It’s a classic tale of David vs. Goliath – in this case, openly gay Gulf War veteran John Rinaldi is taking on 52nd District Congressmember Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, a Vietnam War veteran and chair of the powerful Armed Services Committee.

Can Rinaldi slay the goliath Republican in a conservative East County district, one Hunter has held onto for more than a quarter century? Some believe Rinaldi has no chance of prevailing in Tuesday’s election, most notably the nation’s two largest GLBT political organizations, the Victory Fund and the Human Rights Campaign. Both have declined to endorse his candidacy.

That hasn’t deterred Rinaldi, who says he’s in this fight for the long haul.

“I’m committed to running this race again, which is how I’ve ended up securing 165 labor organization endorsements,” the San Carlos resident said. “We believe we can win in ’06, but we know we can kick Hunter’s butt in ’08.”

Rinaldi isn’t entirely lacking support. The predominantly gay and lesbian San Diego Democratic Club, as well as the state and national Democratic parties and San Diego’s GLBT Vote 2006 have endorsed him. Democratic Congressmember Barney Frank has twice visited San Diego to raise money for Rinaldi’s campaign.

“It’s very important to stop this right-wing cabal from running the whole country, so I’m campaigning for Democrats everywhere,” Frank told the Gay & Lesbian Times this week.

Raising the specter of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prohibits gays and lesbians from serving their country openly, Frank said: “It’s particularly relevant that John is a gay veteran of the Navy. I think a veteran of the Navy helps us to refute that. I think it is also helpful to the Democrats to have veterans who have previously served in Iraq who say, ‘Look, this current [war] is a bad idea.’”

Rinaldi said he hasn’t based his campaign on gay and lesbian issues but on his opposition to the current war in Iraq. He hopes his message will appeal to veterans and other constituents troubled by the way the Republican Congress has handled the war.

“I have a lot of veterans in my district,” said Rinaldi, who served during Desert Storm as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. “It doesn’t matter what party they belong to, George [W.] Bush and Duncan Hunter consistently have voted to screw veterans. They’ve cut their benefits. They want them to pay more for health care. We have a debt of honor to these men and women. They had our back in defending our freedom and we have a duty to have theirs now.”

Rinaldi said he was prompted to enter the race by the deaths of friends serving in Iraq.

“I don’t believe we should have gone to Iraq, but, regardless of whether we should or shouldn’t be there, it was Duncan Hunter’s job as chairman of the Armed Services Committee [to assure the troops] had body armor,” he said. “Their vehicles should have been armored, they should have had radio jammers – and they didn’t.”

Rinaldi noted Hunter’s ties to disgraced former San Diego Congressmember Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who is currently serving an eight-year sentence in federal prison for accepting bribes from defense contractors. Hunter worked in concert with Cunningham to secure lucrative government contracts for Brent Wilkes, one of two defense contractors alleged to have given Cunningham $2.4 million in cash and other perks.

Both Hunter and Cunningham were cheerleaders for Wilkes’ automated document conversion programs.

“As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, [Hunter’s] supposed to be concerned with providing the military with the things that they need to do their job. Instead all we ever get from Hunter are things like the document conversion contract,” Rinaldi said. “He insisted on pushing it because it put a bunch of money into his pocket and into Cunningham’s pocket and in no way benefited the military. They were already doing document conversion.”

Hunter, who this week announced his interest in seeking the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, failed to respond to numerous requests for an interview left at his San Diego campaign headquarters and at his Washington congressional office.

“I think that as more and more of the story unfolds we’re going to find that Hunter was as complicit [as Cunningham] and is as guilty,” Rinaldi said.

Rinaldi also assailed Hunter’s proposed 700-mile border fence extension, which President Bush approved earlier this month. He said the fence would do little to prevent illegal immigration or make the country safer.

Rinaldi also has been bold in his condemnation of Hunter’s joint ownership of a cabin in rural Virginia with Preston M. Geren III, a close confidant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a senior Pentagon official.

“I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s doing something in bed – literally or figuratively – with a lobbyist for the Pentagon,” Rinaldi said.

On issues specific to the GLBT community, Rinaldi supports same-sex marriage, clean-syringe exchange programs and the medicinal use of marijuana as prescribed by a doctor. Rinaldi said he also supports a woman’s right to choose an abortion, and opposes Proposition 85, a reworked version of failed legislation that requires a parent be notified 48 hours before an abortion is performed on a girl younger than 18.

