Election 2010

Cohen and Farrell come from behind in early ranked-choice tally

Sasha Cuttler
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Cohen and Farrell come from behind in early ranked-choice tally

A preliminary run of the ranked-choice ballots in San Francisco Board of Supervisors races shows D10 candidate Malia Cohen and D2 candidate Mark Farrell winning come-from-behind victories in those races while Jane Kim in D6 and Scott Wiener in D8 maintain their current leads to win their races. Yet with about 50,000 ballots citywide remaining to be counted, Election Department head John Arntz warned those results aren’t final.

“It’s going to change. Nothing is permanent, nothing is final. We have to go through every single ballot,” he told the Guardian.

Still, the results are interesting and could predict the final outcomes, which won’t be known for about another week. In the free-for-all that was the D10 race, Tony Kelly maintained his election night lead throughout 18 rounds of redistributing votes, with Kelly at 35.33 percent, Cohen at 33.44 percent, and Lynette Sweet at 31.23 percent. But on the next round, 429 of Sweet’s votes went to Cohen and 139 to Kelly, giving Cohen a 152-vote margin of victory: 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent.

In D2, the elections chart appears to show all four also-rans being eliminated at once (normally, the last place candidate is knocked out round by round) and that redistribution gives Farrell the edge over Reilly by just 97 votes, or having 50.3 percent of the vote. But given that there’s still lots of votes to count in high-turnout D2, that could change.

In D6, where there was a shootout between two progressives, Kim and Debra Walker, the two candidates appeared to hold their five-point margin of difference through nine rounds of elimination, until the downtown-backed candidate Theresa Sparks was eliminated in round 10, with 769 of her votes going to Kim and 572 to Walker, giving Kim a winning percentage of 54 percent to Walker’s 46 percent.

And in D8, the counting of ranked choice ballots shows election night winner Scott Wiener extending his seven-point election night lead to beat Rafael Mandelman with 55.65 percent of the vote.

Arntz said there are about 50,000 ballots remaining, maybe more once provisional ballots are tallied, and the department has been counting them at a rate of 15,000-18,000 per day. So ranked-choice tallies with all the ballot will probably occur by the end of next week, with the final canvassing and certification expected in about 20 days.

 

Guardian intern Nicole Dial contributed this report.

Mayoral question perplexes the pundits

Sasha Cuttler
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Mayoral question perplexes the pundits

Today’s post-election analysis session at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association featured the usual room full of smart political minds from across the ideological spectrum – including those of hosts Alex Clemens and David Latterman – but nobody had any real insights into the big question on everyone’s minds: who will be the next mayor?

Everyone agrees that Gavin Newsom is headed to Sacramento in January, and state law calls for him to become lieutenant governor (and resign as mayor) on Jan. 3. At that point, Board President David Chiu becomes acting mayor, and the current Board of Supervisors is scheduled to meet Jan. 4 and could vote for a new interim mayor. The newly elected board takes office a week later and as its first order of business it will elect a new president, who becomes the new acting mayor, and if the old board can’t elect an interim, then the new one could elect an interim mayor, who would serve until after the mayoral election in November.

It’s tough enough for anyone to get to six votes, particularly considering supervisors can’t vote for themselves, but the deal-making could also involve the district attorney’s job. If Kamala Harris holds her slim current lead for attorney general, the new mayor would get to appoint her replacement. And if Rep. Nancy Pelosi decides to resign, that plum job would mix things up further. So everything is revolving around the vote for mayor right now.

“Everything comes back to this,” Latterman said, as he and Clemens basically had to shrug off questions about who has the inside track to be mayor. There are just too many variables involved, too many possible deals that could be cut, too many ambitious politicians in the mix, not to mention innumerable outsiders who could be tapped (hmmm…Mayor Jones, it does have a ring to it).

Latterman, a downtown consultant who helps update the Progressive Voter Index (created by SF State Professor Rich DeLeon), noted that the citywide results in the election once again showed that the overall city electorate is more moderate than progressive, particularly because the districts that have the strongest voter turnout (Districts 2, 4, and 8) are also some of the city’s most conservative.

