In a tight mayoral race, Democrat Christine Quinn has turned to
her gay supporters for help.
At a Friday night campaign rally held outside the Stonewall Inn,
the West Village bar long associated with the modern gay rights
movement, Quinn reminded the crowd that her bid to become mayor of
New York City also included a historical footnote: She's a lesbian.
Edith Windsor, the lesbian widow at the center of the Supreme
Court case that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA),
introduced Quinn.
“She's gay and I think that's great,” Windsor told the crowd.
“I am, too!” (The video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
After leading Democratic mayoral primary polls for months, Quinn
came in third in a recent poll.
“You know, you don't end up the first openly gay and woman
speaker of the City Council 'cause you're the front-runner,” she
told BuzzFeed.com
last week. “I got that position – won it – as the underdog.
And I'm going to fight over the next 10 days and get into the runoff
because New Yorkers deserve a fighter as mayor.”
Quinn asked “gay New York,” as one speaker put it, to drive
her into a run-off election. (A candidate needs to win 40 percent of
the vote to avoid a run-off.)