By Tim Redmond
The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club may wind up endorsing Mark Leno for state Senate next month without even hearing from his opponent, Carole Migden.
The club voted March 12 to go ahead and suspend the normal rules to allow an early endorsement of Leno, who is challenging Migden for state Senate. Frankly, it’s not a big surprise — everyone knew that Alice would wind up backing Leno. That club is very much his political base.
Still, some club members thought that there ought to at least be a candidate’s forum before the final vote, where Migden would have a chance to show up and make her case. A motion to make the early endorsement contingent on that was handily defeated.
Now, club president Rebecca Prozan is scrambling to pull a forum together before the final endorement vote in April — but there’s guarantee it will happen. Prozan told me she thinks Migden should have been invited to speak before the final vote, “but the membership rejected that position.”
This strikes me as a bit unfair — and not a terribly productive way to go about local politics right now. Sure, Leno’s the club favorite, and that’s fine — but Migden is also a legitmate LGBT community leader with a credible record and constituency, and a queer San Francisco political organization in a potentially divisive race like this ought to go out of its way to be fair to all involved and not to leave anyone with bitter feelings.