Election 2011

Two words Ed Lee doesn’t want to hear

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There are two words no candidate wants to hear a month before Election Day:

“Criminal investigation.”

I give District Attorney George Gascon credit — I didn’t think he’d ever really go after municipal corruption, but he’s showing at least a bit of political spine here, launching an investigation into the dubious campaign contributions of Ed Lee. Lee’s campaign immediately said there would be full cooperation:

Last week, Mayor Lee’s campaign returned 23 contributions associated with Go Lorrie’s Shuttle company as a result of the campaign’s own concerns and compliance review. On Friday, the campaign reached out to the District Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Ethics Commission and the Fair Political Practices Commission to offer its full assistance in any investigation or review. It is important to note that there is nothing about the District Attorney’s statement or initiation of an investigation that suggests that Mayor Lee’s campaign is a target.

And at this point, there’s no way to know how far the investigation will go or what it will turn up. But the very fact that the D.A. is looking into all of this looks bad for Lee.

And if Gascon’s office scours not only the Go Lorrie’s money but the rest of Lee’s campaign contributions — and the independent expenditure committees that aren’t supposed to be coordinating with each other or the main campaign — he might find more.

Bill Barnes, who works with the Lee campaign, told me that he was doing everything possible to make sure the contributions were all on the up-and-up. “I can’t control the i.e.’s,” he said, “but we are very careful to follow the law.”

He also said that it’s possible there were mistakes, like the Go Lorrie’s money. “We’re raising a lot of money in a short period of time,” he said.

But you see, that’s part of the problem. You enter the race late, refuse to accept public financing (and abide by spending limits) and start trying to raise more than a million bucks in a few weeks, and it’s too easy to get sloppy. Add in the fact that people like Willie Brown, who never cared much for campaign contribution or ethics laws, are involved in the fundraising, and you have a recipe for real trouble.

 

The Ed Lee Story: Gack!

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I finally got a copy of The Ed Lee Story — a 132-page paperback hagiography written by campaign flak Enrique Pearce — and it’s way, way over the top. I shouldn’t even compare it to the lives of the saints — I read that stuff in Catholic School, and none of it was a sappy, drippy and utterly lacking in perspective as this. The Ed Lee Story reads like what it is — a giant, extended campaign flier, produced by a supposedly independent group backing Lee for mayor.

Willie Brown appears in the first chapter, speaking with “characteristic showmanship and hypnotic charm.” Pearce once worked for Matt Gonzalez — who ran for supervisor as a strong opponent of Brown’s administration and was such a critic of the City Hall corruption that the mayor represented that he didn’t even return Brown’s call congratulating him on winning a seat on the board. But he has either forgotten or utterly sanitized that era.

Rose Pak appears a page later, described as a “community leader and Ed’s longtime friend,” which is one way of putting it.

I haven’t been able to reach Pearce; if he calls me I’ll update this post. But in other news accounts, Pearce insists that Lee had no role in the great work — it’s described as an “unauthorized biography,” and Tony Winnicker, the press spokesperson for the official Ed Lee for Mayor campaign, told me his crew had nothing to do with it. Pearce must have gone to great lengths to get all those high school and college photos.

Most of the footnotes cite the San Francisco Examiner and BeyondChron, but Pearce interviewed a number of Lee’s old friends. This was a fair amount of work, including a lot of research.

But here’s the thing: Pearce (who’s had problems with keeping independent campaigns independent in the past) supposedly wrote this book without any help or support from any of the people who are involved in the Lee adminstration or in his campaign. I don’t know, maybe he did. But that’s the problem with these “independent expenditure” committees — it’s hard to believe that there’s truly zero coordination between the various groups that are working to get Lee elected.

The Chron notes at least one indication that it’s not all as independent as it seems:

Pearce said he never spoke with Lee or his family for the book. However, at a golf tournament at the Olympic Club on Monday to benefit the nonprofit Chinese Hospital, Lee’s wife, Anita, beamed as she signed copies.

Plus, he clearly worked with Pak on the book:

Pearce swears all those family photos in the book were gleaned from various websites and family friends. And where did Pearce get Lee’s favorite recipe for “No-longer secret Poongaloong” (basically spaghetti with frozen peas, corn and a half-bottle of Del Monte ketchup thrown in)?

