Is This How Democracies Die? Tim Gill and the Anti-Marriage Machine

Tim Gill, buying off state politics one gay liberal at a time.

Imagine this.

You live in a city in Minnesota that votes heavily Democrat. People usually vote along party lines. A good portion of the population are minorities, mostly blacks and Hispanics. Most of the citizens are union workers who depend on the government to ensure a sufficient minimum wage and to provide health benefits.

Along comes a Republican who challenges the incumbent Democrat. At first, he doesn't do very well, since the voters usually follow party lines. But this year, the economy's bad. The incumbent isn't saying the right things. This new candidate, the Republican, runs a slick campaign. His campaign money seems endless. He advertises well. His team are the best. And he wins the election by a narrow margin.

Once in power, the new Republican senator starts pushing legislation to curtail union power and cut off government funding for state health programs. In short, he unravels programs that his constituents wanted to keep.

Now imagine you take a look at the newly elected state senator and you discover that he received a lot of contributions. In fact, half the money he raised came from out of state, from Florida and from California and from Colorado. These were substantial donations, yet just at the legal limit. No one donor made more than his limit in contributions but there sure were a lot of out-of-state donors willing to put up $1000 for a candidate in Minnesota.

Stop and think for a moment. Does anything in this story sound fishy to you? Wouldn't you suspect some sort of collusion? Wouldn't you ask yourself, "What was gained by electing this Republican? Who wanted him in the state senate? Why were so many people from out of the state interested in this man?"

In other words, isn't something wrong with this story and how the election was run?

The problem is, the story is real. Instead of a Republican getting elected, it was a Democrat. This Democrat just happened to replace a cosponsor of the Minnesota Marriage Amendment bill designed to protect the definition of marriage. This Democrat received 48% of her donations from out of state. This Democrat was bought and paid for by Tim Gill. And this story repeats itself in Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, California, and New York.

Here's the news story from the Minnesota Star Tribune:

Gill is a 55-year-old multimillionaire and political activist from Denver. He's the founder of Quark, a desktop publishing software company, with a fortune that Forbes has estimated at $425 million.

Gill's interest in a small-potatoes Minnesota state Senate race is no coincidence. His target, Reiter, was a cosponsor of the Minnesota Marriage Amendment bill. And Gill -- whom the Atlantic magazine has called "the country's biggest gay donor" -- has built a highly sophisticated, below-the-radar assault operation precisely to take out people like her.

Gill's network has been dubbed "the Gay Mafia that's redefining liberal politics" by Time magazine. He and his pals -- like-minded, mega-bucks donors -- hold that most decisions affecting gays are made at the state level. They believe they can get more bang for their buck in sleepy state races, where relatively small sums of money can turn the tide. This strategy allows them to "punish the wicked," in Gill's words.

The strategy has had extraordinary success. In 2006, Gill contributed about $15 million to state and local races in 13 states, and his allies gave millions more, according to the Atlantic. At this level, the magazine noted, a few thousand dollars can often decide a close race. Fifty of the 70 targeted candidates were defeated, and in Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington, control of at least one legislative chamber moved to the Democratic Party.

The key to the effort's success is a potent combination of vast sums of money -- carefully targeted with the aid of sophisticated political consultants -- and stealth tactics.

Gill and his allies do not announce the candidates they are gunning for before an election. "Revealing targets only after an election makes it impossible for them to fight back," explained the Atlantic. "You have to create an environment of fear and respect," Gill adviser Ted Trimpa told the Bay Area Reporter.

As part of this stealth strategy, Gill's forces don't reveal their agenda or mention gay issues. Instead, they seize on any issue on which their targets are vulnerable -- from veterans' affairs to prescription-drug costs -- and do so with blistering negativity.

We need to ask ourselves some serious questions about how politics is done in the United States. Is this how we are to elect our state officials? Do we allow one man to dictate the outcome of our elections because of his money and his single issue obsession to have homosexuals get married? Does this serve the best interests of the people or only the best interests of Tim Gill? If same sex marriage is so desirable, why does Tim Gill's political machine hide behind lies and subterfuge to push the issue? Is it right and fair and free to have private donors circumvent the law in order to put their chosen person in power?

Are we a government of the people, by the people and for the people or are we a government of fabulously wealthy, power hungry, society-be-damned ideologues?

Wake up people. Same sex marriage isn't about equality and love and tolerance. Same sex marriage is forced on the country by a core group of wealthy megalomaniacs whose ringleader is a homosexual who will stop at nothing to destroy American politics in order to get his way.