In the hardscrabble steelmaking area of Sparrows Point overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, Ed Bennett cut his political teeth, working gritty precincts east of Baltimore to re-elect President Nixon.

It was an unlikely beginning for the man who 36 years later would lead Northern California's largest Democratic Party organization and the Sacramento region's campaign to keep same-sex marriage legal.

"I've never missed an election. And, I've voted Democratic ever since," Bennett says of the 1972 election year that hooked him on politics.

Bennett, 49, is president of the Sacramento Stonewall Democrats, at the helm during a pivotal year for gays and lesbians.

A Navy veteran who came out to his mother during a heated discussion about singer Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade in the 1970s, Bennett is building the 5-year-old organization into an influential political force.

Democrats, whether they are running for school trustee or Congress, have sought the club's endorsement recently.

"Part of what Ed's tried to do is see that Stonewall is positioned to have influence," said Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo, who won a Stonewall endorsement early in her re-election bid.

Bennett is a levelheaded leader and a consensus builder who is not afraid to seek advice, said fellow advocates and politicians.

"He's so comfortable with himself he's able to advocate," said Tina Reynolds, a Sacramento lesbian who owns a multimedia firm. "There's no closet about this man."

Darrick Lawson, a chiropractor and former Stonewall president, said that while he is sometimes guided by emotion, Bennett is more analytical.

"He approaches things like a recipe: First you boil the water and then you do this," Lawson said.

Within days of becoming president, Bennett got a call while river rafting: A man perceived to be gay was attacked at Lake Natoma. That was in July 2007. Satender Singh, 26, died from his injuries. Bennett went to work, creating a community coalition that would quell rumors and anger, but push for justice. In a strategic move, he chose a straight woman to lead the coalition.

"In the end it was a wise choice," said Georgette Imura of the Council on Asian Pacific Islanders Together for Advocacy and Leadership. Imura, who was the chairwoman, said: "It made the community and media look at this from a broad perspective, not just a gay and lesbian perspective."

Bennett contacted Fargo and law enforcement leaders, said Laurie McBride of Sacramento, co-chair of the National Stonewall Democrat Club.

"He made himself available night and day," she said. Bennett dispatched e-mails, urging cool heads so the coalition could get what it wanted: hate crime charges against the attackers if the facts warranted it.

The suspected perpetrators, including one who fled the country and has never been apprehended, were Slavic, and the confrontation exacerbated tensions with Slavic evangelicals who espouse anti-gay views. A 22-year-old man was convicted of assault in June, but the jury deadlocked on the hate crime charge.

When the state Supreme Court decision legalized same-sex marriage in June, Bennett married his partner, Todd Vlaanderen, and quickly became a spokesman on the matter.

He then launched a plan to elevate Sacramento's profile in a campaign to defeat Proposition 8. The November ballot initiative proposes an amendment to the state constitution limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.

"I wanted to make sure we had a voice in the state campaign," Bennett said.

Rather than funnel money to San Francisco or Los Angeles chapters, the campaign will have a Sacramento office in September, with workers running phone banks, he said.

In the living room of his Curtis Park home, Bennett is as casual as the pair of shorts and T-shirt he wears when he talks about a life of surprising turns.

As he was growing up in an area dominated by steel mills, Bennett's schooling seemed to propel the self-described class clown toward a union job at the mill. He was voted student council president but couldn't seem to mature. "I would have smacked me at the time if I was my child," he said.

After he graduated from high school, his mother questioned why he was so disturbed about Bryant, an orange-juice pitchwoman turned anti-gay activist.

"She said, 'Are you gay?' And I said, 'Yes,' " Bennett recalls. "She burst into tears." Soothed by a family minister, his parents and brother accepted him.

That, however, did not settle him down. Bennett later dropped out of college and worked as a nightclub disc jockey. And he sensed something was missing from his life. Something maybe a stint in the Navy could fix.

"I didn't think of the consequences," he says. "Changing my life was more important."

Keeping his sexual identity secret from all but a few close friends, he served as a Navy hospital corpsman in San Diego and Okinawa, and left the service in 1987.

Bennett became a computer programmer and settled in Sacramento in 1989 with a former partner.

Now he is the third president of the Sacramento Stonewall Democrats.

Patrice Rogers is membership chairwoman, and among the straight members who account for 30 percent of the 400-person chapter.

"With all the adversity, Ed always maintains optimism and a balance of joy against any kind of bigotry," she said.

Bennett was grand marshal in a gay pride parade in Sacramento two years ago, marching with a gay veterans group, she said. After the parade, he talked only about how the honor had pleased him. Later, Rogers discovered that someone had spit on Bennett as the parade started.

Bennett never mentioned the incident.

Call The Bee's M.S. Enkoji, (916) 321-1106.