Reacting to the Mike Michaud Announcement

Rep. Mike Michaud (D-ME)

Since I write all of my articles a day or two in advance, and because he announced this yesterday morning, I did not have a chance to include Rep. Mike Michaud’s recent announcement that he is gay in our gay marriage update yesterday.  Michaud, a titan in Maine politics, came out in the Bangor Daily News yesterday in one of the more stunning developments of the 2014 gubernatorial races.

There are a myriad of questions that come from this, but the first thing I want to say is congratulations to the congressman.  Coming out to anyone, at any age, is not an easy thing to do and requires a lot of gumption.  I truly hope for his sake that this was a “the public was the last to know” sort of situation, as I wouldn’t want him to have had to be in the closet with his friends, family, and colleagues for so many years if he didn’t want to.  But I get it if he did-coming out of the closet, no matter how supportive and wonderful it is when you eventually do, SUCKS!  Inevitably there’s someone who reacts the way you always assumed they would, someone who finds out before you wanted to tell them, and someone whom you remain in the closet to (unless of course you’re a public figure like Michaud, where that bell can’t be unrung).

However, I don’t want to steer away from the impact of his decision, and I do agree that this should have no bearing on his campaign, except hopefully that it will continue to crack glass ceilings about openness and acceptance toward gay people.  But we don’t live in a perfect world, and the question of course has to be asked: what impact, if any, will this announcement have on Michaud’s campaign to become the next governor of Maine?

The reality is that no person has ever been openly gay and elected governor of a state (Jim McGreevey came out after he was already governor and didn’t run for another term), and the sample size of openly GLBT politicians who have run for statewide office are extremely small.  By my estimation (please correct me in the comments if I’m wrong), only four openly GLBT people have won election to statewide office in the United States: Ed Flanagan (the first, in Vermont), Kevin Lembo (D-CT), Kate Brown (D-OR), and of course most famously, Tammy Baldwin to the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin.

I couldn’t find a list of candidates who have lost (again, hit up the comments to continue the discussion), so it’s hard to see if there is a sort of Bradley Effect with these candidates.  It’s worth noting that all four hale from progressive states, a title one could assuredly assign to Maine.  Looking at Lembo’s race in particular (considering that Maine and Connecticut are close in terms of electorates, though Maine would be considered slightly more independent), the state’s Comptroller won his race by roughly the same margins as other first-time constitutional office candidates Denise Merrill and George Jepsen, meaning that party label almost assuredly had more to do with his victory than his sexuality.  Kate Brown won her first run for office by a similar margin to State Treasurer Ben Westlund, a different first-time candidate.  Though there are likely some Bradley Effects that may take place with an openly gay candidate, these examples how that they aren't hugely impactful.

This is especially true for Wisconsin, the most moderate of the states in question, and the one with the highest-profile race, which should serve as something of a model to Michaud’s handling of the situation.  Tammy Baldwin never hid from her sexuality, but it wasn’t a huge focus of her campaign.  It’s also worth noting that any sort of covert campaigns trying to use her sexuality as part of the campaign were condemned by both the press and by her opponent.  In the end, Baldwin performed just a point lower than President Obama did, and she had to take on a titan in Wisconsin politics, former Governor Tommy Thompson.

So, while some in the media will question whether or not Michaud’s newly divulged sexuality will have an impact on his race, I venture to say that it won’t.  Any sort of Bradley Effect for openly gay candidates in blue states (note I’m not saying the same about, say, Alabama) appears to be minimal at best.  If this race is close or if Michaud loses, it will likely be the national environment or the strong third party presence in Maine that would have cost him the governorship, not his sexuality.