“The recipe was from Rose,” he said. Of course it was.

And we know that Pak meets with the mayor regularly.

Independent expenditure committees have a huge advantage — they can raise unlimited money, in unlimited amounts. In San Francisco, candidates for mayor can only take money in $500 chunks, and can’t accept contributions from corporations or entities that have contracts with the city. The folks who funded this book — and we still don’t know who they are — were under no such regulations.

The trade off is that the “real” campaign — the one financed with regulated money — can’t have any contact at all with the “independent” campaign.

Meantime, Enrique Pearce wrote 132 pages about Ed Lee, complete with childhood anecdotes, pictures, interviews with old friends and testimonial statements — and the mayor’s office and campaign had no input, connection, information, coordination or anything? Geez. Maybe Kitty Kelley’s got some competition.

 

The odd twist to the Chron’s Chiu endorsement

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The most obvious interpretation of the San Francisco Chronicle’s endorsement of David Chiu is that the Chron thinks Chiu has completely left the progressive camp and is now aligned with the political wing the daily paper calls “moderates:”

What is impressive about Chiu is that “change” and “jobs” are not just campaign slogans for him. He can go into detail about the redundancies and red tape at City Hall that are holding back economic development: the 15 departments that regulate the private sector, the hundreds of fees that burden businesses big and small, a payroll tax that is a disincentive to hire … If elected, he would have a mandate to make city government more efficient and effective.

(I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but the payroll tax is NOT a disincentive to hire.)

The Chron — which, on economic issues like taxes and development, is a very conservative paper — clearly thinks Chiu can be trusted, which ought to make progressives nervous.

But here’s the other interesting twist.

Hearst Corporation bought the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, at the top of the market, for more than $500 million. I guarantee the paper isn’t worth more than a tiny fraction of that today. It’s still losing money, and has been for years, and nobody’s buying daily newspapers any more, and if Hearst wanted to unload the Chron, the New York publishing chain would be lucky to get $50 million. Hell, they’d be lucky to get $25 million.

So the bean counters in New York have this nonperforming half-billion-dollar asset on their balance sheets, and there’s no way to recover that money — except for one thing: The Chron owns a bunch of land around Fifth and Mission, including its own historic building. And that property is potentially worth a whole lot of money. When the economy picks up, Hearst can develop the parking lots, old press facilities and even its HQ; turn it all into condos and office space, and suddenly there’s a real chance of recouping some of those deep losses.

The process is already underway — the Chron’s been moving tech firms into vacant space in its building, and is working with developers on the shape of what could be a major project still to come.

And guess what? In June, William Randolph Hearst III — heir to part of the Hearst fortune and a member of the Hearst Corp. board — made a rare campaign contribution to a San Francisco political candidate. He gave the maximum allowable $500 to … David Chiu. Around the same time, Michael Cohen and Jesse Blout, the partners in a firm called Strada that’s working on the redevelopment of the Chron’s property, also gave Chiu the maxiumum $500.

I figured the top people at the Chron would back Ed Lee because they figured he’d be down with whatever they wanted to do with that land — particularly since Lee’s good buddy Willie Brown is now a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. But it appears they’ve cast their lot with Chiu. As Mr. Spock would say, fascinating.

Chronicle taps Chiu, opening up the mayoral field

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David Chiu has snagged the mayoral endorsement of the San Francisco Chronicle, beefing up his fairly paltry list of endorsers and giving his campaign something to trumpet with its hefty cash reserves in the final weeks. Most importantly, the endorsement opens up the race and probably hurts perceived frontrunner Ed Lee.

After the Examiner endorsed Lee as its top pick, it would have solidified the appointed incumbent mayor’s standing as the consensus pick of pro-business centrists – who always have a strong influence in the mayor’s race – if the Chron had also gone that way. But now, both that vote and the Chinese-American vote will be divided, with some of the latter also picked up by Leland Yee, who got the top endorsements of the Labor Council, Sierra Club, and other influential groups.

The Chronicle endorsement probably gives the biggest advantage to Dennis Herrera, who has placed second in most public opinion polls as well as many endorsements, including getting the second place nod in the Guardian, Examiner, Labor Council, Milk Club, San Francisco Democratic Party, and others – an impressive array that covers the full spectrum of San Francisco politics.

