What a coup!

OK, so it’s not exactly shocking that District 3 candidate Stephen Whitburn found support in the San Diego Democratic Club (SDDC), the same club he headed as president for three terms. Unexpected, however, is Whitburn walking away last Thursday with 175 votes compared to Todd Gloria’s 65, easily earning him the club’s endorsement. That’s 69 percent of the vote, with four ayes going to former Councilmember James Hartley and 10 abstentions.

In last week’s editorial, we predicted that neither candidate would grab the 60 percent needed to earn the club’s endorsement. So much for our prediction. That said, how Gloria failed to turn out enough supporters to match Whitburn vote by vote is beyond us. Gloria, who has been unofficially campaigning for more than two years, should have better anticipated this vote and stacked the room with his supporters.

According to the SDDC, there was an influx of approximately 125 new members leading up to the endorsement. Apparently the majority were Whitburn’s.

The SDDC’s endorsement should add swagger to Whitburn’s campaign. No more can the Gloria camp tout its candidate as the clear gay favorite – an obvious political strategy it has employed since well before official campaigning even began. Gloria may be considered the front-runner by many, but in politics, where public perception is everything, it doesn’t bode well that his own Democratic club is supporting another candidate.

Love ’em or hate ’em, the SDDC is one of the main Democratic voices for San Diego’s gay community and has the influence and resources to put behind its candidate.

Further, any chance of one gay candidate dropping out of the race in the interest of electing the other is now a pipe dream. Not that Whitburn had any intention of bowing out, but we now have a race – one both plan to win.

We’ve squawked here a number of times about the pitfalls of endorsing too early. We believe there are a number of considerations that factor into making an endorsement, one being how a candidate runs his or her campaign. And there’s still a lot of campaigning left for these two to do.

Now that the race is on, and as these two candidates attempt to distinguish themselves from one another, the community stands to benefit from spirited debate about how both plan to bring about real change at City Hall.

We’ll be watching Whitburn and Gloria closely and be making our endorsement as we near the primary.

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