The new City Council: And then there were three
by David WarnerI know it’s not the main issue.
I believe that Darden Rice and Amy Foster were elected to St. Pete City Council because of their platforms, their experience, their ability to move the city forward — and that those are the same reasons voters have elected Steve Kornell to the council twice.
I agree with Rice that the fact that the three are gay is not a big deal — in fact, as she told me on election night, “In a way it’s progress because [italics mine] it’s not a big deal.”
But still.
I am very, very happy to suddenly be living in a city with as many openly gay City Councilpersons as West Hollywood.
West Hollywood: The L.A. gay mecca that was the first U.S. city to establish a same-sex domestic partnership registry — 28 years ago.
St. Pete: The city where Republican mayors refuse to march in pride parades.
How did we get here?
After all, it was only seven years ago that noted homophobe Theresa “Momma Tee” Lassiter was able to stir up trouble in Rice’s previous run for City Council by asking her at a community meeting if she was gay, then storming out when Rice answered in the affirmative. Rice lost that election.
This time around, the clout shifted. Rice won a coveted endorsement from the Victory Fund, the powerful national LGBT political action committee that named her race one of 10 to watch around the country in 2013. She went on to break fundraising records for a City Council race.
Meanwhile, the increasingly irrelevant Lassiter wrote a memo explaining why the Council didn’t need another “honey comb”— and voters ignored her. Kornell even made a joke about Momma Tee’s curious choice of anti-gay slur, introducing himself to CL’s Arielle Stevenson on election night with the wisecrack, “Have you met the new head of the honeycomb caucus?”
Rumor has it that opposing camps in this year’s Council races tried to play the anti-gay card, too, but in more covert fashion than Lassiter. But no matter — their tactics didn’t work.
Herb Snitzer, legendary photographer and man-about-St. Pete, summed it up nicely in his interview with Stevenson.
“We have three gay people on City Council now and a Jewish mayor. These distinctions don’t matter anymore because your generation, the youth, has changed that. No one gives a crap anymore and it’s awesome. It’s great.”
As Rice and Amy Foster stressed Tuesday night, they won because their campaigns dealt with issues everyone — straight, gay, whatever — has a stake in. Rice’s top three priorities will be mass transit, curbside recycling, and jobs in Midtown, she told me. Foster, who did a “listening tour” (shades of Hillary Clinton) when she began running, sees the election as a “sea change” for the city, but not just because of the newly diverse makeup of Council.
“You know everybody wants that to be important — to know that diversity in our city is valued,” she said. “But this is a win for all families.”
Rice pointed out that the victories are simply a reflection of how integrally involved LGBT people have become in the life of the city.
“It shows how active the gay community is in our entire community.”
And looking around at Tuesday’s national election results, you see that phenomenon in cities all over the country. Seattle electing its first openly gay mayor, State Sen. Ed Murray.
Houston re-electing openly lesbian Mayor Annise Parker.
New York City electing six gay City Councilmembers.
Maine’s U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud announcing he was gay so it wouldn’t be an issue in his campaign for governor.
And so on, and so on — so much so that you really do begin to think, well, a candidate’s sexual orientation isn’t a big deal anymore. I’m reminded of the roll call of openly gay elected officials in the documentary, Breaking Through, that was shown at this year’s Tampa International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival — so many that I started to think, OK, OK, enough already, I get the point. There’s a lot of ’em.
But then, that’s the wonderful, and still to me astonishing, point: There are so many of them. So many of us.
There has been a sea change. And St. Petersburg, bless its sometimes backwards, often progressive, determinedly independent heart, is part of it.