As a result, he said, “The city is not voting for a far left mayor come November, so [progressives] will do whatever they can to get a mayor now.” Progressives are indeed hoping to get one of their own into Room 200 in January, and they hope that would allow whoever is chosen to win over enough voters to remain after November.

As a result, conservatives and most moderates will dig in, with many pushing the idea of a “caretaker mayor” so the playing field between left and right is still fairly even this fall.

“This is a World Series for political junkies,” Clemens said, who had the funniest way of casting the question: Normally, about 11 people run for mayor and the whole city picks one, he said, “but this is the opposite.” These 11 supervisors have the whole city to pick a mayor from, and at this point, it’s anyone’s guess who that will be.

Election 2010: How the late absentees are breaking

Zelda Bronstein
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Lots of votes still to count in San Francisco — as of this morning, the Department of Elections said there were about 80,000 absentee and provisional ballots in the hopper. But some have been counted yesterday and today, and we can draw some conclusions.

Typically election-day absentees break fairly close to the way election-day votes break, and Kamala Harris is citing that — and her campaign’s own analysis — to claim victory;

“Uncounted ballots will only bolster Kamala Harris’s lead, as they will reflect Harris’s strong Election Day advantage.”

In San Francisco, though, I’ve seen progressive measures that won on election day go down to defeat when the late votes, which were not as conservative as the early absentees but more conservative than election-day votes — were counted.

We now have the newest results from the DOE, and a little quick math gives us some interesting trends. In D2, Janet Reilly has (marginally) increased her lead over Mark Farrell. She’s gone from 6253 yesterday to 6512 today, a pickup of 259 votes. Farrell picked up only 223. So Reilly will probably still lead this race when all the votes are counted, but the RCV calculation will depend entirely on whether supporters of the third and fourth candidates, Abraham Simmons and Kat  Anderson, were voting for Anyone But Reilly or were willing to put Reilly as a second choice.

In D6, Jane Kim picked up about 100 votes over Debra Walker, enough to make her the clear front-runner. Again, though: Do the more conservative Theresa Sparks votes go to Kim,  whose supporters tried to portray Walker as part of a liberal machine and who touted her support for Prop. G, or do a sizable number go to Walker, another LGBT candidate?

D10? Not much has changed.  Tony Kelly picked up 65 votes. Lynette Sweet picked up 80. Malia Cohen picked up 72. Steve Moss picked up 64. The rankings aren’t going to change much. But this will be the mother of all RCV elections — and we’ll know more tomorrow, when DOE does its first RCV pass.

 

 

 

What beard does Newsom fear?

Zelda Bronstein
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7
What beard does Newsom fear?

Mayor Gavin Newsom seemed to jokingly endorse Giants closer Brian Wilson for mayor at the parade Nov. 3rd (and Wilson might have endorsed his BDSM-loving neighbor), but maybe the mayor’s words have been misinterpreted. Maybe he was referring to another local player when he proclaimed the words “fear the beard.” Just a thought.


 


 


Ranked choice vote tallying starts tomorrow

Sasha Cuttler
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With four of the five Board of Supervisors races awaiting ranked-choice voting tallies, the San Francisco Department of Elections says it will run a preliminary ranked choice voting tally tomorrow (Friday) afternoon.

The department says there are still at least 52,000 ballots left to count (14,000 provisional ballots and 38,000 absentee ballots dropped off at the polls), plus an unknown number of absentee ballots still arriving by mail, so tomorrow won’t be the final word on who wins. But it will give a good idea where people’s second choices are going.

In District 10, just 90 votes separate leader Tony Kelly from runner-up Lynette Sweet, while Jane Kim has 470 votes more than Debra Walker in D6, and Janet Reilly is leading Mark Farrell by just 361 votes in D10. Looking slightly more settled is D8, where Scott Wiener leads Rafael Mandelman by 1,168 votes, particularly given the third place finisher is Rebecca Prozan. Like Wiener, she is a moderate former president of the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club.

Election officials say they don’t have a breakdown of the outstanding votes by district.

