In statewide and local campaigns throughout Vermont this year, civil unions seem to have taken on the role of the proverbial elephant in the room. Everyone knows it is there but none of the statewide candidates is willing to talk about it.
      Two years ago, civil unions played a key role in Vermont’s election campaigns. A number of antigay groups, including Take Back Vermont, Take it to the People (TIP), and Standing Together and Reclaiming the State (STARS), were formed to elect candidates pledged to overturning the landmark law. Campaigning with an anti-civil union agenda, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives while Democrats maintained control of the state Senate, and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D), a civil union supporter, narrowly won reelection.
      On the surface, civil unions seem to be playing a smaller role in 2002. The TIP web site was updated only in mid-October and the STARS web site is defunct. While the state Democratic Party platform says, “We continue to support Vermont’s Civil Unions law,” the Republican Party’s platform avoids calls for outright repeal: “A primary responsibility of government is to support traditional institutions, such as family, which are its foundations.”
      Candidates for office also suggest that civil unions have a much lower profile. “Civil unions is certainly a quieter issue this year than it was in the last election,” said Anthony Pollina, the Progressive Party’s nominee for Lieutenant Governor. “It does come up, but it is fair to say it doesn’t come up as often. Two years ago civil union was used quite effectively as a wedge issue.” Pollina, a civil union supporter, ran for Governor in 2000.
      Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Douglas also says civil unions are not a big issue for the average Vermont voter. “Interestingly, very few people ask me about civil unions on the campaign trail,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think it is prominent on people’s minds right now.”
      The GOP’s candidate for Lt. Governor, Brian Dubie, echoed Douglas’s comments. “I have been asked the [civil union] question once in a public forum,” he said on Vermont Public Radio’s Switchboard program. “It hasn’t come up.”
      Democratic gubernatorial candidate Doug Racine’s recent fundraising letter to civil union supporters likewise did not directly address civil unions or diversity education in schools, but referred to Vermont “traditions of human rights” and “access to safe and affirming schools.” Racine wrote that the campaign will decide “if we are taken back into a divisive struggle.”
      Pollina attributes the lack of interest in civil unions to the fact that fears raised during the civil union debate in 2000 did not materialize. “The average folks who may have been opposed [to civil unions] have begun to see that it hasn’t really changed their lives, and it hasn’t really changed the state,” he said. “I do think that people are focused on the economy.”
      But are civil unions really off the political radar screen in Vermont this year? Civil union supporters don’t think so.
     “Even though the law we passed has survived the hateful attacks by the Take-Backers, we’re not out of the woods yet,” Vermonters for Civil Unions statewide coordinator Henrietta Jordan recently wrote in an email sent to civil union supporters. “The press may believe that civil unions is not at issue in this year’s election, but don’t doubt for a minute that anti-civil union legislators will try again as they see they have a majority in both the House and Senate. In fact, this election may be more dangerous than the 2000 one, precisely because there are so many new candidates, and many of them are not saying how they’d vote on civil unions.”
      Pollina agrees with Jordan’s assessment. “I do believe that there is still a hard core of anti-civil union, almost anti-civil rights, folks who organize below the radar screen and will work hard for those candidates who oppose civil unions particularly in the rural parts of the state.”
      Legislative strategists have suggested that there’s no chance the Democrats – viewed as the pro-civil union party, although there have been defectors on important votes, and some Republicans have supported the civil union law – can take back the House of Representatives from the Republicans. They are focusing their major effort on maintaining control of the Senate.
      Email sent to energize supporters of Vermonters for Civil Union from the organization’s founders quoted “Take Back Vermont” founder Tom Wilson’s rallying cry: “The opportunity this election year presents cannot be over-estimated. Vermont is Ground Zero in the culture war. The whole country watches. If the pro-family movement can take the Vermont Senate · we send a profound message of hope to the world: America lives, truth prevails, and grassroots truth-tellers can turn the tide.”
      The pro-civil union political action committee also quoted a fundraising mailing from the Rutland-based “Center for American Cultural Renewal,” asserting, “We can finish the housecleaning we started two years ago; the Senate, the Executive, the Judiciary – all need sweeping out ...We are thrilled with the chances to take back the Vermont Senate this year!”
      The email went on to suggest that an anti-civil union House and Senate might pass a new version of last year’s bill to “repeal and replace” civil unions, along with Rep. Nancy Sheltra’s “perennial proposals to censor our local schools to prevent education promoting tolerance, including tolerance of sexual minorities.”
      Further complicating the picture is the increasingly likely possibility that the three-way races for Governor and Lt. Governor might be decided by the newly seated legislature.