Lee, Herrera, and Jeff Adachi also got praised by the Chronicle in a companion editorial entitled “Three other candidates to consider,” and that will also help Adachi with his left-right punch and outsider appeal, making him another candidate who can’t be counted out just yet.

By opening up the mayor’s race and creating a more complicated calculus in the city’s ranked choice voting system, the varied list of endorsements and the dethroning of Lee as a done-deal could also be a boon to John Avalos, the consensus pick of the city’s left who has a long list of first place endorsements (including those of the Guardian, Milk Club, SF Democratic Party, and many others). Avalos could capitalize on the rising frustration with corporate America that is embodied to the Occupy movement, which he has been nearly alone among the mayoral field in actively supporting.

(You can read an Excel file of the endorsements of various San Francisco organizations, which we’ll periodically update, here.)

While the Lee campaign and the many independent expenditure groups that back him are expected to vastly outspend the rest of the field, obscene displays of corporate cash could end up backfiring this year, particularly against the backdrop of OccupySF and the business community’s raid on employee health care funds and deceptive surcharges on restaurant bills, which Chiu and Lee have been supporting.

Bottom line: with four weeks left until Election Day, the mayor’s race is still up for grabs.

Editorial: The Occupy Wall Street platform

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In New York City, the protesters who started the Occupy Wall Street movement remain camped out in Zuccotti Park. In Washington, DC, President Obama said at an Oct. 6 press conference that he understands the sentiment driving the activists. Yet in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee has approved a police crackdown and the confiscation of camping supplies in an effort to debilitate the occupation in front of the Federal Reserve Bank.

The move comes at a time when Lee is doing nothing to crack down on foreclosures that cost the city money, nothing to force the big banks that have the city’s deposits to lend more in the community, and nothing to promote local taxes on the wealthy.

While Lee says he supports the First Amendment rights of the protesters, he sent the cops in at 10:30 at night to confiscate their belongings — using, in part, the sit-lie law (which is only in effect until 11 p.m.)

His approach is just wrong. This city ought to be embracing and supporting the demonstrations. San Francisco makes room for all kinds of public events; this one should be no different. The people at City Hall should be working with the people in the streets to make San Francisco a central part of this growing national movement.

Make no mistake about it: What started as a small-scale, leaderless, somewhat ragtag group in lower Manhattan now has the potential to become a potent political force in this country. Occupy Wall Street has tapped into a deep feeling of frustration that’s shared by people in blue states and red states, in cities and towns and rural communities. The feeble economy impacts almost everyone — and this movement has managed to point the finger at the people who caused the problem, who are preventing solutions and who are making big money off the suffering of others.

We realize that at this point, there’s no specific focus for Occupy Wall Street. The civil rights movement and the anti-war movements of the 1960s and the antinuclear movement of the 1970s, the demonstrations against free trade agreements in the 1990s and the marches against the Iraq War in the past decade included people with hundreds of ideological agendas, but they had a pretty clear message — and, generally speaking, specific actions that government officials could take to address the issues.

Occupy Wall Street hasn’t called for any bills, regulations or policies. It’s still a group that is simply calling attention to a basic truth — the very wealthy in general, and the financial sector in particular, are enjoying economic gains at the expense of the rest of us. But that alone is a profound and potent message — if the demonstrators don’t have all the solutions, at least they’ve identified the problem. And that’s more than Obama, Congress, or the mainstream news media have done.

There’s been plenty of talk of a formal platform — one Occupy Wall Street activist posted a proposed list of 13 demands on the group’s website. It’s not a bad list (a guaranteed living wage, single-payer health care, free college education, debt forgiveness, a racial and gender equal rights amendment) with a few somewhat random elements (outlaw all credit agencies). Fox news has picked up the list, although the organization, such as it is, has made it clear that there is no consensus on any platform and agenda. And the labor unions that are joining the protests — with the proper respect for the folks who started things — have legislation in mind (a financial transaction tax, for example).

There’s a danger that the message becomes so diffuse, and imbued with every possible issue that anyone on the left cares about, that it loses the potential to have an impact on the 2012 elections. Occupy Wall Street could go a long way to providing a populist progressive message to counter the Tea Party (which is funded by and largely organized by billionaires but tries to claim grassroots legitimacy).