Election 2010: SF’s season of political madness

Zelda Bronstein
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You can draw — or not draw — all sorts of conclusions about the meaning of last night’s national election, but I can tell you what the state and local results mean: A season of political madness. As of the first week in January, San Francisco will have a new mayor and (probably) a new district attorney, and neither will be elected by the voters. And if some pundits are correct and Nancy Pelosi decides to retire rather than taking a seat on the back bench, then a once-in-a-lifetime change to take a safe seat in Congress will open up. And man, will the mad scramble be on.


Gavin Newsom will be sworn in as lt. governor the same day that Kamala Harris (if her lead in the polls holds) will be sworn in as attorney general. In theory, that means Board President David Chiu will become acting mayor — with the authority to appoint a new district attorney. That’s if Harris doesn’t step down a day early, allowing Newsom to appoint her replacement. Deals are being offered and tossed around already (and one of the interesting elements is that Chiu has always been interested in the D.A.’s job — which would open up not only the board presidency but his D3 seat.)


Then the current board members will have five days before their terms end to choose a new mayor by majority vote (except that no supervisor can vote form him or herself), and in the meantime, Chiu will be both acting mayor and board president. If the supes can’t make a decision, the new board — and we still don’t know who will be on that board — will get a chance to elect both a new board president (and acting mayor) and a new mayor.


And to make it more complicated, a number of the people being looked at for the mayor’s job — and some of the people who plan to run for mayor next November — would also be very interested in Pelosi’s seat.


This election isn’t over yet — but already, I promise you, the talks are on and everyone’s thinking about the deal.


It’s going to be crazy — and it also offers progressives a rare change to reshape city politics. No matter what happens with the D6 and D10 races, progressives will hold the board majority. If they can work together — thinking about the larger agenda, not just their personal egos — this could turn out very well indeed.

Steve Moss, sorehead

Zelda Bronstein
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Steve Moss, sorehead

Steve Moss spent a lot of money — and had a lot of money spent on his behalf — but at this point is in 4th place in the D10 race. Not out of the running — none of the top four contenders, Moss, Tony Kelly, Malia Cohen and Lynette Sweet, are finished, since ranked-choice voting will decide the outcome and anything could happen — but he’s certainly not in a commanding position. And he’s not being a good sport about it.


Reporter Rula Al-Nasrawi showed up last night at the Moss party — and got treated with a level of rudeness that reflects very badly on any potential elected official. Here’s her report:


So I walked in to Goat Hill Pizza and I walked all the way to the back room and I asked these two men if Steve Moss was around and they said that he was probably in the bathroom or something, so I sat down and waited on a stool. It was actually kind of awkward because there weren’t that many people there and there were all of these stools lined up against the wall. So I looked up and I recognized him, he was talking to his wife and some other people. I shook his hand and introduced myself and told him that I just wanted to swing by his party and just chat with him, and he said sure, even though he seemed a little nervous. He led me out of that back room and into the main restaurant and we were about to sit down at a table when a man Steve later refered to as his manager came storming into the room saying “Nonononono we do not talk to them!” And then Steve jumped up out of the chair and said, “Yeah sorry my manager says I can’t talk to you … your paper slandered me.”


So: Steve Moss can’t think for himself, he lets a campaign manager tell him who to talk to — and he snubs a newspaper that dared to publish critical stuff about him. Almost Tea-Party-like. What a bad sign.


 

