In a key midterm election year, an unexpected Supreme Court decision on a divisive political issue would usually send shockwaves.
But when the Supreme Court opted recently to let stand rulings allowing gay marriage in five states, paving the way for gay marriage in many others, it hardly registered on the campaign trail.
In North Carolina, an important battleground state in the fight for a Senate majority, the court’s decision has already had a major impact.
A federal circuit judge decided last week that same-sex marriages in North Carolina could move forward despite an ongoing lawsuit over the state’s Amendment One ballot measure that banned such marriages.
Yet neither Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan nor Republican Thom Tillis did much with the issue.
Instead, in a recent debate, Hagan lumped in Amendment One with other examples of Tillis’ record in the statehouse as House speaker.
“Speaker Tillis is wasting your taxpayer dollars litigating a law that the Supreme Court has said, pretty much, leave it alone,” Hagan said.
Tillis said that he would continue to fight the court’s decision.
“The citizens voted 60 percent for this law,” Tillis responded. “That’s why I’m doing my job.”
Such political ambivalence seems to reflect a growing acceptance of gay marriage and the sense nationally that it will eventually be legal where now it is not.
The shift presents a challenge to Republicans, as they have recognized that gay marriage will not be a winning issue and have tried to change course.
When a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll asked respondents whether their views on gay marriage align more closely with those of Republicans or Democrats, the result overwhelmingly favored Democrats, 48 percent to 31 percent.
“The dynamics on this issue have changed incredibly since 2004, when the issue was used as a wedge on the opposite side,” said Jeff Cook-McCormac, a senior adviser to the American Unity PAC founded by billionaire GOP donor Paul Singer to encourage Republican candidates to support gay marriage.
Now, growing numbers of Republican candidates see a political benefit to supporting same-sex marriage. This year, the PAC will support five Republican House incumbents, another five to seven House challengers, and two Republican Senate candidates: Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine, and Oregon’s Monica Wehby, who is taking on Sen. Jeff Merkley.
“The political benefit to being perceived as anti-gay as a candidate has really evaporated,” Cook-McCormac said.
One competitive Senate race this year has provided a particularly apt case study of the shifting political debate over gay marriage.
In Colorado, another state where gay marriage became legal this month as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, Republican Rep. Cory Gardner has talked about the issue under the broad umbrella of nondiscrimination.
Gardner’s Democratic opponent, Sen. Mark Udall, has long supported same-sex marriage, but Gardner once opposed a measure in Colorado that would have allowed gay couples to adopt. Now, he says he has changed his mind on that issue.
“I don’t think we should have discrimination in this country but people also have beliefs, issues, they may … from a religious standpoint be concerned about,” he told a local news network this year.
The pivot appears to have worked.
When the Denver Post offered Gardner its surprise endorsement, the editorial board wrote that “his past views on same-sex marriage are becoming irrelevant now that the Supreme Court has let appeals court rulings stand and marriage equality appears unstoppable.”
