Reply #5: The state legislature leaders decide what to do [View All]

The proposed constitutional amendment (Travaglini-Lees bill) has to be passed a second time in the course of a called Constitutional Convention session of the state legislature during the next year. The person who decides whether to call the Constitutional Convention session (at all) is the senior of the two leaders of the two chambers of the legislature, which is presently the Senate Majority Leader, Bob Traviglini.

It was thought after the resignation of Tom Finneran (Speaker of the state House, in late September) that there wasn't any real desire in the legislature or reason in the polling numbers for anyone (Travaglini or DiMasi, Finneran's successor) to take it up again. But Travaglini is now the real player in the State House- basically Mitt Romney's antagonist- and his ego, previously not a problem (having to play second fiddle to a rather prickly Finneran), is becoming more noticed. Travaglini is saying he wants to take up T-L again and pass it 'if the legislature so decides'... the predominant idea seems to be that he's decided to shift to the right/center and take up Finneran's conservative Democrat mantle, rather than Finneran's liberal alternative as he did for a number of years. And that the bill itself has his name on it seems to have a lot to do with it: it registers as an "accomplishment" if passed, in the formal sense. But no one's quite sure what his real or final decision is.

The numbers are not too good in state legislature. T-L passed last March with about 85 votes truly opposed out of 200 (30+ of them from state Senators). Whether the 15-20 more votes, basically all needed to be found among the 160 House members...there's no shortage of effort being made, privately about 30 House members said last year they voted for T-L but think it's not right, and no pro-marriage legislator lost and 3 pro-marriage challengers won. But they fear the voters. A lot depends on the statewide polling numbers that are found and feel of their districts these 30 have. It's a complicated calculation, with the safe thing for them to do still to pass the thing on to the voters in November '06.

So a lot of agony or not depends on what Bob Travaglini decides, say, next month. I'm pretty sure that November '06 is going to be a Republican disaster, but if Travaglini decides to end the buck passing it will allow more effort to go toward the '1913 law' problem and a decent attack on the federal DoMA.

The good news is that the federal court challenge was rejected a couple of weeks ago by the US Supreme Court. Largess v. SJC, declined without comment or a hearing. The argument was pretty absurd, but the Infamous Five couldn't find a defensible excuse to it, evidently enough.

There's going to be a second attempt at a state court challenge, some kind of attempt to wedge the SJC justices about whether the SJC or the Legislature has the authority to decide the state's definition of marriage. It was the major problem the dissenters in Goodridge v. DPH had...but they had no coherent argument, positively or negatively. Basically, the past year's process (the game around the proposed constitutional amendment) has decided the answer to that one: the Legislature always passes the buck to either the SJC or the voters.