Prop. 73: What's been gained by losing?

THE SPECIAL ELECTION: ASSESSING THE VOTE
EVANGELICALS: GOP sees fired-up base after close vote on Prop. 73
Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, November 10, 2005

The GOP consultant who rallied evangelical Christians to support Proposition 73, the parental notification measure for abortion, said Wednesday that the initiative's near miss was a sign that California was ready for more religious involvement in politics.

The start, said Republican organizer Gary Marx, could be a ballot measure to insert in the state Constitution a ban on same-sex marriage.

Even though proponents ran no TV ads, Prop. 73 lost by less than six percentage points Tuesday -- the tightest margin on a day every other initiative on the ballot was routed.

Even abortion rights advocates who opposed Prop. 73 noted that much of California outside the liberal coastal counties had supported the measure, a possible sign that evangelical Christians had been energized to vote.

The initiative's backers concentrated on getting out the evangelical vote in fast-growing Central Valley counties. On Tuesday, 62 percent of Fresno County voters backed the measure. In Kern County, the figure was 65 percent.

"Yeah, Prop. 73 went down, but it failed by a narrow margin," said Elizabeth Creely, an organizer with Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights. "California is not a safe state (for abortion rights.) They (Republicans) found a lot of energy out there."

Marx, a Virginia consultant who worked on President Bush's campaign last year reaching out to evangelicals, said that energy could be focused next on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Such an amendment would strengthen the state's definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, which became law -- but not part of the Constitution -- when voters approved Prop. 22 in 2000.

"People saw that (evangelicals) are a great, untapped area," said Marx, who the California Republican Party brought in two months ago to reach out to evangelicals. "The ground is paved for a similar type of effort on a marriage amendment."

Republican leaders reacted to the idea cautiously. Mike Vallante, the state party's chief operating officer, said that while Prop. 73 had a crossover appeal in its parental notification feature, a ban on same-sex marriage would be more challenging to sell to voters. He said it was too soon to say whether the party would support one.

"We'd probably find more dissent on that issue," Vallante said. "If I had to look into my crystal ball, immigration might be an issue that might have an appeal to a wider variety of Californians."

An initiative being circulated by GOP Assemblyman Ray Haynes of Murrieta (Riverside County) would amend the state Constitution to create a California border patrol to arrest suspected illegal immigrants. It must gather 598,105 signatures by Dec. 12 to qualify for the ballot next year.

At the same time, Vallante said he was thrilled at the "person-to-person" contact that the GOP had made in the evangelical community.

"One of the things we decided in focusing on 73 is that we didn't want to take our base for granted," Vallante said. "In the past, that's what we would have done. Now that we've made these inroads with the evangelicals, we definitely want to build on that."

Marx modeled his strategy on the same one that helped put Bush in the White House for another four years in 2004: tap into the social networks of conservative evangelicals by getting them excited to vote on a social issue.

In 2004, that issue was the anti-gay marriage propositions on several state ballots. In California it was Prop. 73, which would have amended the state Constitution to require a doctor to provide written notice to a parent or guardian of an unmarried girl under age 18 at least 48 hours before performing an abortion, except in medical emergencies.

Over the past several weeks, supporters showed DVDs in evangelical churches and prepared pro-Prop. 73 homilies for Roman Catholic parishes.

The narrowness of Prop. 73's loss was a bright spot for Peter Henderson, who chairs the steering committee for ProtectMarriage.com and supported the measure.

Henderson's group is trying to qualify a constitutional amendment for next year's ballot that would say marriage "between a man and a woman is the only legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state."

"The high number of votes (Prop. 73) got in the red counties -- that's very encouraging to us," Henderson said. "A marriage amendment would be a good way to get conservatives out there to get in support of Arnold next year. He's going to need our support."

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a wild card for 2006, when he will be up for re-election, said Bill Whalen, a Hoover Institution research fellow and former GOP strategist.

"He's said that he wants the people to decide (same sex marriage)," Whalen said. "You don't know how he'll come down on this."

Whalen said that while Marx's take on Prop. 73 was "not exactly spin, it was very optimistic."

"On one hand, he should be very pleased with the result, given that it seemed like the voters were just voting 'no' on everything," Whalen said. "But next year is going to be a very different ballgame."