Election 2010: Labor and progressives dodge a bullet

Sasha Cuttler
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Bucking a national conservative, anti-government political trend, San Franciscans stayed with some fairly progressive politics on election night, rejecting a measure to demonize public employees (Prop. B), giving progressive John Rizzo far more votes than his City College of San Francisco board rivals, and taking far more liberal positions in state ballot measures and candidates than California voters, who were already far to the left of national voters.
“We are really happy that Prop. B is going down because it was such a misguided measure. It was not well thought through,” San Francisco Labor Council President Tim Paulson told the Guardian at the party labor threw with the San Francisco Democratic Party at Great American Music Hall. “San Francisco voters are the smartest in America.”
Paulson was also happy to see those voters approve Prop. N, taxing the transfer of properties worth more than $5 million, “because San Franciscans know that everyone has to pay their fair share.”
Another labor priority, Prop. J, the temporary hotel tax increase, lost by a narrow margin after Mayor Gavin Newsom and his downtown allies opposed it, and the online travel company spent millions of dollars to bury Prop. K – a Newsom-created rival measure that would have closed a loophole that lets the company avoid paying the hotel tax.
Rizzo said he was happy to far outpoll Lawrence Wong and Anita Grier as the three incumbents ran uncontested for their City College board seats, which should put him in a leadership position in the troubled district. “There is a tradition at City College that the highest vote getter gets the presidency, so I’m pretty happy,” Rizzo told us on election night.
There were some conservative victories in San Francisco, including approval of Prop. L, which criminalizes sitting or lying on sidewalks, and Prop. G, which will reduce Muni operator wages and change work rules after getting the approval of about 63 percent of voters.
“Ultimately, downtown did well,” progressive political consultant Jim Stearns said, noting how aggressive spending by downtown business and real estate interests ended a string of progressive victories in the last several election cycles, including the likely election of Scott Wiener in D8 and the strong challenge in D2 by Mark Farrell to perceived frontrunner Janet Reilly, who had progressive endorsements.
Stearns said national polls have shown that people are more afraid of big government than big corporations, whereas progressives tend to hold the opposite view. “That national atmosphere definitely had an impact on even races locally,” Stearns said.
But in San Francisco, the progressives retain a strong position in the political debates to come.

Election 2010: Jim Meko’s “not going anywhere”

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Election 2010: Jim Meko’s “not going anywhere”

D6 candidate Jim Meko was with campaign volunteers Jake Dues and Anthony Faber at his print shop on 10th Street near the end of the night on Nov. 2.

Meko and the others had ordered pizza, and a couple cans of Bud Light were out on the table. It was a quiet scene, since it was clear that he wasn’t one of the front-runners. Meko seemed disappointed by his loss, but kept a positive attitude.

“Unlike other losing candidates,” he said, “I’m not going anywhere. So I won’t be dwelling on what I could have done to win, but what I can do next for the district.”

He mentioned his involvement with the SoMa leadership council and Western SoMa community plan, which he has been involved with for years.

Election 2010: A last sit on Haight Street

Andrew Lam
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Election 2010: A last sit on Haight Street

I guess sit-lie supporters don’t party that late. I arrived at Hobson’s Choice, the Haight Street election party central for Civil Sidewalks at 11:30 p.m. only to find the triumphant contingent long gone. “Oh yeah, the last couple guys just left,” the bartender tells me. “There was a ton of people here.”

Not heading home any time soon, however, was Scott Free, who was sitting on a chair strumming a guitar down the block from Hobson’s contemplating the downfall of Prop. 19. Free’s been living “outdoors” for the past two years and has lived in the Haight for eight. He’s pretty sure the passage of Prop L is just a sign of a change that’s been long coming in the neighborhood. “Yeah, sit-lie will change things — but then, I didn’t think they’d be giving smoking tickets in Golden Gate Park. I came to San Francisco from Santa Clara County for the music and the tolerance.”

Hard to believe that voters in SF just passed a measure that will effectively ban Free and friends’ joyful noise. 

Their buddy is prone on the sidewalk besides him — drinking away the night that made homelessness illegal and made sure pot remained the same? “He’s real upset about it all,” Free tells me “he’s a big time sitter and liar.” 

Election 2010: Debra Walker holds out

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Election 2010: Debra Walker holds out

San Francisco Democrats milled about the Great American Music Hall, where a screen displaying election results was the centerpiece of the room. D6 candidate Debra Walker was thanking campaign volunteers and hugging supporters when we caught up with her.

But with Jane Kim ahead in the race, the celebration was somewhat subdued in her corner of the room.

Still, Walker was hopeful. “Now I think it’s going to be about the distribution of second choice votes,” she told us. “It’s going to be a nailbiter. In fact, I’m pretty confident about it. I’m really hopeful that we’ll gain the votes we need.”

