hen California teacher Mark Takano ran for Congress 15 years ago, he lost to Republican challenger Ken Calvert by a scant 519 votes. Two years later, things looked more promising. Police had caught Calvert with a prostitute; Takano should have easily clinched a win. But just three months before the election, Ray Haynes—a Calvert supporter in the state assembly—outed Takano as gay.
“I said quite clearly I personally don’t want a homosexual representing me in Congress,” Haynes said at the time.
Takano’s opponents sent a late mailer, which asked voters in pink letters to consider whether Takano should be “A Congressman for Riverside … or San Francisco?” He lost again, by a much wider margin than his first run.
But what once sunk his campaign could prove to be a boon as Takano runs for the U.S. House again next year. “I think the atmosphere has changed fairly dramatically,” Takano says. “A former regional director of the Democratic Party here [told me], ‘Your sexual orientation back in the early ’90s was maybe a liability, but now it’s probably an asset.’”
See the full article from “The American Prospect”
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