And there’s no need for a laundry list of agenda items. The focus is right where it ought to be: The richest Americans — and the big financial institutions — have been sucking all the money and energy out of the economy. The remaining 99 percent are suffering. Tax the top 1 percent and create a robust jobs program to put the rest of the country back to work; that’s a winning platform for 2012.

Lee’s talking points sound familiar

Interim Mayor Ed Lee released a 17-point jobs plan last week as part of his bid for mayor, prompting City Attorney Dennis Herrera to accuse the interim mayor of “plagiarism” since Herrera, also a contender for mayor, issued a 17-point jobs plan himself earlier this year.

Herrera’s campaign also criticized Lee for ending his plan with Herrera’s signature slogan, “a city that works.”

But Herrera isn’t the only mayoral candidate for whom Lee’s campaign rhetoric rings a bell. Board President David Chiu, who attracted a great deal of attention earlier this year for his statement that supervisors are elected not to take positions but to “get things done,” seems to have served as a muse to the campaign consultants who thought up Lee’s campaign slogan: “Ed Lee Gets it Done.”

(Which — is it just me? — or does having that phrase plastered everywhere bring to mind something more like this?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnDO5VTge6w

Lee’s “new era of civility in City Hall,” meanwhile, closely echoes language Chiu has used on the campaign trail. At a campaign stop in June, Chiu told a room of supporters that before civility was restored this year, “City government was frankly pretty dysfunctional.” Politicians from different political factions bickered with one another, he said, and “they literally couldn’t even sit in the same room.”

At an Aug. 11 rally, Lee told supporters, “We have changed the tone in which we run government,” and added, “I still have in my mind the screaming and the yelling” that the city family used to engage in. 

A few more striking similarities, taken from the candidates’ respective campaign websites:

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Prioritize hiring of local residents.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Hire San Franciscans.”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Invest in community institutions and infrastructure.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Invest in infrastructure jobs.”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Support the continued growth of the technology sector.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Attract & grow the jobs of the future.”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “[Expand] the impact of SFMade.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Revive local manufacturing – ‘Made in San Francisco.’”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Fill vacant storefronts.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Improve blighted areas.”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Reform our broken business tax. San Francisco is the only city in California that levies a tax on businesses exclusively on payroll.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Reform the Payroll tax  … Mayor Lee knows that San Francisco’s current business tax structure punishes job creation when it should reward it.”

Asked to comment on the remarkable similarities in campaign materials, Lee spokesperson Tony Winnicker told the Guardian, “It’s just another baseless attack from Dennis Herrera’s campaign, only this one sounds like he’s in the third grade.

“Mayor Lee has been giving small business loans and recruiting new jobs to San Francisco from his first days as Mayor,” Winnicker continued. “His economic plan builds on the good work and projects underway and includes many genuinely new ideas to create even more jobs for the future.”

Winnicker added, “As for President Chiu, it’s no surprise that he and Mayor Lee would share many views on how to create jobs for our City as they’ve worked together closely on many issues throughout the year. He thinks President Chiu has many good ideas in addition to Mayor Lee’s own new proposals in our 17-point economic plan. Mayor Lee looks forward to continuing to work with Board President Chiu to create jobs for every neighborhood of our City.”

Louise Renne’s confused history

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Wow, the Chron found a way to take a swipe at Dennis Herrera for getting involved in politics — and guess who the expert source is? Former City Attorney Louise Renne — who politicized her office so dramatically that the voters approved a measure barring city attorneys from endorsing candidates.

The Chron piece goes back and forth on whether Ed Lee properly disclosed city contracts. Then it quotes Tony Winnicker from Lee’s campaign:

They must get exhausted over there at that campaign throwing stones out of their glass house all day long,” Winnicker said. ”What’s really too bad is we can’t actually look to our legal counsel to get guidance on this. .. because the mayor’s only legal counsel is too busy attacking him.

Which apparently disturbed Renne:

“I think the city attorney has to be particularly careful  in what he or she says and in what he or she does,” Renne said. “I don’t know if that line has been crossed here. I’m trying to stay out of the mayor’s race. I’m extremely troubled that these questions are even being raised.”

Please, Louise.

First, Renne ran for mayor herself while she was city attorney, in 1987, against Art Agnos and John Molinari (who, as a supervisor, was her client). She didn’t get far. Over the next few years, she regularly supported candidates and took stands on propositions, even when her office was involved in evaluating those measures or giving advice to elected officials. In 1995, she endorsed Willie Brown for mayor — even though he was running against her client, incumbent Mayor Frank Jordan.