 

Election 2010: Progressives keep D6 seat

Sasha Cuttler
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Election 2010: Progressives keep D6 seat

While the outcome of the D6 supervisorial race won’t be known until all the ranked choice ballots get counted, it is clear that the seat will stay with the progressives as Jane Kim and Debra Walker vie to see how many voters liked them second best. And that was good enough news for Board President David Chiu.
“Given where Debra and Jane are, I’m glad that we’re going to keep this a progressive seat,” Chiu, a Kim supporter, told us at their election night party in the new club Public Works, which is right next to Kim’s Mission Street campaign headquarters.
The latest results show Kim with 3,780 votes (31.3 %), Walker with 3,337 votes (27.7%), and downtown-backed Theresa Sparks with 1,985 votes (16.5%), and the rest divided among 11 other candidates.
“I feel good,” Kim told the Guardian, although she seemed a little weary from running a strong campaign, noting that they had 400 volunteers on the street today, most of them wearing the bright red T-shirts that read “See Jane Run” on the back. “What I’m really happy about is we ran a really good campaign.”
Kim supporters on hand included Sup. John Avalos, transit activist Dave Snyder, progressive activists Julian Davis and Sunny Angulo, Chiu board aides Judson True and Cat Rauschuber, and a large group of young Asian-American activists.
“I really want to encourage people to get to get to know each other,” Kim told the crowd. “We live in a big city and a really diverse district.”

Election 2010: Loose crowd, few conclusions at the Labor-Dems party

Andrew Lam
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SF Democratic Party chairperson Aaron Peskin made it to the Labor Council-Democratic Party soiree at the Great American Music Hall a little late. Of course, he didn’t miss much yet. Ask him how things are going tonight and he says “I’ll tell you on Friday.”

It’s a somewhat anti-climatic election night for followers of the tightly contested supervisoral races. Peskin told us he doubts that the close calls will be settled until later this week.

But the tardy tidings hardly seem to be stopping the party at GAMH. An abrasive little man who has unfortunately gotten his hands on a video camera shouts over the crowd at Peskin as he makes his way through the throngs. “You gonna pretend like you didn’t see me? You bitch!” Debra Walker, a candidate in the race for District 6, enters to a smattering of applause around 10:30 p.m. Drinks all around.

Election 2010: The Cohen party

Zelda Bronstein
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By Shawn Gaynor


Malia Cohen, her campaign staff and enthusiastic supporters gathered at Poquito’s on Third street anxiously awaiting election results. “It feels good to be the underdog,” said a grinning Cohen.


In a crowded district 10 field Cohen says, “she is the most prepared to work with all of the district’s people, district 10 is not monolithic it is not simply an African American community.”


“I am going to go where the people are and speak with people in their places of comfort they have ideas, creditable policy ideas. The people know how to solve our problems.”


 When asked what the district’s most pressing problem is, Cohen said: “it is an issue she saw highlighted on the campaign trail. We had a campaign BBQ up on third street and it really showed how profound the need is. We have to be addressing  food issues better in our community.” Cohen placed an importance on attracting new business including tourism to the district. “I see some real gems in district 10 and we need to  help polish those gems.”

Election 2010: The Prozan party

Zelda Bronstein
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Amid a packed bar of Giants fans and political supporters, Rebecca Prozan was greeted with fervent clapping and shouts. Whether or not she wins tonight, her supporters and fans still believe strongly in her and her campaign. Her supporters even sported paper hats with Prozan’s face.


“My base and my supporters is the people I’ve met on Muni or worked with at the mayor’s office, or at the dog park.” She said, excitedly shaking hands, posing for pictures and greeting the crowd.


Her supporters were upbeat about the election results based on her politics and ideals.” It’s easy to read the paper and have thoughts but harder to take action,” Asit Panwala, one of the election canvassers said. “I see her willingness to help people and how she engages with the public.”


 

Election 2010: D6 comes down to Sparks

Zelda Bronstein
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Here’s what’s going to make the D6 race so interesting as RCV plays out: The second-place votes of all the minor candidates won’t be enough to put either Walker or Kim over the top. The final decision about which progressive will be supervisor is going to come down to the second-place votes of a candidate who was seen by progressives as the one to beat: Theresa Sparks. Who were the Sparks voters — and how will they allote their second-place votes? I don’t think anyone knows for sure — but that’s what will determine the next D6 supervisor.

