Lesbian Patricia Todd won her fight to become the first openly gay member of the Alabama House of Representatives Aug. 26 after the state’s Democratic Party leaders rejected an earlier decision by a party panel to overturn her election victory in July.

“This is history,” said Howard Bayless, chair of Equality Alabama, a statewide gay rights group. “Our state is forever changed by this race.”

The Democratic Party Executive Committee, convening in the state capital in Montgomery, voted 95-87 to reverse a decision two days earlier by a party subcommittee and to allow Todd’s July 18 primary victory to stand.

Todd, a Democrat, defeated her Democratic opponent, Gaynell Hendricks, by 59 votes in a July 18 party primary runoff. With no Republican entering the race, the winner of the runoff was to be the presumed winner of the state House seat in District 54, which includes much of Birmingham.

But Hendricks’ supporters challenged the outcome of the runoff, saying Todd should have been disqualified because she missed the deadline for filing a campaign finance report. Hendricks’ mother-in-law, who filed the challenge, charged that Todd sought to hide from voters a $25,000 contribution from the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a Washington, D.C. group.

Todd disputed the charge, saying her filing of the campaign report on the day before the election, instead of five days before as required by law, was unintentional and due to a mix-up at the post office. She said her status as an out lesbian was well known to the voters, and that she had reported in previous finance reports contributions she had received from the Victory Fund.

On Aug. 24, a five-member subcommittee of the state Democratic Party invoked a party bylaw that had not been used for 18 years to disqualify both Todd and Hendricks as candidates, for their failure to file a campaign finance statement with the party’s leader. Critics of the decision noted that no candidate had filed the statements with the party since a law was enacted requiring them to be filed with the state instead.

Party insiders said the challenge, said to be orchestrated by state party leader Joe Reed, was aimed at eliminating Todd from contention and persuading the full party committee to award the seat to Hendricks.

Reed said he wanted an African American to represent the majority black district. As chair of the state party’s powerful African-American caucus, he is recognized as a key player in Alabama politics.

Hendricks, a Birmingham businesswoman, is African American. Todd, who heads a private AIDS clinic, is white.

The Birmingham News reported that the Aug. 26 vote by the full Democratic Party committee split largely along racial lines, with all but about eight of the committee’s African-American members voting to let the subcommittee’s decision stand. All of the white members sided with Todd and voted to overturn the subcommittee’s action.

It was the decision by the eight African-American members to break ranks with Reed that delivered Todd her final victory, the Birmingham News reported. State Rep. Alvin Holmes, the only African-American member of the full party committee to speak on Todd’s behalf, said efforts to overturn her election were a throwback to the days when elections were stolen from blacks.

“Selective prosecution has been done to black people in Alabama more than any other person in this state,” the Birmingham News quoted him as saying. “Unless someone can show the 59 votes received were illegal votes, there’s no way you can deny her the seat.”

Todd said she views the dispute over her election as a challenge to Reed’s longstanding role as a political powerbroker rather than a rift between blacks and whites or blacks and gays.

“I got 26 percent of the black vote [in the runoff],” Todd said. “I don’t consider it a race issue.”

Due to the “political reality” in the state, Bayless said Equality Alabama does not believe it would be prudent for Todd to introduce legislation in her first year in office to outlaw employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Todd has not said whether she would introduce such legislation, although she said she would continue to push for a hate crimes bill.