After I ran this post yesterday on the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council’s endorsement of District 3 City Council candidate Todd Gloria, I got a number of questions from readers about why unions shifted from their shared endorsement in the primary to picking Gloria outright.
In the primary campaign, the umbrella labor group offered a shared endorsement of the three front-running Democrats in the district, Gloria, Stephen Whitburn and John Hartley.
Gloria and Whitburn emerged from the primary and are now facing each other in the general election.
So I got on the phone with Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer Lorena Gonzalez to see why her group went with Gloria over Whitburn this time.
She said in the primaries there were three good candidates on labor issues. But, I asked her, why, when you had two of those candidates back again the primary, would you chose Gloria over Whitburn?
She said sometimes certain unions want to push for certain candidates. In this case, she said, hotel workers and fire fighters pressed for Gloria.
“I think the people who voted for Todd really connected with him, his experiences as a native San Diego and as the son of a hotel worker and a landscaper,” Gonzalez said.
She said she doesn’t imagine the unions will pour many resources into the race, which is between two Democrats, when Dems in districts 1 and 7 will be fighting battles against Republican candidates.