Despite the outcome in Maine last night, as Ben Smith pointed out, several LGBT candidates won local elections or stand a good chance of winning as of this morning. Annise Parker, a candidate for mayor of Houston looks to have a good chance of winning a runoff election there. In North Carolina, Chapel Hill elected Mark Kleinschmidt mayor.
But I think the most interesting result was in Detroit, where a city that is 80 percent black elected a black, openly gay candidate, Charles Pugh, city council president. Black voters are a key element of the liberal coalition, but they also tend to be cold toward marriage equality. Pugh may be a sign of things moving in the other direction. The other thing is that, while I'm not so familiar with Detroit, any city with such a large percentage of African Americans is also bound to have an active black LGBT community, which I think makes a great deal of difference when it comes to persuading black voters about such things.
-- A. Serwer
