Passing Prop 8: smart timing and messaging convinced California voters to support traditional marriage.(CASE STUDY)(California Proposition 8)

When we signed our firm up to manage the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign to put the traditional definition of marriage--one man, one woman--into California's constitution, Frank Schubert's brother told him we had "no chance" to win the campaign. That view reflected conventional wisdom. After all, California is one of the most liberal states in the nation. It's a state whose Supreme Court had just legalized same-sex marriage. A state where the Democratic nominee for president hasn't had to aggressively campaign in nearly two decades. A state where millions of young, first-time voters were poised to go to the polls to send a message to George Bush and elect Barack Obama. And a state where for the first time in history, according to a major polling outfit, a majority of voters supported gay marriage.

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This is the story of how conventional wisdom was stood on its head and how Proposition 8 was enacted by a 700,000-vote margin.

The Early Campaign Period

Schubert Flint Public Affairs signed onto the Yes on Prop 8 campaign right before the first of what would eventually total 18,000 gay weddings took place after the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. We immediately faced our first important strategic challenge: How to respond to the marriages? We decided to withhold criticism of the same-sex couples who were getting married (after all, they were simply taking advantage of the rights the Court had granted them), and urged all our supporters to refrain from demonstrations, protests or rallies opposing the marriages. This initial strategic positioning, later validated in qualitative and quantitative research, recognized that passing Proposition 8 would depend on our ability to convince voters that same-sex marriage had broader implications for Californians and was not only about the two individuals involved in a committed gay relationship.

On the first day that same-sex marriages took place, June 16, we fielded nearly 300 media calls from reporters around the globe. Our message was calm and low-key: Our fight was not with the gay couples getting married, our fight was with the flawed reasoning of a narrow majority of the California Supreme Court.

Over the next three months, sympathetic news articles and television reports appeared daily across the state. Traditional marriage supporters were routinely portrayed as right-wingers holding onto outdated, bigoted ideas. Gay marriage backers spent $6 million airing a sympathetic 60-second issue advocacy ad. And state Attorney General Jerry Brown shamelessly rewrote the official summary of the measure in a way clearly designed to bias voters against the initiative.