Election 2010: Just about final in SF

Zelda Bronstein
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We won’t know who the new supervisors are for several more days — and the near-final reslts show a much closer race in D 8 than  I thought a few minutes ago. Scott Wiener is still in the lead, but Rafael Mandelman is within 1,000 votes, and Rebecca Prozan in third has 3,500 votes. The Prozan votes would have to split overwhlemingly for Mandelman, but it’s possible.


But we do know this: Theresa Sparks, the candidate with the downtown and real-estate money, is not going to win in District 6. Steve Moss, who had all the big-money support, isn’t going to win either. (And he’s acting like a sorehead: His staff just kicked our reporter out of his party.) 


The School Board reace appears to have gone the way the Guardian recommended: Hydra Mendoza, Margaret Brodkin, and Kim-Shree Maufas look to be the top three.

Election 2010: More SF results, closer and closer races

Zelda Bronstein
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We now have 70 percent of the precincts reporting, and some of the supervisor races are still awy, way too close to call. Janet Reilly and political neophyte Mark Farrell are going to finish within a few percentage points — and Distrct 2 will come down to where the votes for Abraham Simmons, also a neophyte but in third place, wind up. In D 6, Jane Kim is about 600 votes ahead of Debra Walker, with Theresa Sparks well behind them; one of the two progressives will get this seat. Kim is in a strong position, but again: It all depends on the second- and third-place votes. James Keys, who had the endorsement of Chris Daly (and who Daly insisted to us was a serious candidate) has only 430 votes, or about 5 percent.


In D10, Tony Kelly, who had far less money than some other candidates, remains in the lead. Malia Cohen and Lynette Sweet are close behind, and Steve Moss, despite big money, is a distant 4th.


Scott Wiener is well ahead in D8, with 44 percent of the vote, and I’d say that one’s about over.

Election 2010: Wiener confident in D8, but Mandelman not giving up

Sasha Cuttler
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Election 2010: Wiener confident in D8, but Mandelman not giving up

The mood was buoyant in Harvey’s bar in the Castro, where D8 supervisorial candidate Scott Wiener had 54 percent of the vote in early returns when he arrived around 9:30 pm. His lead over progressive candidate Rafael Mandelman has narrowed since then (45-33 percent at last count), and that campaign was still hopeful at its party at Pilsner Inn on Church Street.
“The question is does it get tight enough that the number two votes make a difference,” Mandelman told the Guardian, referring to the ranked choice election and showing hope that many of Rebecca Prozan’s second choice votes would go to him. Mandelman noted that his campaign had a solid volunteer effort and good turnout in the district. “We think it’s going to be closer than in looks right now.”
But Wiener expressed confidence that he will prevail. “I feel really good about it,” he told the Guardian. The race was fairly cordial among the candidates, but Wiener got hit pretty hard by mailers from labor and tenant groups attacking him as hostile to progressive priorities.
“It got negative toward the end, and I think that’s unfortunate, but that’s modern politics and the truth prevailed,” said Wiener, who has argued that his record of votes on tenant issue while serving on the DCCC was better that it was represented in this election. In fact, even some progressives think Wiener might be a better vote on tenant issues than incumbent Bevan Dufty, who was consistently a swing vote against tenant protection legislation.
In fact, Wiener campaign manager Adam Taylor, who is a renter, told us that he wouldn’t have worked on the campaign if he didn’t believe Wiener would stand up for renters’ rights. “We expected certain falsehoods to count out and they did,” said Taylor, who was running his first campaign in San Francisco. “I’m proud of how we kept our head held high.”

Election 2010: Theresa Sparks supporters await results

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Election 2010: Theresa Sparks supporters await results

District 6 candidate Theresa Sparks showed up fashionably late for her own election night gathering at Don Ramon’s Mexican restaurant in the South of Market neighborhood. Election results are still coming in, and she told the crowd, “We’ll just watch it together and see what happens.” Early results show Jane Kim as the favored candidate in the district so far, but as everyone here seems to be telling one another, “it’s going to be a long night.”

Rob Black of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce was in attendance, as well as Francis Tsang, who works in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s press office. 

