Mar 28, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the endorsement Monday of the Liberty City Democratic Club, Philadelphia’s largest gay political group.

That boosts her support among gay voters at a time when polls show her ahead of rival presidential contender Barack Obama in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary set for April 22.

Gay activists in Pennsylvania said the Clinton and Obama campaigns were reaching out to gay voters in a state that political pundits say Clinton must win to keep her candidacy alive. She trails Obama in pledged delegates, and some party observers now speculate that uncommitted superdelegates will decide the nomination in Obama’s favor if he retains his lead in pledged delegates through the remaining primaries and caucuses.

Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was scheduled to appear Thursday at the popular Philadelphia gay bar Woody’s to participate in a candidates’ forum sponsored by the National Stonewall Democrats. Lesbian singer Melissa Etheridge was scheduled to address the forum as an Obama representative by phone from Los Angeles.

National Stonewall Democrats announced on its web site that it had organized a live transmission by phone of the Philadelphia forum to gay house parties throughout the country, which the group said would serve as another in its series of presidential candidate forums held in key primary states.

One of the Thursday night house parties was scheduled to take place in Washington at the home of D.C. gay Democratic Party activist David Salie.

The Clinton endorsement by the Liberty City gay Democratic group came a few weeks after a gay Pittsburgh group, the Steel City Democrats, also gave its endorsement to Clinton.

“We are proud to endorse Senator Hillary Clinton in this important primary cycle,” said Matthew Woodcock, a spokesperson for the Liberty City group. “Her record of accomplishment is proof positive that she’ll be a fighter for the LGBT community in the White House and that’s what we need.”

Tobias Wolff, a University of Pennsylvania Law School professor and head of Obama’s gay campaign steering committee, acknowledged that Obama is the underdog in the Pennsylvania primary and that Clinton appears to have the support of the state’s established gay groups.

He said the Obama campaign was hopeful that large numbers of gays in the state would join a record number of newly registered voters in turning the tide in Obama’s favor in the days leading up to the Pennsylvania primary. Figures released by the Pennsylvania Department of State this week show that 161,000 people either registered for the first time or re-registered as Democrats in the state, marking a record gain for the party.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Obama campaign organized voter registration drives that targeted college students. Pennsylvania is known for its large number of colleges and also has a significant gay population. Armed with clip boards and pens, Obama volunteers descended on Center City, the gay section of Philadelphia, signing up new voters they believe will support Obama rather than Clinton, the newspaper reported. The state’s deadline for registering new voters ended on March 24.

Mark Segal, publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, the state’s largest gay newspaper, said the Clinton campaign has so far had a more aggressive outreach to gay voters in Philadelphia and other parts of the state.

“The Clinton campaign takes the GLBT community very seriously,” he said. “At the moment, it’s Hillary’s to lose,” he said, referring to the gay vote.

Segal said his paper has remained neutral so far in the Pennsylvania primary but he plans to make an endorsement on behalf of the Gay News during the final week of the campaign.

Stacy Sobel, executive director of Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, a nonpartisan gay group based in Philadelphia, said gays are especially motivated to vote in the primary because the state legislature is considering an anti-gay ballot measure calling for a state constitutional ban on gay marriage. A number of state legislators will be on the same primary ballot as Clinton and Obama, with many of them having taken sides on the gay marriage issue.