We Did It!!!

I had one of the best days of my life yesterday, watching hateful legislation, that I have poured my blood, sweat, and tears into ultimately go down in flames!! What a day!

And what a roller coaster day it was. We always thought our best chance of killing this bill was in the Senate, but then we got word from our friends in the House that we had a chance to kill it over on their side. We had our target list and went to work. We sent out our action alert and I don’t know how many people actually see our emails, blogs, and facebook posts, but I know between Joe Corrigan, Pamela Kandt, and myself we are sending emails to approximately 1,500 people.

So the bill was brought around 11:30 in the house and many of our great allies spoke against this legislation for the last time. Mary Throne, Cathy Connolly, Pat Childers, Dan Zwonitzer, Bernadine Craft, Pete Illoway, and Ruth Petroff all made fantastic comments on why this bill should not pass, but when question was called the vote came 31 ayes, 28 nayes, and 1 excused.  We were disappointed but knew we had to focus on the Senate and do it quickly as they would be voting on this in just a few short hours.

The Senate Gallery was packed! WYWatch, http://www.wywatch.org/ filled the gallery.  They had their bibles open, clung to their rosary beads, and bowed their heads in prayer. Senator Burns called for an emergency rules committee meeting as he said “This is unconstitutional!” “You can’t have a bill that says one thing and reads completely different!” The rules committee met in private and found against Senator Burns' argument.  So Senator Rothfuss tried to call it on another technicality and the rules committee was again meeting in private… but they emerged and the technicality was shut down and question was immediately called.

I could feel the lump in my throat start to swell as the roll call clerk started down the list. As soon as Senator Landen said “NO,” I got a thumbs up from Senator Cale Case and I knew we had done it! Not only did Senator Landen switch back to our side, we also had a no vote from Senator Hines that we were not expecting. So the final vote was 14 ayes and 16 nayes… Victory!!!

I tried hard to control myself, but I could feel the tears welling up! I have tears as I type this thinking back to that feeling of utter bliss!  I wanted to jump up and down and I wanted to scream across the gallery at the WYWatch folks…. “TAKE THAT! YOU COCKADOODY’S!” but PDA’s are strongly discouraged at the Capital; so we quietly hugged one another and worked our way to the lobby were the press was waiting to hear our thoughts.

I had a great conversation with Governor Mead after the vote, and he seemed to be relieved that this was shot down as well. I will blog about that tomorrow! I think we came up with some really good ideas for down the road!

As for right now, I’m trying not to gloat, but to say that I’m overjoyed would be an understatement.  Thank you all for your tremendous hard work, love and support throughout all of this. You made a difference and good has triumphed over evil!

Jeran