State Senator Sheila Kuehl visited San Diego last weekend to speak at a fundraising event for Lori Saldaña, the Democratic contender for the State Assembly’s 76th District seat, hosted at the La Jolla home of former San Diego Port Commissioner Peter Janopaul.

“This is an election where she’s [Saldaña] got to race,” said Kuehl, the first out lesbian elected to California’s state Legislature. “This is not a walk in the park, but she is clearly the best candidate because we were all over the map in the primary.”

San Diego’s GLBT community is facing a new challenge this year in the race for the State Assembly’s 76th District seat. Unlike recent elections where Assemblymember Christine Kehoe was the overwhelming GLBT community favorite, two candidates in this year’s election, Lori Saldaña and Tricia Hunter, are courting the GLBT vote, leaving many voters wondering which candidate to cast their vote for.

The majority of GLBT politicians and political organizations have cast their lot with Saldaña, the Democratic candidate, including Assemblymembers Kehoe and Mark Leno, state Senator Sheila Kuehl, Deputy Mayor Toni Atkins, Equality California and the San Diego Democratic Club. District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, the Log Cabin Republicans and GLBT Vote 2004 have backed Hunter.

Kuehl noted that in the March primary, much of the attention had been placed on candidates Vince Hall and Heidi von Szeliski, but it was Saldaña who was able to survive the mudslinging between those two candidates and emerge as the Democratic choice in the 76th District. Now Saldaña faces Republican candidate Tricia Hunter, a self-proclaimed moderate Republican who has the backing of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“There was a lot of speculation about the new governor, that he was going to be really good on LGBT issues,” Kuehl noted at the event. “As long as we don’t seem to have any relationship in our community to hurting business, then maybe he will be good to the LGBT community, but I will never take for granted that he will be with us necessarily. It’s a struggle, it’s a fight, it’s insistence, and there is a lot of dissention down on the first floor among his staff.”

Kuehl noted that in the 2005 session of the State Assembly, it will be even more important to have a strong base of Democratic support because important bills related to GLBT civil rights will be coming up in the next legislative session.

“This year, when Mark Leno reintroduces his marriage bill, it’s going to more important, I think, than it has ever been,” Kuehl said. “We have to worry about whether we are going to have 41 votes we need for that bill in the Assembly, I don’t think there is any question that we are going to have 21 votes in the Senate.”

Last spring, Leno introduced AB 1967, the Marriage License Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would have prohibited the denial of marriage licenses by the State of California to same-sex couples by amending the state Family Code to define “marriage” as a civil contract between “two persons” instead of between a man and a woman. While the bill received widespread Democratic support in the Assembly, Leno pulled the bill as a precautionary measure and said he would reintroduce it in 2005 when he felt support for the measure would be stronger.

“When questions like equal marriage rights come up, Equality California has endorsed me,” said Saldaña, who supports same-sex marriage. “... California was the first state in the country to overturn the ban on interracial marriage; why shouldn’t we be the first to go to the next step and have full marriage equality?”

In the past, every GLBT civil rights bill that has been passed in the State Assembly has been along party lines, and many members of the GLBT community have questioned whether Hunter will be able to take a stand on GLBT rights issues when they go against the Republican party platform. In the past, Hunter has stated that she supports civil unions, which is the same stance presidential candidate John Kerry has taken. It is that position that kept Kerry from gaining the endorsement of California Equality, the largest GLBT lobbying organization in the state.

“Tricia will not have a base of support to vote on those issues within her own party. If she goes down that path, she will be a one-term Assembly member,” Saldaña said. “That’s what happened to her last time in Riverside County where she was too moderate and pro-choice for the Republicans and they ran a person against her and she lost. I believe the same thing could happen.”

Saldaña added: “In a nutshell, the Republican Party will not allow their members to support LGBT issues and their bills.”

At press time, Hunter had not returned calls from the Gay & Lesbian Times for comments pertaining to this story.