One of the more interesting things about the Democratic County Central Committee’s mayoral endorsements was the lack of support for Mayor Ed Lee among the eight state and federal office holders who sit on the panel.
Under the party charter, any Democrat who lives in the city and represents San Francisco in Sacramento or Washington gets to vote at the DCCC. So U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Jackie Speier, state Senators Mark Leno and Leland Yee, State Assembly Members Tom Ammiano and Fiona Ma and Attorney General Kamala Harris all had a say in who the party would support for mayor. None of those people ever show up at the meetings, but they’re allowed to appoint an alternate to represent their views.
And only Feinstein voted to endorse Lee.
Pelosi’s alternate didn’t show up for the endorsement meeting. Speier abstained. Yee voted for himself. Leno voted No Endorsement. Ammiano suported Avalos. Harris abstained. Fiona Ma voted for Bevan Dufty.
Not a rousing show of support for the incumbent.
(It would have been interesting if Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom were still on the DCCC, but Gav has moved to Marin, and he will now have the distinct honor of serving on that county’s committee.)
Meanwhile: I almost want to ignore Randy Shaw’s attempt to portray the DCCC (and some white progressives in general) as racist for not supporting any of the Asian candidates, since I think it’s too easy to throw that word around in this city, and journalists ought to be pretty careful when they do it. White people (like me and Randy Shaw) need to be particularly sensitive to race issues in the media — and I do think there are real tensions between some old-line progressives and emerging Asian political leaders who don’t always agree with progressives on issues. But that sensitivity should include not sensationalizing race or using race to score political points.
That said, it’s worth noting that of the four Asians on the Board of Supervisors, the DCCC endorsed three (Eric Mar, David Chiu, and Carmen Chu). The only one who didn’t get the DCCC nod for supervisor was Shaw’s candidate in District 6, Jane Kim.
Oh, and the Number 1 candidate endorsed by the Democratic Party is Latino. And the two fastest-growing non-white political populations in the city are Asians and Latinos.
You can fight forever about the politics of the DCCC endorsement and why the panel only chose two candidates. The Guardian will almost certainly support three, since that’s how RCV works. Why Yee, who has the support of both SEIU Local 1021 and the Sierra Club, got only two votes at the DCCC is a fair question. Why Chiu, who is a member of the DCCC, didn’t win the third slot is also an interesting political question. But I honestly don’t think race was a factor. Maybe I’m wrong.
And as for the whole flap about Aaron Peskin, Rose Pak and the People’s Republic of China (based, by the way, on Peskin’s comments in a Falun Gong newspaper): I met with Rose Pak a few weeks ago, and in the course of talking about Leland Yee (who I will be profiling in the Aug. 31 Guardian) she told me that some progressives were accusing her of being a Communist — a reference to comments by Peskin and Chris Daly linking her to the PRC. She called it “red baiting.”
Just for the record: I’d by happy if Pak WAS a communist — maybe she’d be more interested in income redistribution, progressive taxation and land reform in San Francisco. I like communists. I even got me a picture of ol’ Leon Trostky hangin’ in my office (along with a picture of John Ross, another noted pinko). And years ago, when I had a garage, I really did have a commie flag tacked up on the wall. A friend bought it for me in the Soviet Union back in the day, and one of the reasons I loved it was that it was so poorly made that it started to unravel the minute I stuck the tacks in it, and the colors weren’t quite right, and the silkscreened hammer and sickle was way off center. Go team.
Seriously, I think the era when the label “Communist” was a serious smear is long over. Nobody cares any more. Besides, China isn’t really a Communist country these days, is it? I’m not an expert on the Chinese economy, but it seems much more hyper-capitalist to me. And it’s safe to say that there’s no Cuba-style forced economic equality in China, a country that has a handful of billionaires and a lot of very poor people and may have even worse income distribution than the United States.
Maybe we could talk about the issues?