Copyright © 2012 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Toni Atkins
Ben Hueso
Marti Emerald
Dave Roberts
Marne Foster
Robert Amador
The predominantly
Queer San Diego Democrats for Equality’s June 28 meeting turned into a
love-fest for its endorsed candidates — at least those who survived the June 5
primary and made it into the November 6 general election. “This is my home
Democratic club,” said Assemblymember Toni Atkins as she kicked off the
celebration. She asked the club to endorse fellow Democrat Dr. Shirley Weber
for another Assembly seat and spoke briefly about the budget she and the other
Democrats in the legislature had just passed. “It’s not without pain,” she
admitted, “but we worked hard over 75 budget meetings.” She thanked the club
for supporting the 2010 initiative that allows state budgets to be passed with
simple majorities in both houses of the legislature instead of two-thirds.
“Toni and I make
a great team,” said fellow Assemblymember Ben Hueso. “I’m lucky to work with
her and have the benefit of all her years of experience. We’re going into one
of the most important elections. We can’t take anything for granted with
Obama.” Hueso called the Affordable Care Act, the landmark health insurance
reform legislation passed by a Democratic Congress in 2010 and derisively
referred to by Republicans as “Obamacare,” “one of the most ground-breaking
pieces” of legislation ever passed, and like many club members he showed his
relief that that morning the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled the Affordable Care
Act constitutional.
Next up was City
Councilmember Marti Emerald, who first won in 2008 in District 7 and this year
was re-elected with an outright majority in the primary of the new District 9.
She thanked the club for supplying volunteer power for both her Council
campaigns and, like Hueso, referred to the court victory for the Affordable
Care Act. “We’re building a great future, but the war is just beginning,” she
said. “We need to do the work of re-electing a great President, getting a Mayor
who really cares about all of San Diego,
and keeping a Democratic majority on the City Council.”
Dave Roberts,
openly Queer Democratic candidate for retiring county supervisor Pam
Slater-Price’s seat, mentioned his own history with the Affordable Care Act.
“I’m an Obama appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services who has
been working for 2 ½ years on implementation,” he said. He thanked the club for
their endorsement of him, saying that “it was six months before the election
and people were saying the endorsements were already taken. But we got 125
endorsements, including the Republican incumbent.” After reviewing the
communities in the district where he did well and where he needs work, Roberts
said, “When my husband and I look at our five children, and people see us, no
one believes we’ll have an openly Gay man on the Board of Supervisors with Bill
Horn and Ron Roberts.”
“I’m really
pleased with getting 62 percent of the vote in the primary, but now I have to
start all over again running citywide,” said Marne Foster, the club’s endorsed
candidate for the District E seat San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD)
Board of Trustees. (The SDUSD board candidates run in district-only primaries
but the top two finishers have to compete in a citywide election — like San
Diego City Council candidates still had to until district-only elections, a
reform the club supported, were put in in 1988.) “I look forward to supporting
the LGBT [Queer] community and having a dialogue,” Foster said. “When I get on
that school board, it won’t be about me, it’ll be about the children. I have
four children and I want to make sure all
our children are successful.”
Another
successful school board candidate, John Lee Evans, didn’t appear in person but
sent a statement. “This race is going to be very important in November,” Evans
said in his statement. “The current progressive majority on the board could be
undone if my opponent is elected to the board … We have made a lot of progress
at San Diego Unified recently with Richard Barrera, Kevin Beiser and myself on
the board. I was on a recent panel at the San Diego Psychological Association
with [San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center director]
Dr. Delores Jacobs discussing San Diego Unified’s anti-bullying policy and the
social education going on in the district.”
Lyn Neylon, who
unseated a long-term incumbent in District 2 of the San Diego County Board of
Education, also sent a statement. “It was a very close race,” she said — she
won by a 1.5 percent margin — “and I am grateful and humbled by the support
received from the San Diego Democrats for Equality, the San Diego County
Democratic Party, the American Federation of Teachers, and all the volunteers
who lent their help by making phone calls, placing yard signs or simply telling
a friend. I also want to thank the voters of our community who responded by
coming out to the polls for a local primary election. Thank you for the
confidence you’ve shown in me. I will do my utmost to be worthy of our trust.”
Assemblymember
Marty Block, who’s running for State Senate in the 39th District,
sent a staff representative identified only as Roberto. Though Block was
supported by the club throughout his Assembly career, Roberto stressed that his
general-election opponent will be former Republican Assembly leader George
Plescia. Roberto drew a dramatic contrast between the two candidates: “Marty
was at the LGBT Awards that they gave at the Assembly last week, and he told me
that Plescia had said, ‘Why do we even do this? It’s really silly and so
unnecessary.’ That gives you an idea of where George’s mentality is at.”
Roberto also noted that Block scored a 94 percent rating from the League of
Conservation Voters to Plescia’s 5 percent, and Block received 100 percent from
Planned Parenthood to Plescia’s 0 percent. Block, said Roberto, also received a
100 percent rating from organized labor.
The club
followed Atkins’ recommendation and endorsed Dr. Shirley Weber for the 79th
Assembly District. It also gave an acceptable rating to Robert Amador, a
moderate Republican running for a judgeship against Right-winger Jim Miller.
And in the first test of the club’s stringent new rules against endorsing
candidates who are not 100 percent for marriage equality and reproductive
choice, it refused to consider an endorsement for Juan Vargas for the 51st Congressional District even though he’s the only Democrat who survived the
blanket primary and made it to the general election.
“I don’t think
we should endorse in this race, because it would make us look foolish,” said
club secretary Lyn Gwidzak. She noted that the club had first given him an
acceptable rating along with fellow Democrat Denise Moreno Ducheny, then
rescinded it after Vargas cast the deciding vote in a State Senate committee
against a bill allowing nurse-practitioners and midwives to perform abortions.
Vargas has also never come out for marriage equality and, when he spoke to the
club in February, gave a long, rambling answer that suggested he doesn’t agree
with the whole idea of civil marriage and thinks the definition of marriage
should be left to churches.
