Story highlights The Houston Chronicle's editorial board said supporting Donald Trump would repudiate 'notions of competence'

The paper has traditionally endorsed Republican candidates, supporting Mitt Romney in 2012

(CNN) Hillary Clinton has earned an early surprise endorsement from The Houston Chronicle with the Texas newspaper describing Donald Trump as "totally lacking in qualifications to be president."

With 99 days to go until Election Day, November 8, The Chronicle's editorial board announced its support of Clinton on Friday in a scathing review of Trump's candidacy , criticizing his policy positions on immigration, healthcare, energy and foreign affairs, as well as his experience and temperament.

The board wrote that while it usually endorsed candidates closer to Election Day, it made an exception for the 2016 presidential race because the choice between Clinton and Trump was not merely political and to stand behind the Republican nominee would "repudiate the most basic notions of competence and capability."

"Any one of Trump's less-than-sterling qualities -- his erratic temperament, his dodgy business practices, his racism, his Putin-like strongman inclinations and faux-populist demagoguery, his contempt for the rule of law, his ignorance -- is enough to be disqualifying," the board wrote. "His convention-speech comment, 'I alone can fix it,' should make every American shudder. He is, we believe, a danger to the Republic."

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