose of this paper is to make an effort to provide an accurate and comprehensive list of all LGB legislators in American states and to raise some of the questions and issues that have to be answered in deciding who should and should not be included in the database. In developing this database, one also learns of some of the specific features of American state legislatures that make the project more challenging. While some of the work on the impact of group representation on legislative voting behavior and policy outcomes has focused on the United State Congress, much of the comparative work has been done in the context of state legislatures. Fifty states and five territorial governments provide a reasonably sized pool of data points that allows researchers to make comparisons and apply a number of statistical 1 The focus of this paper is on LGB state legislators because to date no open transgendered person has served in a state legislature. Haider-Markel (2002) cites Althea Garrison as being the first transgendered state legislator in the U.S. (elected in Massachusetts in 1992 and outed shortly after the election [Ferguson 2012]), but Ms. Garrison has never publicly acknowledged her status as a transgendered legislator even though she continues to campaign for elected office to this day (Bernstein 2013; Roberts 2012). A second transgendered candidate, Stacie Laughton, was elected to the New Hampshire state legislature in 2012, but the State Attorney General found her ineligible for the seat because of a previous felony conviction, the penalty for which still had not been completed, and she submitted a resignation before ever being sworn in (Gill 2013). 3 procedures to the data if that is the direction they want to go in. Such research also benefits from reasonably comprehensive and accessible data sources for information needed for these kinds of studies. However, one piece of data, in particular, that has proved hard to come by is the number of openly GLB state legislators in a particular state in any given year. There are a few studies that have attempted to look at the second and third questions and they have developed databases for the purposes of their studies, most notably the work of Donald Haider-Markel and his various co-authors. Beginning with his dissertation, Haider-Markel (1997) has produced and printed lists of open LGBT elected officials in the American states (Haider-Markel 2000; Smith & Haider- Markel 2002) as appendices. In more recent work, however, where he uses the data in conducting various statistical analyses about the impact of LGB representation, the actual data source tends to be simply referenced as “compiled by the author” from some specifically named sources (e.g., Victory Fund, Human Rights Campaign, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force) and specific terms used in database research. Likewise, Rebekah Herrick (2009, 2010(a), 2010(b)) makes reference to her data sources for the information (Victory Fund). If anyone would want to reproduce their studies, they would need to rely on a final list put together by the author him or herself. It might be possible to access some data from the organizations identified by these authors, but it would not be easy, as will be discussed below. Recently Reynolds (2013) has done similar work focused on legislators in national governing bodies. This project emerged as I began to think about possible research projects about the impact of LGB legislators on public policy. The first thing I needed was a list of who those LGB legislators are/were and when they served. It was my difficulty in finding such a list, or at least a list that I felt was reliable, that led me to try to create a master list of LGBT state and territorial legislatures with the idea of making it publicly accessible, accurate, and comprehensive. In this effort, I learned quite a bit about LGB public officials, “coming out” as an elected official, and a number of specific quirks in particular state legislatures that I didn’t know before. Before moving to a report on some of the specific information that I have developed, I want to describe some of the challenges those working in this area will face. The Usual Suspects for Data As I noted, researchers tend to rely on national organizations for information about state legislatures. There is not necessarily anything wrong with this IF the national organizations have prioritized the maintenance of accurate state records as part of their mission. The Human Resource Campaign (HRC) does a good job of keeping track of state policy developments – consider, for example the many “state 4 policy adoption” maps they maintain and which are easily available from their main website (but note there is not a map of elected officials), but their principal focus with respect to candidates has been at the federal level. HRC also puts out an annual compendium of GLBT legislation considered in the states that is essential for studies of whether or not LGB policy success is affected by the presence of LGB legislators. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has in recent years been much more of a policy shop that conducts important studies and produces reports that the media and public can use to understand the issues. They also monitor LGB -related policy activity at the state level and publish issue maps. Another major activity is putting on the annual “Creating Change” workshop to train activists in general but they don’t specifically train candidates to run for office. It has fallen to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund to specialize in LGB political candidates and elected officials more specifically. And while they do provide assistance to Congressional candidates, most of their work is at the state and local levels. One of their most important tasks is training LGB candidates and advising previously closeted LGB elected officials about strategies for coming out publicly. Although they have some information online about current elected officials, the historical information available tends to be about LGB candidates they supported (and whether or not they were successful in the election) which means that LGB candidates who don’t seek their financial support are not going to be listed in their “Scorecard” as a winner or loser and may not be included in their list of current officials. The Victory Fund’s online listing of elected officials is disappointing, to say the list; the problem starts with the fact the first six people appearing on list have no names attached to the photos. The online accessibility to their Gay Politics Report is limited in how far it goes back and the lack of a search engine for using it. This division of labor among the groups is not a bad thing at all. The problem is, for someone who wants up-to-date and accurate information about GLB (and T) elected officials, these websites provide a place to start, but they don’t generate a lot of confidence that they are complete and accurate. I will note, for the record, that there is what appears to be a comprehensive listing of GLBT parliamentarians (including U.S. members of Congress) that is published online, but I am not in a position to talk about its reliability. The site was established by the LGBT Representation & Rights Research Initiative housed at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. New Resources 5 In the end, I began with the published list from Haider-Markel in his 2000 article, then various reports put out by the Victory Fund that listed “their” winners and losers, random news stories I have been collecting over the years, and a Google search using a variety of terms – gay, lesbian, legislature, elected, and the names of specific states.