Who controls the State House?
The State Senator possibly in line to replace Senate President Travaglini, who appears to be planning his exit, is Therese Murray. She has just hired a MassEquality operative as her aide (he runs a nasty little blog). We reported earlier on Sen. Dianne Wilkerson's new legislative aide from MassEquality (also involved in an extremist GLBT blog, Jesse AKA "QueerJay"). Governor Patrick also respects MassEquality's work:
From Bay Windows:
MassEquality loses key operative to Patrick administration
It looks like MassEquality’s success in Bay State politics is both a blessing and curse. Several operatives have leveraged their experience at the organization to broaden their horizons in national or local politics, among them former campaign director Marty Rouse, who departed MassEquality in 2005 to become national field director for the Human Rights Campaign; former field organizer Jesse Sullivan, who is now state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson’s legislative director, and Chris Mason, who left his post as assistant canvass director to work as an aide to state Sen. Therese Murray, the heir apparent to the Senate presidency.
The latest to go is Stan McGee, the director of MassEquality’s civic and business outreach, a successful initiative that recruited some of the state’s most influential business big-wigs to the marriage movement. McGee started his new job as assistant secretary for policy and planning to Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Daniel O’Connell on Feb. 5. And he’s pretty sure that that the coalition-building skills he honed during the past year at MassEquality gave him a leg up on the competition. “I can imagine that in some other states having worked at a gay civil rights nonprofit would have been a liability,” says McGee, a corporate attorney, Harvard Law School alum and Rhodes Scholar. “There’s no doubt in my mind that I would not have been considered as seriously as I was for this position but for the work that I did at MassEquality.”
Solomon [of MassEquality] credited McGee with making “a huge difference” in the fight to preserve marriage equality in Massachusetts, praising his ability to effectively go where no ordinary grassroots activist could: the corporate boardroom.... McGee was responsible for an unprecedented statement issued last June urging the legislature to reject the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-marriage that was signed by 165 high-powered business and civic leaders, among them New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft, Boston Foundation President Paul Grogan and Boston Chamber of Commerce President Paul Guzzi. Along with MassEquality Development Director Scott Gortikov, McGee also leveraged those contacts to stage a fundraiser that netted $100,000 for the organization.
