Following its District 2 forum last Thursday evening, the San Diego Democratic Club (SDDC) voted not to endorse in the District 2 race for the Nov. 8 primary, which is set to fill former Councilmember Michael Zucchet’s seat. Zucchet resigned in July after being convicted on corruption charges.

Seventeen candidates are vying to replace Zucchet, whose former district includes the coastline from southern La Jolla to Point Loma and also Old Town, Mission Hills and downtown.

Eight of the 17 candidates met before the SDDC in hopes of winning the club’s endorsement. According to SDDC President Steven Whitburn, Lorena Gonzalez, an environmental lawyer in the lieutenant governor’s office, received the most number of votes for the endorsement, but fell one vote shy of breaking the 60-percent threshold needed to receive the club’s outright endorsement.

“I think that influenced the membership’s decision to highlight her in another way by making her the one candidate to be rated acceptable,” Whitburn said.

All of the eight candidates present at the forum scored 100 percent on the SDDC candidate questionnaire, which asks a series of questions on specific issues including same-sex marriage, medicinal marijuana, needle exchange and abortion.

Candidates in attendance were businessperson and apartment manager James Morrison; Kathleen Blavatt, a small business owner, teacher and graphic communications specialist who sits on the city’s Mission Bay Landfill Technical Advisory Committee; attorney George Najjar; San Diego Community College District trustee Rich Grosch; public middle school teacher Tom Eaton; Ian Trowbridge, a retired Salk Institute professor and civic activist; Pat Zaharopoulos, a deputy state attorney general; and Gonzalez.

Due to the number of candidates at the forum, only a handful of questions from the club were addressed. But they included GLBT-specific issues such as the candidates’ positions on marriage equality, clean-needle exchange and the Boy Scouts preferential land lease in Balboa Park. The eight candidates’100-percent scores on the candidate questionnaire means that all eight candidates supported full marriage equality and needle exchange.

Each of the candidates, except Morrison, said they were strongly opposed to the Boy Scouts’ $1-a-year lease in Balboa Park, and said that subsidizing discrimination was wrong. Morrison said he did not support the policy, but would like to work together with the Boy Scouts for a solution.

“I guess I would like to work to see if this policy could be changed,” Morrison said, adding that the main tenants of the Boy Scouts should be inclusive. “It’s really unfortunate that those young teenage boys are always penalized [for] what us adults deem right and what isn’t right.”

The Republican candidate to beat, businessperson and former District 2 candidate Kevin Faulconer, received an unacceptable rating by the club for his support of the Boy Scouts’ lease and his position against clean-needle exchange. The membership asked each of the candidates how they planned to defeat Faulconer, who is committed to raising $600,000 during the race.

“Kevin Faulconer is raising $600,000 because Kevin Faulconer needs $600,000,” said Najjar. “I think we need to focus on winning a runoff, and, at that time, I think we all have strategies.”

Several candidates mentioned adopting a grass-roots approach over raising funds, and emphasized the importance of walking precincts, knocking on doors and talking to people.

Both Gonzalez and Trowbridge pledged to raise $100,000 to defeat Faulconer. Zaharopoulos pledged to raise $25,000.

Gonzalez urged her Democratic opponents to run a clean race in order to get one Democratic candidate from the primary into the runoff.

“If we tear each other apart, Kevin Faulconer can walk away with it,” she said. “… I am willing to make a pledge today to make this a clean an honest campaign and not tear apart my opponents.”

When asked about how they would solve the pension fund crisis, two points were broadly adopted: waiting for the city audit to determine the size of the pension deficit in order to determine what action to take, and not scapegoating city employees.

“We don’t even know what the deficit is. We don’t have the audits for 2003, 2004 or 2005, and so specific solutions at this stage would be premature,” Trowbridge said. “What I would say is the working men and women of City Hall … are our human capital, and what I don’t want to see is cuts made in the budget of the city that are so high that we lose this human capital we’ve built up over decades.”

Blavatt highlighted the importance of electing Councilmember Donna Frye as mayor in the Nov. 8 special election.

“I think one big thing is getting Donna Frye elected,” Blavatt said. “All along she says we need to see the books, we need an audit. If Sanders gets in there, I think we have Murphy all over again.”

Following the debate, the candidates stepped outside while the membership discussed which candidate would obtain the endorsement.

“We went through four ballots and every time we eliminated the candidates with the fewest votes, and ultimately it was left between Lorena Gonzales and no endorsement,” Whitburn said. “She actually got more votes on the final ballot [than not to endorse], but it was not the 60 percent needed for the endorsement.”