Ron Buckmire took it upon himself to debunk the idea that "it's African-Americans' fault." He acknowledged that majorities of black voters voted for Prop 8 and noted that they were courted to do so with an aggressive campaign of robocalls and mailers conflating Barack Obama's position on gay marriage with his position on Prop 8.
In Arkansas, he reminded us, black voters voted against the initiative preventing non-married couples from adopting or providing foster care for children. Buckmire concluded that African-Americans are no more homophobic than any other demographic group.
He noted that there were 1.3 million voters who voted for Obama and against Prop 4 but were for Prop 8. "Maybe we should be blaming pro-choice Obama supporters."
[...]
One interesting moment came when Buckmire was asked why there is such a wide gap between people who were engaged before the election and people who are now. Buckmire answered, I think correctly, that complacency had set in because people thought "No on 8" was ahead. He then mentioned internal polls, which apparently consistently showed Yes on 8 ahead. So someone in the audience yelled out angrily "why didn't you tell us!?" [EQCA Executive Director Geoff] Kors responded that they sent out many emails saying not to believe the public polls, that their internal polls were showing a much tighter race and whenever they did that, they were accused of simply fear-mongering to raise money. Once there was a public poll that confirmed what their internal polls were showing, people suddenly got engaged.
I do agree that (in hindsight) it was a tactical error for the NO ON PROP 8 campaign not to share their internal polls with the public but Deputy Campaign Manager Sky Johnson told me on Thursday that even when theyshared actual internal poll data with potential funders they were being rebuffed in August and September--people thought it was just a fundraising ploy.
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