“It harms the poorest and weakest among us,” he said of the measure.

Rinaldi said he also opposes the Boy Scouts’ preferential land lease in Balboa Park, given the organization’s policy of banning gays and atheists from its ranks.

Born and raised in Fairfax, Va., Rinaldi has worked as a high school teacher, a police officer and a minister. Today, he is part owner in the San Diego branch of Silver Linings Mortgage and is currently finishing his Ph.D. in leadership studies at the University of San Diego.

“I was raised by Kennedy-era parents,” he said. “My father was a government service worker, so I grew up in a family that taught me to serve our country and our nation, and I’ve tried to do that, whether as a police officer, in the military or as a minister.”

Rinaldi touted early attempts to make himself known to House Democrats.

“I’ve been to D.C. several times,” he said. “I’ve made good inroads with Bob Filner and Susan Davis locally, and people like Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin and Russ Holt. If I win I’m not a strange face.”

Despite attending part of the Victory Fund’s training and winning a tough primary election, Rinaldi ultimately failed to garner the fund’s endorsement, an admittedly raw nerve for the candidate.

“We had counted on the Victory Fund and HRC endorsements,” Rinaldi said. “Because of inside-the-beltway mentality and an arbitrary rule that they will not endorse candidates for federal office that have not held previous elected office, they refused to look at our endorsement, which created kind of a penal effect in terms of the kind of money we could have tapped into around the country.

“If I had been elected postal clerk … or if I was on the school board here, they’d support me for Congress,” Rinaldi said. “None of those have any way, shape, fashion or form of training [candidates] running for office on a federal level. Winning a five-way primary demonstrated our ability and resolve in this campaign.”

Denis Dison, the Victory Fund’s vice president for communications, said unseating an incumbent congressmember can take upward of $2 million. To date, Rinaldi has raised slightly more than $71,500.

“Raising that kind of money is extremely difficult if you do not have a political track record, if you don’t have strong backing from the community and can demonstrate that,” Dison said. “Our entire political budget this year for 88 candidates is less than $3 million and it takes a tremendous amount of effort and energy to raise that kind of money. To do that you’ve got to have somebody like a Tammy Baldwin, who had been elected before, had a ton of community support behind her and was sort of poised to win.”

Congressmember Frank, D-Mass., who received the fund’s endorsement in his current bid for re-election, said he is disappointed that Rinaldi did not receive support from the Victory Fund and HRC.

“Particularly HRC, I think they made a mistake,” Frank said. “Apparently, they have this policy that says they only endorse candidates who they think can win…. I think for HRC this is a terrible mistake and sort of falling into the Washington self-importance trap. They don’t like the idea that it will cause us problems if we’re associated with a losing candidate. For the Victory Fund, I can see where they say we’re trying to husband the resources.”

HRC evoked the ire of many in the GLBT community this year when it endorsed Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who opposes same-sex marriage, over pro-gay challenger Ned Lamont.

Mike Mings, political action committee director for the HRC, said the organization bases its endorsements on a candidate’s ability to raise money, to demonstrate leadership and on their political viability.

“Our endorsement comes with a PAC check,” Mings said. “You need to do a lot of work before you go to Washington.”

Robin Brand, vice president of politics and strategy for the Victory Fund, said that without cash in a congressional race there is no campaign.

“I understand we get frustrated and our emotional reaction is that he’s [Hunter] a horrible, anti-gay Republican incumbent … but we’ve got to make smart decisions,” Brand said. “These aren’t emotional reactions, they’re measurable reactions.”

Adrian Kwiatkowski, director of government public affairs for the Monger Company, said that despite recent revelations that Hunter may have dodged a portion of his property taxes on his Alpine home and other alleged misdeeds, basic math assures Hunter’s victory. He noted that there are 154,000 registered Republicans in the district and only about 100,000 Democrats.

“Look at the election results for the primary of June 6,” Kwiatkowski said. “Duncan Hunter got 60,000 votes. When you combine John Rinaldi with all the other Democrats in that race, all the Democrats only got 32,000…. He needs to move and then start smaller someplace else…. [The district’s] gerrymandered to benefit Republicans and anyone that tries to put resources into it is wasting money.”