Since helping to found the Rainbow House as a Tufts sophomore, Carl Sciortino has stepped into the national fray on gay marriage by winning the Democratic primary for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
"The reason I got very involved politically and as a student activist around the gay issues was because it was important to me to give back to my community," said Sciortino in an interview at Diesel Caf?© in Davis Square.
Sciortino's path to the State House began when some Massachusetts state legislators began working on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Tufts graduate and Somerville resident Sciortino wanted to know where his own state representative, 16-year incumbent Vincent Ciampa, stood on the issue.
After writing over two dozen letters to Ciampa, Sciortino and two friends - one of whom would become his campaign manager - went directly to Ciampa's office on Beacon Hill to meet with the man Sciortino would later defeat.
"It took him quite a long time during that meeting to actually say where he stood, and we made it very clear that we weren't leaving until we got an answer," Sciortino said. "We left there, and based on that, talked for many weeks about whether we should do anything more about it and decided I should run and see what happens."
Sciortino's fears were well-founded - in March 2004, Ciampa voted for a constitutional amendment which would prohibit gay marriage but establish civil unions. The amendment passed 105 to 92, but the legislature must consider it for a second vote during the 2005-2006 session. The proposed amendment must also be approved on a statewide popular ballot in 2006 in order to become law.
That second statehouse vote has made the 2004 election a critical battleground for both sides of the gay marriage debate. Sciortino's win has moved the legislature one vote closer to defeating the amendment, a fact that was not lost on pro-gay marriage groups during the primary campaign.
Since many Massachusetts Democrats face no Republican challengers in statewide races, pro-gay marriage groups targeted 11 incumbent House members who supported the ban on gay marriage in their primary battles, including Ciampa. These groups rallied behind Sciortino from the get-go, helping him and other Democratic challengers financially and with volunteer support.
Sciortino received the endorsement of MassEquality, The Freedom to Marry Coalition and The Victory Fund. According to publicly-available finance information, of the $50,985.34 that Sciortino had raised two weeks before the election, $500 came from the Freedom to Mary Coalition and $500 from Gay Pennies for Politics.
But Sciortino estimates that only 10 percent of the money they raised was because of the gay marriage issue. In response to the accusation that her candidate was carried only by pro-gay marriage money, campaign manager Rachel Berry pointed out that Sciortino received funds from a smaller number of political action committees than the 31 from which Ciampa received donations.
According to an analysis by The Somerville Journal, 69 percent of the money Sciortino raised came from outside his electoral district, while 77 percent of the $22,335 Ciampa raised came from outside of the district.
But Sciortino's election was not a referendum on gay marriage, Berry said. The Sciortino campaign conducted two internal polls to evaluate what issues were most important to Somerville and Medford voters. Gay marriage ranked lower than education, health care and the economy, the most important issues.
And although Sciortino was open about his policy on gay marriage, of the five flyers circulated by his campaign, only two mentioned the issue. The flyer distributed most often was about education and attacked Ciampa for voting against $1 million in funding for local schools.
Pro-gay marriage groups also helped to defend eight legislators who opposed the gay marriage ban that were being challenged in the Sept. 14 primary. The groups were successful in defending all eight seats and managed to unseat two of the incumbents who voted for the gay marriage ban.
Sciortino's decision to run for public office grew out of a history of working for his community. In his first semester at Tufts, Sciortino was elected LBGT culture representative to the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate. That year he also met Rachel Berry, daughter of political science Professor Jeffery Berry, with whom he successfully lobbied the University to open the Rainbow House for LBGT students. Eight years later, Rachel Berry, who is also openly gay, became Sciortino's campaign manager when he ran for statewide office.
