Gav was on KQED this morning, talking about his run for Lite Guv, and he started right off by saying how he doesn’t ever — ever — read the Bay Guardian
Michael Krasny started off by asking why Newsom refused to appear on the radio in a debate with Janice Hahn. “She agreed, you didn’t.” Krasny asked. “Why?”
Newsom’s comment: Gee, I didn’t have time for a debate. Too busy running the city, and trying to balance a budget– “the most complex budget in city history.” He insisted that he’d solved a $522 million deficit without laying off police or firefighters, while protecting the soc sev safety net and investing in homeless service and universal health care.
Krasny: “So the Guardian can’t beat you up any more?”
Gav: “Honestly, I haven’t read it in years, with all due respect to Tim Redmond and Brugmann and whatever the team is over there.”
Krasny, politely, tried to bring up the idea that a no-new-taxes budget means fewer jobs, but Newsom had none of it: “They seem to have a tax first policy,” he said (although he doesn’t read us, so he doesn’t know. He complained that San Franciscans are already paying 10 percent in sales tax — “a regressive tax,” and that “they (presumably the Guardian) consistently support it, I don’t.”
Read our paper, Mr. Mayor. The Guardian has consistently, for many years, argued that sales taxes are regressive, and we’ve consistently, for years, argued that there are far better options, ways the city can reclaim money from the wealthy. And we’ve argued that Newsom’s no-new-taxes policy is bad for the economy.
Oh, and by the way: You talked over and over about universal health care in San Francisco, and how proud you were of that policy. But if you were reading the Bay Guardian, you might recall that it wasn’t your policy. That initiative came from then-Sup. Tom Ammiano, and you opposed the key employer mandates that fund it. Hey, you could even pick that up by reading the Chron: