March 15, 2005

The Interviews
Ted Jackson: How We Won the Battle
Former field director for Citizens to Restore Fairness and current campaign manager for Nick Spencer’s run for City Council

By Rebecca Clark
Queen City Forum Magazine staff writer

With a professional background in theatre and event planning, Ted Jackson began as volunteer for the campaign to repeal Article XII when he found himself with a good deal of free time after being laid off from his job in Hamilton. Jackson was initially involved with the fundraising and media efforts, but he quickly became fascinated by the business of field politics.

I met people from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force who were doing the mentorship and training of local people. I really attached myself and became good friends with a woman named Sarah Reese, who really took me under her wing. She taught me the business of field politics. I loved it so much that I stopped doing fundraising and media and concentrated on field politics, on what it was going to take to get the word out about [repealing] Article XII. I liked it so much that I started applying for jobs in the field. I was essentially a staff person, working almost full-time, but not getting paid. I was still unemployed, working at a restaurant at night, and then decided to make a career change. The Article XII campaign said “we can’t lose you,” so they hired me. I was the Outreach Coordinator, then took over as a Field Organizer when [that person] left and moved back to DC. I became the lead Field Organizer and eventually the Field Director, and headed up GOTV plan.

We never engaged that conversation, which for some of our committee members was, I know, very nerve-wracking. By doing that, and not engaging it, in most ways it seemed to go away. Through that, we never lost any of our support [among pro-Issue 1 voters]. We had support of the Archbishop, who is someone who also would have supported Issue 1.

(Ohio Issue 1 fell in the City of Cincinnati by a margin of 47% to 53% and passed statewide 56% to 44%.)

The campaign to repeal Article XII identified 20,000 supporters through its extensive door-to-door canvassing efforts. Jackson talks about the importance of that personal contact to a gay rights campaign.

I really do think that [the repeal passed]… because people had a conversation with someone whom they perceived was gay about Article XII. They had an image of a gay person that wasn’t some outlandish person that they should be afraid of--who looked just like the person next door, or worked three cubicles down at work. By going door to door and having a face to face conversation, regardless of whether that canvasser was gay or not, they feel like they know a gay person now. Many of our canvassing volunteers were straight. They were friends or parents of gay people, but they [the person at the door] would assume that the canvasser was gay. One of the things that we used to do in our training of canvassers is that we would have people practice saying the word gay, because they were going to come out of the closet 40 times that day, regardless of whether or not they were gay.

By late afternoon on Election Day, the repeal campaign had moved all of its poll workers to African-American precincts along Reading Road where the opposition was concentrating its entire crew of paid workers.

We had a pretty angry crowd of people out there up and down Reading Rd. We had food donated [for our workers], but much more than we actually needed. I sent [one of our volunteers] up the Reading Rd corridor, and I said I want you to go feed our people but I also want you to feed the opposition. He looked at me funny --he was very nervous about doing this. “You’re a standing member of the African-American community,” I said. “You’ve been doing civil rights work for years. I want you to go up to their workers and say, ‘I understand we may be on different sides of this issue, but we’re all out here all day long and you’re hungry, so here’s a lunch.’ One by one, I started getting reports that some of those signs were coming down, and that all of our workers were suddenly being treated better.

One of the best [stories] that we had was [from] from a volunteer, a student from CCM. He had a whole group of people--5-6 opposition--with just him [at the polling place].

He was out in front of the Urban League polling site. [The No on 3 poll workers] had been paid by the opposition $125 to stand out there all day. He reminded them of the story of Jesus and the Temple, where Jesus went through the Temple and got upset because they were selling things in his temple. It had some sort of impact on them, and they ended up putting down their signs and leaving.

With the hard-won victory of Issue 3 under his belt, Jackson has moved on to manage Nick Spencer’s second run for City Council. At the end our conversation, Jackson shared his take on the current nature of field politics in Cincinnati.

The average canvasser, generally within a two-hour shift would identify ten supportive voters--that was for our issue, on the Repeal Article XII campaign. Everyone was terrified to go to the west side, because that had this perception that, you know, Westsiders were going to be Catholic, they were going to be anti-gay, things like that. And then you’d hit pockets of neighborhoods where younger couples had moved in--it was maybe their first home, they‘re just starting out in their marriage and their life-- and you’re finding a younger, more progressive voter. And moving to a neighborhood where they can afford to buy their first house. We’re seeing quite a bit of that. Kennedy Heights is seeing a revitalization right now, where people are moving in. So you’re seeing what happened to Mt. Adams 30 years ago starting to happen in other parts of the city, and because of that, you now have new voters over in other parts of the city that might vote differently or might think a different way. And so I think it’s very important to get in touch with those people and find out who they are. For the most part, in the past there’s been this three voter-bloc system [in Cincinnati], that essentially the areas between [I-] 71 and [I-] 75 are the African-American and white liberal areas, right? That’s where all the Democrats [are]. Everything east of [I-] 71 are all of the rich Republicans, and everything west of [I-] 75 were Catholic union members who were either going to vote Democrat or Republican depending on what the major issue were. They were the swing group. If the economy was the big issue, they were going to vote with the Democrats because they were all labor. But if it was social issues[that were big], they might vote with the conservatives. What we found was that that’s not totally true anymore. Nick [Spencer] really impressed upon me a desire to go out and meet and talk with the voters and run a voter identification campaign [to get to know these] new voters.

Links
· QCF Magazine --  “Religious Left Alive and Well in Cincinnati?"

· “Church and State, Religion and Politics ”
·  Pewforum.org --- "Religion and Politics: Contention and Consensus ”
·  The New York Times --- “Democrats Turn to Leader of Religious Left ”[Jan. 17, 2005]
·  Heartland Institute --- “What About the Religious Left?”[Feb 1, 1997]


Contact Information
· rebeccac@queencityforum.com