In a special election on Tuesday, the voters of Massachusetts will elect their next US Senator. That person will be either the 60th Democrat or the 41st Republican in Washington, DC.
The race was supposed to be a cakewalk for the Democrat, Martha Coakley who is the current state attorney general, but it has turned into a toss-up. The Republican candidate, Scott Brown, is closer to winning than any Massachusetts Republican has been in the past two generations, according to the trends in state opinion surveys.
There are differences between the candidates when it comes to the marriage issue.
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Coakley wants to repeal DOMA and Brown wants to protect DOMA. Coakley, as attorney general, has filed the first and only state sponsored challenge to DOMA in federal court.
Brown, as a state senator, repeatedly supported a state marriage amendment. At the state constitutional convention a couple years ago he was among those who voted in favor of placing the amendment on the ballot to give the people of Massachusetts the opportunity to vote directly on the issue.
Coakley supported the SSM campaign in Massachusetts and opposed the prospect of a ballot vote on a marriage amendment. She participated in the procedural obstructionism that defeated the effort to hold a vote on a state marriage amendment.
Both have said that in their opinion the localized imposition of SSM is "settled law" in Massachusetts.
Both oppose a federal marriage amendment.
Brown supports DOMA because it allows the states to decide the marriage issue through direct votes of the people or through elected representatives. The question for him is: would he support a federal marriage amendment if DOMA was repealed by Congress or if it was overturned by the judiciary?
Coakley opposes DOMA because, she says, there are SSMs which state governments are not allowed to treat as marriages when implementing social policies which are funded or mandated by federal law. The question for her is: would she agree with Olson, and with the CA anti-8 litigators, that abolishing marital status would solve the constitutional problem, as she sees it?
Maybe readers can suggest a better question for each candidate?
Brown says that he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman but he also supports civil union for same-sex twosomes. Coakley supports the merging of SSM and marriage across the country.
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Sources:
Public Policy Polling: Massachusetts Senate Poll.
Boston Globe: Being the underdog never deters a driven Brown.
Campaign website: Martha Coakley.
Campaign website: Scott Brown.
UPDATE (18 Jan 2010) - Rothenberg, Pollster.com, and widening consensus: "Not just a win, but “a comfortable win." Anything could still happen.
Massachusetts Family Institute: "Special US Senate Election, Voter Guide."
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