It was exactly that sort of conflict that led to the city law that now prevents the elected city attorney from making endorsements in local elections. And now she’s worried about Dennis Herrera?

Ed Lee’s funny money

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The break on the big campaign news of the week goes to the Bay Citizen’s Gerry Shih, who tracked down a couple of employees of GO Lorrie’s and got them to admit that they had no idea who Ed Lee was and had given him $500 because their boss had agreed to reimburse them in cash. Now the other candidates are making an issue of it — Dennis Herrera has called for a criminal investigation, David Chiu has issued a somewhat weaker statement and Jeff Adachi’s campaign is calling the whole thing sleazy.

What makes this so interesting is not just that someone at GO Lorrie’s may have been laundering contributions — the airport shuttle company has been lobbying the city to try to change the rules around where the shuttle vans get to park. So it’s not just a funky operation to push money to the mayor — it’s money from a company that has a big financial stake in a decision made by city officials (and by the way, the airport commissioners are appointed by the mayor).

Matt Dorsey, a spokesperon for Herrera’s campaign, told us that “there’s a point where campaign activities stop being cute and questionable and become illegal.” He noted that Mayor Lee, while vowing to return the tainted money, hasn’t called for a further inquiry.

“If laundered campaign contributions came to the attention of the Herrera campaign, the first person to call for an investigation would be Dennis Herrera,” Dorsey said.

Chiu’s statement: “These revelations raise deeply troubling questions that merit a full investigation by state authorities.  City Hall cannot be for sale.  Pay-to-play politics has no place in San Francisco, and will have no place in a Chiu administration – you can count on that.”

More: “Incidents like these are a reminder of the backroom deals and crony politics that San Franciscans are sick of,” said Colin Dyer, field director for Jeff Adachi. “This is just another in a long line of questionable activities surrounding Ed Lee and his powerful special interest backers. He promised to be a different sort of mayor, Ed Lee is just more of the same.

The big question, of course, is whether this will finally start to take the edge off the Ed Lee Teflon. And that depends in part on the San Francisco Chronicle — which put a far less relevant story about Dennis Herrera (one that didn’t involve illegal money laundering) right on the front page in the lead space above the fold.

The Chron, weakened as it is, still helps define the daily news cycle in this town. But guess what? The Chron didn’t break this story. The Bay Citizen did. And it there’s one thing I’ve found to be consistent about the ol’ Chron over the years is that the paper tends to ignore stories broken by the competition.

But this ought to be front-page news everywhere, not just because it’s a potential felony but because it represents the side of Ed Lee that we’re all worried about. In the Bad Old Days, Willie Brown’s operation did stuff like this all the time. Money went in and out of shadow committees and independent expenditure groups and it was almost impossible to keep track of who was giving how much to Brown — except that anyone who wanted to do business with the city had to pay up.

If Ed Lee’s folks are starting to play those same games, then it’s a very bad sign.

Endorsement interviews: Bevan Dufty

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Bevan Dufty’s been running for mayor for about two years now. He’s often the star of the debates — if only because he has an engaging personality and is willing to laugh at himself, a rare trait in a politicians. And although he way typcially aligned with the fiscal conservatives on the Board of Supervisors, he has the support of the progressive SEIU Local 1021 — in large part because he’s talking about working with city employees instead of demonizing them. He also told us that the next mayor of San Franciisco needs to have a black agenda — to address the alarming outmigration of African Americans and the economic damage that’s been done to that community. You can listen to the full interview and watch video after the jump.


Dufty by endorsements2011


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPohsxUCQao

Alioto-Pier plays the school card

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Former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier is barely registering in the mayoral polls and at this point has about zero chance of getting elected. So she’s thrown out a desperation pitch, trying to get votes from people who think kids should all go to neighborhood schools.

A mailer that I got yesterday shows two sad looking children in front of a Muni bus with the line: “Our ride to school is longer than our parents’ ride to work. Who will stand up and fight for us?”

