Gay Marriage Prognosticating, House Edition
On Thursday the Minnesota House is expected to vote on HF 1054, the Gay Marriage bill. According to Tom Bakk, the Senate will follow shortly after:
House DFL leaders plan to bring a bill to legalize gay marriage to the full floor on Thursday, expressing confidence that they have secured votes to pass the proposal in the chamber.
The vote in the House will come just six months after voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. House Speaker Paul Thissen has repeatedly said he would not bring the bill to the floor until he has the necessary 68 votes to pass the measure. The Senate is expected to take up the bill after the House, with Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk expressing confidence in its passage there. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, a strong supporter of gay marriage, has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.
With this in mind, I’m going to revisit a pair of posts I did back in December. For those who haven’t been following along, almost six months ago now I wrote a post called “Marriage Equality in 2013: The In-between Senators” and another post called “Marriage Equality in 2013: The In-between Representatives.”
What those posts lacked in concise titles, they made up for in tables of information. The information being those Republican Senators and Representatives who represent districts that voted against the anti-marriage amendment and those DFL Senators and Representatives who represent districts that voted for said amendment.
The idea being to see who the “swing votes” were going to be, and which way they were likely to swing.
More information is known about where some of those members stand, and with news that the votes for passage are secured in both chambers, I’m going to look at where all the votes are coming from. Starting with the house.
First, here is the table I made in December, except that I’ve changed the contents of the column titled “Info.” That column now contains the current status of these legislator’s as best as I can gather:
| HD | Representative | N-Y | D-R | Margin | Info |
| 40A | Michael Nelson | -2% | 100% | 98% | Yes |
| 06A | Carly Melin | -6% | 42% | 36% | Yes |
| 11A | Mike Sundin | -5% | 36% | 31% | Yes |
| 03A | David Dill | -3% | 34% | 31% | |
| 06B | Jason Metsa | -7% | 37% | 30% | Yes |
| 27B | Jeanne Poppe | -16% | 26% | 10% | |
| 04B | Paul Marquart | -21% | 31% | 10% | |
| 05A | John Persell | -5% | 12% | 7% | |
| 10A | John Ward | -16% | 14% | -2% | |
| 24B | Patti Fritz | -17% | 14% | -3% | No |
| 05B | Tom Anzelc | -16% | 7% | -9% | Yes |
| 02A | Roger Erickson | -21% | 9% | -12% | |
| 27A | Shannon Savick | -22% | 3% | -19% | Yes |
| 17B | Mary Sawatzky | -24% | 5% | -19% | No |
| 11B | Tim Faust | -27% | 3% | -24% | Yes |
| 17A | Andrew Falk | -33% | 8% | -25% | |
| 10B | Joe Radinovich | -27% | 1% | -26% | Yes |
| 12A | Jay McNamar | -29% | 1% | -28% |
Assuming that all of the DFLers who are not on this list vote Yes and all the Republicans vote No, then thirteen of those people will have to vote Yes. Given the information available, eight are a Yes while two are a No.
That leaves eight more from which five votes are needed. Below is a table with just those eight individuals.
| HD | Representative | N-Y | D-R | Margin |
| 03A | David Dill | -3% | 34% | 31% |
| 27B | Jeanne Poppe | -16% | 26% | 10% |
| 04B | Paul Marquart | -21% | 31% | 10% |
| 05A | John Persell | -5% | 12% | 7% |
| 10A | John Ward | -16% | 14% | -2% |
| 02A | Roger Erickson | -21% | 9% | -12% |
| 17A | Andrew Falk | -33% | 8% | -25% |
| 12A | Jay McNamar | -29% | 1% | -28% |
Since the vote is scheduled and Speaker Paul Thiessen said the vote would only happen if there were enough votes for passage, we know that at least five of these Democrats will be voting for the bill.
Jeanne Poppe has said that she is leaning Yes, so we’ll count her as a Yes, for a total of nine Yes votes. And while David Dill hasn’t said anything and he has the largest electoral cushion on this list, I’m going to assume that he will be voting against marriage equality, or more likely, not voting at all.
That leaves six DFLers and four votes still needed.
Both Paul Marquart and John Persell won their elections rather handily and have a bit of an electoral cushion, so I’m going to put them down as Yes votes as well. Along the same lines, John Ward also won by a large margin and while his district voted for the amendment to a slightly greater degree, he still won by 14 points.
And on Monday Baird Helgeson reported the following:
Freshman Rep. Jay McNamar, DFL-Elbow Lake, also continues to wrestle with the issue. The retired schoolteacher said that a neighbor on one side supports same-sex marriage and his other neighbor strongly opposes it. Both are former students.
McNamar said he will likely make up his mind on the issue the moment of the final vote.
If we assume that McNamar didn’t make up his mind in the meantime, then the 68th vote is coming from one of the two remaining DFLers from the above list; Andrew Falk or Roger Erickson. Or both. Because of course, there could always be more then 68 votes for Marriage Equality.
But if one of those two is more likely to be the deciding vote, the biggest difference between the two that we can point to, as it concerns the issue of gay marriage, is their age. Roger Erickson is 59 years old while Andrew Falk is 30 years old.
If there is one single demographic predictor of support for gay marriage, it’s age. So I’ll take Andrew Falk as the 68th vote.
Here than is the final table, with my predictions in bold.
| HD | Representative | N-Y | D-R | Margin | Info |
| 40A | Michael Nelson | -2% | 100% | 98% | Yes |
| 06A | Carly Melin | -6% | 42% | 36% | Yes |
| 11A | Mike Sundin | -5% | 36% | 31% | Yes |
| 03A | David Dill | -3% | 34% | 31% | No |
| 06B | Jason Metsa | -7% | 37% | 30% | Yes |
| 27B | Jeanne Poppe | -16% | 26% | 10% | Yes |
| 04B | Paul Marquart | -21% | 31% | 10% | Yes |
| 05A | John Persell | -5% | 12% | 7% | Yes |
| 10A | John Ward | -16% | 14% | -2% | Yes |
| 24B | Patti Fritz | -17% | 14% | -3% | No |
| 05B | Tom Anzelc | -16% | 7% | -9% | Yes |
| 02A | Roger Erickson | -21% | 9% | -12% | |
| 27A | Shannon Savick | -22% | 3% | -19% | Yes |
| 17B | Mary Sawatzky | -24% | 5% | -19% | No |
| 11B | Tim Faust | -27% | 3% | -24% | Yes |
| 17A | Andrew Falk | -33% | 8% | -25% | Yes |
| 10B | Joe Radinovich | -27% | 1% | -26% | Yes |
| 12A | Jay McNamar | -29% | 1% | -28% |
I left Roger Erickson and Jay McNamar blank because their votes aren’t required to get to 68 and the purpose of this exercise was to find the 68 most likely votes for Gay Marriage. Which is what I believe I have done. On Thursday we’ll find out.
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