Katra Briel said she had known Sparks for years, and was one of the first to volunteer for her campaign. Being out on the streets and talking to voters about the election was “really enlightening,” she said, but “sometimes the things reminded me of the 7th grade — it seemed like more of a popularity contest than being about the issues.” Briel said she sees Sparks as “the kind of person we need in government.”

John Zowine, another campaign volunteer, said he was inspired to do phone banking for Sparks after a five-year stretch without being involved in any campaigns. “I was really impressed with her,” he said. Asked how he was feeling about the outcome of the race, Zowine said, “I would think that with all those endorsements, and Gavin’s support, she should do really well.”

 

 

 

Election 2010: The Jackson party

Zelda Bronstein
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By Shawn Gaynor

Surrounded by a youthful, diverse, and dedicated volunteer campaign staff, Chris Jackson enthusiastically awaits election results in San Francisco’s district 10.

Nobody here has slept in 24 hours as the campaign pushed for a final get out the vote drive. “Whatever happens, we’ve changed the discussion of this district’s selection, from the focus on middle class issues to a focus on working class issues,” Jackson said. “Our industry is being replaced in District 10 with parking lots and condos. The city needs land trusts to keep foreclosures from destroying neighborhoods.”

He added: “You can’t have high employment in your community if your community reads at a 7th grade level. Win or lose, we are here to stay in the neighborhood and build community. I hope after this election we figure out how to have a united progressive family again, that’s what we need to move forward.”

Election 2010: The Lacy party

Zelda Bronstein
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Outside of Bloom’s Saloon, there’s a silver taco truck with a black and orange Dewitt Lacy sign stuck on the back. “Eat It” by Weird Al is blasting from inside the Saloon and as I timidly follow the noise Lacy himself turns around and gives me a wave.

I instantly feel right at home sipping my ice water while Lacy tells me about his campaign team and their accomplishments. “A lot of us put a lot of hard work into the campaign,” Lacy says.

We talked about the day he met President Obama and how his abilty to keep his cool completely vanished upon shaking the president’s hand. But personal anecdotes aside, Lacy is definitely serious about representing his district.

 “Some people have pegged this race as the Heart and Soul of San Francisco,” Lacy explained. “For far too long this district has been left out or overlooked and it’s time for that to stop.”

And while this particular race may not produce all results immediately — it will be decided by ranked-choice votes later in the week —  Lacy seems relaxed and relieved to be enjoying tacos, tequila, and cherry delight with friends, family and supporters.

When asked if most election parties are this chill, Lacy simply replies, “We are the people man.”

Election 2010: More results, some dramatic changes

Zelda Bronstein
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Wow, are things changing fast. The newest numbers — almost 30 percent of the vote — show D2 very, very tight. I thought janet Reilly would win this one, but it’s a squeaker. The D6 race is getting closer too — Debra Walker is closing in on Jane Kim, but it looks at this point as if a progressive will hold that seat. And in D10, Tony Kelly has taken the lead — and Steve Moss, the beneficiary of big money, is in third place.

Election 2010: Wait is on for Labor-Dems

Andrew Lam
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Election 2010: Wait is on for Labor-Dems

Labor Council executive director Tim Paulson isn’t quite ready to give up the ghost on this one, despite a reported 196 Republican seats already won in the House.  “We really don’t know what the final answers are… some things are going well, some things are going not as well.” Most of labor’s most pressing local races – Paulson cited Measure B and the District 6 and District 8 races as examples – have yet to be decided and may possibly not have a confirmed winner until tomorrow. Measure B is going down at the moment, by the way – 51.6 percent “no” votes, still not enough reported at this point to call the race.

So for now, the Labor Council-Democrat Party party at the Great American Music Hall is contenting itself with crudites and tunes by young rock-women, The She’s. Fiona Ma made it up to congratulate everyone who got out the vote for the Dems – Jerry Brown, Pelosi, and Boxer have cinched their races — but Aaron Peskin of the DCCC hasn’t yet made an appearance. Maybe it’s just the dedication showing. “Aaron doesn’t know the polls closed awhile ago,” Paulson announces. 

 

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