There are shades of the old (sometimes racist) anti-busing stuff here — why should kids have to ride buses – buses — to go to a school that isn’t right in the neighborhood? There’s also very much a class issue — the public schools in rich neighborhoods have resources (that is, rich parents) that schools in poor neighborhoods don’t. So kids who grow up in (still segregated) poor neighborhoods won’t get a chance to have the same quality education as kids who had the skill and drive that it took to be born to wealthy parents.

Sure, we could “make every school a great school,” as the neighborhood schools crew likes to say — but that would take money. Tax money. Lots more tax money.  And I don’t hear Alioto-Pier talking about repealing Prop. 13.

Here’s the reality: In most public schools, parents have to raise money to supplement what the district can offer. You want smaller classes, or language options? Fine — come up with $50,000. Hold fundraisers, write grants, beg and plead — and some school communities are very good at it. Clarendon routinely raises $200,000 or more a year. My daughter’s school, McKinley, holds a car was and Dog Fest, and we got a corporate grant to rebuild the playground. Those things take (a) parents who have time and (b) parents with the skills to write grants and (c) parents who have money to contribute on their own.

You segregate school attendance by neighborhood and you’ll get some schools that have a lot of a, b, and c — and some that have almost none. Now, you could “tax” the good fundraisers — force, say, the Clarendon and McKinley parents to give 25 percent of everything they raise to other schools that don’t have the same parent resources. I’m not actually against that. But it’s almost impossible to administer and unlikely to happen.

Or you could say that parents all over town have the right to choose a school anywhere, including one of the ones in the wealthier parts of town. Then the parents who have resources wind up helping out kids who come from poorer families, because the schools are more socio-economically diverse.

There’s also the fact that San Francisco is a pretty small city; taking a bus from my neighborhood, Bernal Heights, to my son’s middle school, Aptos — in a different neighborhood in another part of town — isn’t that big a deal.

And there’s the indisputable fact that most parents don’t want to be limited to their neighborhood schools. They want choice. There are different types of programs for different kids — and you can’t have Mandarin, Spanish and Japanese immersion all offered at every single elementary school. 

And by the way: Most parents who want to send their kids to the nearby schools get their way already. The new assignment policy gives priorioty to neighborhood residents. And 80 percent of the parents who enter the lottery get one of their seven choices. (Enter the lottery and chose your neighborhood school and the odds are pretty good that you’ll get it. But a lot of people don’t do that — they want a different program or opportunity somewhere else. San Francisco very rarely forces kids to take long bus rides; those kids mostly go to schools that their parents chose for them.) It’s not a perfect system, but as a parent who’s been through it (twice), I can tell you it’s really not that bad.

Then there’s the fact that the mayor doesn’t actually get to decide any of this. The school assigment policy is set by the School Board. So even if Alioto-Pier got elected, there’s no way she could implement the “neighborhood school plan” that she’s talking about.

This is just outright pandering to a West Side crowd. And it’s probably a waste of paper and ink — Alioto-Pier’s not going back to City Hall.

Endorsement interviews: Terry Baum

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Terry Joan Baum is the Green Party candidate for mayor. She told us she got in the race to get progressive issues out and on the agenda; she was a candidate before Sup. John Avalos announced, and she says she’d be supporting him if she weren’t a candidate. She told us she’s the only candidate calling for criminal charges against PG&E in the San Bruno explosion. “I understand that I’m a longshot,” she said, “but I’ve already influenced the debates.” Listen to the interview and watch the video after the jump.


Baum by endorsements2011

Bevan Dufty loves Muni

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The award for the best political ad of the year (so far) goes (no surprise) to Bevan Dufty, who is the only mayoral candidate willing to laugh about himself and the only one who could pull off an ad that’s a love poem to Muni.

I’m sympathetic: I love Muni, too. But I’m not running for mayor and trying to explain why the system is so fucked up.

Still: It’s great to see Dufty on the train with his kid, and it’s great to remember how exciting Muni is for kids, and I laughed when I saw the ad. Which is something.

Check it out:

 

Endorsement interviews: Sharmin Bock

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Sharmin Bock is one of just two candidates for district attorney ever to try a criminal case in court. In fact, she’s tried plenty of them in a 23-year career as an Alameda County prosecutor. She’s lived in San Francisco all that time, commuting across the Bay because, she told us, Alameda County had one of the two best D.A.’s offices in the country. (Not a nice assessment of the office she’s seeking; her implication is that she didn’t want to work at home because the office was never up to her standards).

