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May 19, 2011
Some of the wealthiest financial donors to the Republican Party are bankrolling the campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, The New York Times reported May 13.
According to the newspaper, two-thirds of the funds raised by the campaign so far have come from a group of conservative financiers and wealthy GOP supporters. The donors include Paul E. Singer, a hedge fund manager and top-tier Republican donor, as well as financiers Steven A. Cohen and Clifford S. Asness.
Singer’s involvement is the most striking, NYT said. The chairman of the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning research group, Singer is also one of the most generous Republican donors in the country.
But Singer also has a gay son who married his partner in Massachusetts.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been a major contributor to senate Republicans in New York, also is getting in on the act. He’s given the campaign at least $100,000 of his own money, hosted a fundraiser and lobbied lawmakers in Albany.
The conservative donors say that legalizing same-sex marriage is consistent with conservative principles of personal liberty and small government. Their contributions are financing an intensive campaign of television commercials and grassroots voter outreach coordinated by the group New Yorkers United for Marriage.
“The support is likely to jolt the traditional financial and political backers of gay rights causes, who now find themselves in the unfamiliar position of being outraised and outspent in New York,” NYT said. “Their behind-the-scenes financial support – about $1 million in donations, delivered in recent weeks to a new coalition of gay rights organizations – could alter the political calculus of Albany lawmakers, especially the Republican state senators in whose hands the fate of gay marriage rests.”
