Rhine McLin, Dayton’s incumbent mayor, was defeated Tuesday, and many credit the loss to her support for the city’s gay rights ordinance. Gary Leitzell won the election in a close race, according to the Dayton Daily News.
McLin lost support from the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, which is a group of predominately African-American ministers. The group dropped McLin’s campaign and endorsed Leitzell, citing McLin’s gay-rights support for the switch.
“’We thought we had an agreement that she wouldn’t support a gay-rights ordinance,” Rev. Wilburt Shanklin, president of the Alliance, told the Dayton Daily News.
“She was chastised for taking a stand for human rights, in other words, by a group of ministers who spent much of their lives fighting for it,” the paper told Advocate.com.
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— Kim Brown