Bock really pushed the experience line, saying that a candidate who hadn’t been in the trenches couldn’t lead a team of lawyers on the path toward reform. She told us she doesn’t think low (or maybe even mid-level) drug dealers should be in jail, and is big on changing the was cases are charged. She told us she opposes the death penalty, would never charge a non-violent felony as a third strike, and would focus on fixing the crime lab problems. She also vowed to be aggressive about municipal corruption.

Check out the audio and video after the jump.

 

Bock by endorsements2011

Endorsement interviews: Paul Miyamoto

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Paul Miyamoto is a captain in the Sheriff’s Office and is running for the top job. He told us that at a time when significant change is coming — from the retirement of longtime Sheriff Mike Hennessey to state realignment on prison policy — it’s important to have “someone from within, someone who’s been doing the job.” He vowed (as did all the candidates) to continue Hennessey’s progressive policies, but was a little fuzzy in some areas. He said, for example, that he’s against privatizing jail health services — but would be willing to examine the issue if there were a viable alternative. Audio and video after the jump.

Miyamoto by endorsements2011

 

Endorsement Interviews: Leland Yee

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State Sen. Leland Yee, who is running for mayor, has been involved in local politics since the 1980s, when he joined the School Board. He’s been a supervisor elected at-large, a district supervisor, a state Assembly member and now a senator. And he stirs up strong passions in the city — supporters of Mayor Ed Lee say they urged him to get into the mayor’s race in part to stop Yee from winning. Yee was a fiscal conservative on the Board of Supervisors, but in Sacramento, he’s been a foe of budget cuts. And he told us he wants to see new revenue — including a city income tax — to make sure that “the people who need services get them.”

You can listen to our interview with Yee and see the video after the jump.

Yee by endorsements2011

Endorsement Interviews: George Gascon

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George Gascon is, as far as we can determine, the only police chief in the country ever to become a district attorney. It’s put him in an odd position, particularly given the recent problems in the SFPD: He has to monitor and possibly prosecute people who used to work for him. That conflict has been a big part of the campaigns against him.

Gascon discussed the situation at length, telling us that he’s proud to be “a progressive chief of police who became district attorney.” He said that he was the one who brought some of the department’s problems (the crime lab, the lack of a Brady policy) to light. “I have taken on police corruption aggressively,” he said.

You can listen to the full interview (and see the video) after the jump.

Gascon by endorsements2011

 

Guardian forum: Everybody loves public power

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The Guardian candidates’ forum was a blast — standing room only at the LGBT Center, a great, lively crowd, and most of the candidates for mayor showed up. Not Ed Lee, though — we invited him, but he was a no-show. That’s typical — he’s skipped the vast majority of the mayoral debates and events, and when he does show up, he leaves early.

We set out to pin the candidates down on five key issues that came out of the Guardian’s summer issues forums. Shaw San Liu, our moderator, forced the mayoral contenders to give us yes-or-no answers, and our all-star celebrity panel of answer analyzers (Sue Hestor, Corey Cook and Fernando Marti) weighed in and raised signs to tell us whether the candidate had said Yes, No, or Waffled.

The questions:

1. Will you support the creation of a municipal bank to offer access to credit to small business instead of relying on tax breaks for economic development?

 2. Will you support a freeze on condo conversions and the development of new market-rate condos until the city has a plan and the financing in place to meet the General Plan goal of 60 percent of all new units available at below market rate — and then index new market-rate housing to the creation of affordable units?

3. Do you have a viable plan to bring $250,000 a year in new revenue into the city to address the structural budget deficit?

4. Will you agree to opt out of the federal secure communities program and will you reverse Mayor Newsom’s policy and direct all local law-enforcement agencies not to cooperate with immigration authorities?

 5. Will you support a proposal to either buy out PG&E’s San Francisco facilities or build a new city grid through a bond act so that San Francisco will control its own energy distibution system?

Only John Avalos answered Yes to all five. But it was remarkable how many of the candidates supported most or all of the progressive agenda we’ve developed. Every single candidate voiced support for a municipal bank. And every one of them said Yes to buying out PG&E’s distribution system so the city could run it’s own electric utility.

