SMART

Although, really, it's misleading to compare "legalizing Gay marriage" to "raising the minimum wage" as base-building issues for respective parties. On the one hand, Republicans use a divisive issue to stir ignorance and hate in otherwise good people; on the other hand, the Democrats' issue attracts grassroot support by advocating the payment of fair wages as compensation for real labor.

Not exactly moral equivalents.

Nonetheless:

Democrats to woo voters on wage issue
Frozen minimum pay seen as spur

By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | December 25, 2005

WASHINGTON -- New Year's Day will bring the ninth straight year in which the federal minimum wage has remained frozen at $5.15 an hour, marking the second-longest period that the nation has had a stagnant minimum wage since the standard was established in 1938.

Against that backdrop, Democrats are preparing ballot initiatives in states across the country to boost turnout of Democratic-leaning voters in 2006. Labor, religious, and community groups have launched efforts to place minimum-wage initiatives on ballots in Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Arkansas, and Montana next fall.

Democrats say the minimum wage could be for them what the gay-marriage referendums were in key states for Republicans last year -- an easily understood issue that galvanizes their supporters to show up on Election Day.

''It's a fairness issue, and everybody gets the concept of fairness," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, a long-time proponent of a higher minimum wage. ''It's a moral issue. It's a value."

Of the seven states that appear most likely to have a minimum wage increase on the ballot, five were decided by fewer than 10 percentage points in last year's presidential election, and all but Michigan supported President Bush. Republican senators in three of the states -- Ohio, Arizona, and Montana -- are high on Democrats' target lists, as they seek to pick up seats in Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.

...

Democrats say they hope to replicate Republicans' success in 2004, when ballot initiatives banning gay marriage passed in all 11 states they were offered. The initiatives were credited with boosting GOP turnout in those states.