In crucial shift, governor sways 15 in GOP to support measure
Through all the twists and shifts during the gay-marriage debate this year, there was one constant: 22 Republicans in the House of Representatives opposed every measure that would grant gay couples civil unions in the constitution.
That all changed yesterday, however, when 15 of that 22-member bloc broke away at the urging of Governor Mitt Romney and voted in favor of a proposed amendment that would ban gay marriage but create Vermont-style civil unions.
Those 15 members provided the margin of victory, observers from both camps said yesterday after the measure passed by just five votes.
In the end, the 15 agreed that approving a measure that they viewed as highly undesirable was preferable to the possibility that nothing would be sent to the state ballot for voters to weigh in on.
"Basically, we were boxed in, and something was better than nothing," said Representative Paul K. Frost of Auburn, one of the 15 GOP bloc members who backed the amendment.
Said Representative Jeffrey D. Perry, Republican of Sandwich: "At the end of the day, this was the best we could do. I felt obligated to give something to the people. This was far from what I had hoped it would be, but I felt it was my duty to give the people the opportunity to be heard on this."
To be sure, the House Republicans did not solely determine yesterday's outcome. The coalition that approved the amendment pushed by Senate President Robert E. Travaglini included dozens of Democratic loyalists to House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran and nearly half the 40-member Senate, many of them close allies of Travaglini.
But the House Republicans were critical, because of the unpredictability of how they would vote at the final moment.
Most Republicans interviewed yesterday downplayed Romney's influence over the final vote tally, yet it was clear that the Republican governor had a major effect on the fracturing of the 22-member bloc. Prior to the final vote, Romney's chief of staff, Beth Myers, met behind closed doors with the House Republicans in their first-floor leadership suite, informing them that the governor needed the Legislature to pass some amendment so he could justify his planned request to the Supreme Judicial Court to stay its ruling legalizing gay marriage.
House Republican leaders Bradley H. Jones Jr. and George N. Peterson Jr. were steadfast in their opposition to the proposal, however. Jones and Peterson viewed the so-called compromise amendment as confusing and doomed to failure at the ballot.
But Jones said he refused to twist his colleagues' arms over the matter. "I told them to vote their conscience," Jones said, emerging from the caucus just before the final stretch of floor debate.
The collapse of the 22-vote bloc ended a string of identical votes through 10 prior roll calls in more than three marathon constitutional sessions this year. (The bloc includes Scott P. Brown of Wrentham, a former House member who voted yesterday as a senator after winning a recent special election.) Throughout the day yesterday, Republican House members tried against all odds to impede the amendment they ultimately supported, hoping instead that other measures sponsored by Republicans would come up for a vote.
In the opening moments yesterday, Peterson rose in a bid to get the compromise measure sponsored by Travaglini tossed out, arguing that Senate leaders had sidestepped the procedure for offering amendments. He told his colleagues that he had reviewed the video footage of the prior Constitutional Convention March 11, and insisted that there was foul play afoot.
But several lawmakers merely chuckled.
"I commend my friend from Grafton for trying to implement the instant-replay rule in the House," said Representative Charles A. Murphy, Democrat of Burlington.
Travaglini ruled that Peterson's point was out of order, but Republicans shot back that they doubted Travaglini's ruling, forcing a full roll-call vote to see if a majority of the Legislature agreed. If the Republicans had won that vote, their favored proposals, offered by GOP Representatives Vinny M. deMacedo of Plymouth and Paul Loscocco of Holliston, almost surely would have come to a vote.
But only 48 of 199 lawmakers, including the 22 unified House Republicans, thought Travaglini had flouted the Constitutional Convention's rules.
If the House Republicans provided the winning edge yesterday, another key development was the failure of gay-marriage proponents in the Legislature to persuade colleagues they viewed as ambivalent to abandon the Travaglini measure on the final vote. The pro-marriage camp, led by Senator Jarrett T. Barrios of Cambridge, pushed Democratic colleagues such as Senators Frederick E. Berry of Peabody and Joan M. Menard of Somerset to take the potentially risky step of breaking with the Senate president. But in the end, those members felt they could not vote no on the measure without Travaglini's consent, and they did not get it, according to a Senate aide and a strategist for the gay-marriage supporters.
The gay-marriage backers made obvious progress, increasing their numbers from 77 earlier this month, to 92 on the final roll call yesterday. They said they viewed the slim margin of defeat as evidence they can come back and kill the measure during the 2005-06 legislative session.
"Strategy met strategy," said Representative Byron Rushing, a South End Democrat and gay-marriage proponent. "But we were able to gain enough support in the House to clearly demonstrate the Constitutional Convention is divided on the issue. If we could have gotten four more legislators to vote no, we would have won. We know what we need to work on now is gaining five to 10 legislators who would, after they thought about this, be willing to vote no at the next Constitutional Convention."