They had a lot more trouble with the notion of a freeze on new market-rate housing and condo conversions, and not all of them could explain how they would bring in $250,000 in new revenue. But I give them all credit for showing up and facing the tough questions and saying that, for the most part, they wanted to promote a progressive agenda.

Here are the scores:

John Avalos: Y, Y, Y, Y, Y

David Chiu: Y, W, Y, Y, Y

Bevan Dufty: Y, N, Y, Y,Y

Dennis Herrera: Y, W, Y, Y, Y

Phil Ting: NA. NA, Y, Y, Y (He came late and missed the first two)

Joanna Rees: Y, N, N, Y, Y

Leland Yee: Y, W, W, Y, Y

Jeff Adachi: Y, W, Y, Y, Y

Terry Baum: Y, Y, N, Y, Y

So five waffles on housing policy; nobody wants to stand up and say that we’re building too much housing for the rich and that it has to stop until we catch up with affordable housing. (At least Dufty was honest and told us he doesn’t want to cut off TIC and condo conversions).

I’m waiting for the video and I’ll post it when I get it.

Endorsement Interviews: David Chiu

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Board President and mayoral candidate David Chiu could well be the person most directly hurt by Mayor Ed Lee’s decision to run for a full term. It’s ironic, since Chiu supported Lee — on the basis that the former city administrator would not be a candidate in November. And he has the inside story on why Lee is in the race: According to Chiu, Lee told him that he didn’t really want to run, but “was having trouble saying no to Willie Brown and Rose Pak.”

Chiu has been in the center of the current board, moving away from progressives on some key issues — but he’s talking very much a progressive line in his campaign. He’s promising business tax reforms, transit justice, affordable housing and new revenue. Audio and video after the jump.

Chiu by endorsements2011

Endorsement interviews: John Avalos

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Sup. John Avalos is running a grassroots progressive campaign for mayor. He is, he says, the only candidate talking about working-class people, and he wans to “create an administration that puts neighborhoods and people first.” He wants to create a municipal bank to use money the city now dumps into Wells Fargo and Bank of America for loans to small businesses and economic development. He told us that by the end of his eight years in office, he’d like to see the city bringing in $500 million a year in new revenue — for education, child care, Muni, parks, public health and other services. Check out the interview (audio and video) after the jump.

Avalos by endorsements2011

Endorsement interviews: Bill Fazio

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Bill Fazio has been both a prosecutor and a defense lawyer — most recently working on the defense side — and his views on criminal justice have changed a bit since he first ran for District Attorney’s office in 1999. Back then, he was a supporter of the death penalty; today, he says it’s an expensive failure. He’s not a big fan of “buy busts,” and said he supports restorative justice (but in a limited way). He vowed to us that he’d appoint a team of investigators and prosecutors to go after municipal corruption. You can listen to the interview and watch the video after the jump.

Fazio by endorsements2011

 

Guardian forum: The candidates on the issues

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Don’t miss the final Guardian forum on the mayor’s race — featuring the candidates. It’s going to be fun — so far, eight candidates have confirmed, and we’re going to ask them to talk about the progressive agenda that we’ve developed over the summer. Among other things, we’re going to ask the candidates whether they support some of the key elements of the program — and an independent blue-ribbon all-star panel of experts (not including me) will judge whether the would-by mayors answered yes, answered no — or waffled.

We’ll see you there.

6 p.m., Wed. Sept. 21, at the LGBT Center, Market and Octavia.

Endorsement interviews: Dennis Herrera

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Dennis Herrera has an interesting challenge: as city attorney, he’s been barred by law, legal ethics and custom from taking stands on a lot of the legislative and political issues facing the city. He couldn’t, for example, say he opposes a law that he might later have to defend in court. But now that he’s running for mayor, he’s liberated himself, and he’s started to talk about specific challenges facing the city.

Herrera told us he thinks this is the most important mayor’s race in the past 20 years and said that local government is going to have to play more of a role taking care of things that the federal and state governments will no longer do. He talked about the “culture of an organization” and his experience running a large office. He said that the city can’t cut its way out of its budget problems and he supports “additional revenues,” including a higher real-estate transfer tax, a more progressive payroll tax and (possibly) a commercial rent tax.

He supports an affordable housing bond — but wouldn’t call for a moratorium on market-rate housing and condo conversions.

Video and complete audio are after the jump.

Herrera by endorsements2011