Transcript: The Gay Marriage Factor

This is a partial transcript of "Special Report With Brit Hume," Nov. 10, 2004, that has been edited for clarity.

Watch "Special Report With Brit Hume" weeknights at 6 p.m. ET

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON (D), FORMER UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: With regard to the gay marriage issue, it was an overwhelming factor in the defeat of John Kerry. There’s no question about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIT HUME, HOST: That view of the impact of those gay marriage bans (search) that pass in 11 states last week is rapidly harboring in conventional wisdom, furthering the notion that hard-line moralists made the difference in re-electing President Bush. But is that really what happened?

One person who has been analyzing those numbers is a veteran, Democratic strategist, Pat Caddell; who is now also a FOX News contributor. And he joins us tonight from Los Angeles.

Pat, welcome. What are your numbers telling you?

PAT CADDELL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: You know, first of all, Brit, neither the Democrats (search) are saying that, you know, it was gay marriage and hate that was responsible. Nor are the conservatives saying that on the other side that it won on the presidential thing. On the presidential levels, these amendments tended to help break the late undecideds. Which, by the way, historically break to the incumbent and broke to Bush. And they tended to be older voters, and there’s an increased older voters. Bush didn’t really get that much out of it.

But the stunning thing is it was across the board. If you look at Michigan and Ohio, for instance, not only did, you know, Republican conservatives and so forth in vast numbers vote for the amendments -- and these are very restrictive amendments in those states, 61 percent of the blacks voters voted for it. Fifty-seven percent to 64 percent of union members voted for this.

Forty-five percent of the Democrats, over 40 percent of Kerry’s own voters. In fact if you took the counties that Kerry carried in Ohio, which is about half the vote, and just counted those votes on gay marriage, it would have passed 57-43. You know, in fact, in the south...

HUME: And it did pass by much more than that, correct?

CADDELL: It passed by 62.

HUME: But let me just see if I have the implications of this right. Would it be fair to say that Kerry benefited very much from these voters turning to vote for these amendments?

CADDELL: Well, people were turning out the vote for these amendments, first of all. So he got some of that benefit from that. The obviously more Republican conservative voters voted against it. But I can’t say right now except in the turnout it really made that much difference in the presidential race.

Where I believe -- and by the way, if you go south you can really see the difference. Kentucky and Georgia, Kentucky used to be a swing state, of course. And there you’ve got to have a huge majority, 64 percent of the Democrats in both states voted for this amendment, 68 to 72 percent of the young people.

And by the way, in Ohio and in Michigan the new voters in both cases, 50 percent in Michigan and 59 percent in Ohio voted for the amendment, as did the majority, 51 percent of the voters under 30. This crashed all over the place just as it had in Missouri.

And you know, in all of these places, you can take out the Republican counties and drop them, and they would still pass. With the possible exception of Oregon, which passed as well. And $4 million was spent in that state, it was expected that would be the toughest state for the amendment to pass. And it passed with 57 percent of the vote. It’s amazing.

HUME: Now, you say $4 million was spent in Oregon. How much was spent against it?

CADDELL: Well, you know, here’s the fallacy of, you know, we find this. People think Karl Rove (search) went out and organized these things; Karl Rove had nothing to do with it, actually. These were grassroots movements in reaction to what happened in Massachusetts and particularly in San Francisco. And what happened was that these were grassroots efforts by the churches, basically. These groups had almost no money. Republican organizations stayed away from them like the plague.

And you know, in Missouri, they had $20,000 spent by 1.5 million or 20,000. Oregon didn’t have any money. The money -- but Oregon still passed. And I’ll tell you this. It’s about democracy to some extent. People were -- it’s not that people were going -- you know, going right and crazy. It’s not about intolerance.

It’s about people who don’t understand this and they want a say in it. It’s about democracy in part. People do not believe it could be happening by judges and they have no say about it. In the black community, this is as intense as it is with white evangelicals. And I’m really concerned about my own party attacking. Every time they get up and attack bigotry and say that it’s discrimination, we’re attacking our own voters. And it’s -- it’s really wrong to do this.

And we need a national debate on the subject, which the media has not wanted to do all year. I mean this -- I have been talking about this for some months. We saw what happened in Missouri, and Louisiana set the precedence for this. And I’ll tell you those five senate seats in the south, I predict in the spring will probably go. And I’m now pretty much convinced.

HUME: Pat, is there a difference between the effect between this issue being on the ballot in the presidential race, where you suggest that a very, great many Democrat who were Kerry voters came out and voted for this, and presumably voted for John Kerry as well. Is it a different picture in the Senate races?

CADDELL: It’s impact -- the Senate race is much more direct. You can see, for instance -- well, take the one place -- one campaign that actually ran ads on it on the Democratic side, which was in Colorado. In which attacking Coors in their outreach program, the gays. And you look at the results that Salazar got; he got -- people who said moral views, moral concerns for their major issue, he got over almost over a quarter of those votes. And they’re very, very conservative. No doubt it saved Jim Bunning (search).

HUME: Because of the turnout in Kentucky when he was in trouble?

CADDELL: Yes. And not only the turnout.

HUME: And how can you tell that from the numbers that it saved Bunning?

CADDELL: Well, so far because of the correlation that we’re getting between the voting, for instance, for Bunning and the groups, and this holding on where he held on.

But you know, this -- but the problem is the uphill fight for Democrats. In this being posed or viewed as being suspect. Look at South Carolina, you have a really competent candidate in Tenenbaum a Democrat, a statewide figure. She was running against, you know, a guy who I think had some problems as a candidate. He had come out for 23 percent sales tax. He was for free trade in a state that had been devastated by textiles. And he went around talking about, you know, lesbians in the classrooms. Got himself in a lot of trouble. But she still couldn’t get more -- closer than 10 percent in the end.

HUME: Because?

CADDELL: Because these hurdles, these kinds of turnouts. This kind of issue, the social issues are really hurting.

HUME: Let’s look ahead a couple of years. The president came out in favor of a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, in effect. Many Democrats are opposed. It hasn’t passed in Congress. Doesn’t look like it will any day soon. We got about 15 or 20 seconds left. What’s your idea of the impact of that in the next couple of years?

CADDELL: Look, the people want this to go away. I mean they just want it to go away. And if it doesn’t go way, we’ll have more ballot amendments. And what will happen in the president -- look, the reason why it was a big factor in the presidential campaign is George Bush didn’t make it one.

HUME: But he could.

CADDELL: He could have. And someone will.

HUME: All right. Pat Caddell, great to have you.

Content and Programming Copyright 2004 Fox News Network, L.L.C. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Transcription Copyright 2004 eMediaMillWorks, Inc. (f/k/a Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.), which takes sole responsibility for the accuracy of the transcription. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No license is granted to the user of this material except for the user's personal or internal use and, in such case, only one copy may be printed, nor shall user use any material for commercial purposes or in any fashion that may infringe upon Fox News Network, L.L.C.'s and eMediaMillWorks, Inc.'s copyrights or other proprietary rights or interests in the material. This is not a legal transcript for purposes of litigation.