After the Democratic-majority State Senate rejected the same sex marriage bill last year, different gay rights advocacy groups decided to campaign against the Democrats who voted against the bill. One of those Democrats, Bill Stachowski who represents a district in western New York, lost the primary to challenger Tim Kennedy last night. Fight Back NY sent us this image showing a scoreboard: "The Gays 1, Stachowski 0."
The Human Rights Campaign issued a statement, "HRC’s Campaign for New York Marriage has been working in cooperation with Fight Back New York, Empire State Pride Agenda, Freedom to Marry and Marriage Equality New York to close the eight-vote gap blocking marriage equality in the New York state Senate. As part of the campaign, HRC endorsed Tim Kennedy and provided direct contributions, staff resources and volunteers to his campaign. Unfortunately two endorsees - Charlie Ramos and Lynn Nunes - were not successful in their primaries today." (Ramos lost to incumbent Bronx State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. and Nunes to Queens incumbent State Senator Shirley Huntley.)
Of course, Stachowski was probably also burdened by being an Albany incumbent—Capitol Confidential said that given Kennedy had few specifics on taking on the deficit and other issues, it seemed "more like he’s couching himself as a receptacle for votes cast against Stachowski (and the current, deeply unpopular, Senate) rather than for his own set of ideas."
