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Why did Mayor Newsom buy a $51,000 Chevy car in Colma when the only Chevy dealership in San Francisco is going out of business? Scroll down for the KPIX video showing how Hank Plante busts the mayor.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Photo by Paula Connelly

Newsom’s driver and new Chevy Hybrid Tahoe SUV vehicle, parked in front of the Ark toy store on 24th Street, during a press conference launching the Shop Local–Get More campaign. The city bought the car from a dealership in Colma for $51,000.

It was marvelous. Simply marvelous. Hank Plante busts the mayor.

Let me set the scene: The reporters and small business leaders on Wednesday (Dec. 5) were packed in the Ark, a toyshop on 24th Street, for a press conference to launch formally the “Shop Local–Get More” campaign aimed at getting San Franciscans and everyone else to shop local in San Francisco this holiday season.

Steve Falk, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, laid out the chamber’s extensive program for its members to give substantial discounts to customers. Gerald Johnson, owner of the Ark, explained how his store would give 10 per cent off your next purchase with a purchase of more than $100. Mayor Newsom, who rolled in late in his city car, gave a zippy little talk about the values of shopping local and helping out the merchants and business community during tough times.

Newsom is at his best at these informal occasions, a little pep talk here, a genial smile and gesture there, lots of jutting jaw, no tough questions please. Then came time for questions and Newsom visibly relaxed for what he hoped would be some Noe Valley soft balls.

Hank Plante, the savvy political editor of KPIX Television (Channel 5), was positioned in the front of the crowd with his television cameraman and his camera was whirring away. He led off with a timely question.

“Mr. Mayor, you want people to shop in San Francisco. You know the car dealerships are in trouble. Can you tell us why you didn’t buy your new official city car here in the city?”

Newsom replied testily, “Uh, I have no idea. Thanks for the Gotcha question and I don’t have a clue. I didn’t have anything to do with the purchase of that car.” He said he would find out what happened and get back with the answer.

Plante reported the exchange in the KPIX newscast that night. He said, “We’re losing our last Chevy dealership” in San Francisco. He said that the new car was a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV that cost $51,000 at a dealership in Colma. He pointed out that the Chevy was one of the “most visible purchases the mayor made this year.” Marie Brooks, from Ellis Brooks Chevy dealership on Van Ness Avenue, told Plante, “I think it’s wrong for one of our city officials to buy anything outside the city.” Ellis Brooks is a family-owned car dealership and one of the oldest and most famous local names in selling cars in Northern California.

Plante reported that Newsom kept ducking the question and later refused to allow the press corps to take a picture of him leaving the press conference in his gleaming black hybrid car parked in front of the toy store (see pic above.) KPIX showed video footage of Newsom not getting into the car and walking down 24th street.

Plante had nailed a point that has been agitating the small (and big) business community for years. Scott Hauge, a prominent small business leader and founder and president of Small Business California, was at the press conference and picked up on the point immediately. In his followup email to small business people in the city, Hauge noted he had attended the press conference “where the mayor was promoting a shop SF campaign.

“I applaud the mayor and others like the SF Chamber, Bay Guardian, Small Business Commission and Hotel Council for their efforts. What I didn’t hear was anything the city will do to require SF City agencies to buy from SF companies located in SF.”

Then Hauge zeroed in. “SF government does not have a very good track record in this area. In fact the mayor was asked why he did not purchase his hybrid vehicle in SF and he said he didn’t know why. Now is the time to push this issue. SF businesses have a higher cost of doing business because of mandates imposed on us. It seems to me that the least the city can do is buy from SF businesses.” I think he’s spot on.

And so Plante, Hauge, the Guardian, and small (and big) business in San Francisco are waiting anxiously for Newsom’s explanation why he bought a $51,000 city Chevy vehicle in Colma and not in San Francisco where our last Chevy dealership is on hard times and going out of business. And we are all waiting even more anxiously to hear what the mayor plans to do to correct this Shop- outside -San Francisco-syndrome and get the city working to spend its tens of millions of dollars of city tax dollars on businesses and services in San Francisco.

P.S. Full disclosure: the Guardian is a sponsor of the Shop Local campaign. And we sent a delegation to the press conference: Sales and Marketing Director Jennifer Lachman, Vice President of Operations Daniel B. Brugmann, Online and Print Advertising Coordinator Rebecca Frank, Assistant to the Publisher Paula Connelly who took the press conference photos, and myself. We are happy to pitch in on this critical and timely endeavor to put as much instant cash as possible into our local businesses and our community.

Our contribution, as a locally owned, independent newsweekly, is our own Shop Local campaign featuring a key marketing line derived from an analysis provided by the Business Alliance of Local Living Economies (BALLE), using a formula created by the consulting firm Civic Economics. This data is dramatic. It shows that if our 600,000 or so Guardian readers would spend $l00 with locally owned, independent businesses in San Francisco during the holiday season, that would inject $99 million into the San Francisco economy. Immediately.

That’s nearly $15 million more dollars than the city would see if that money were spent on chain stores that send their revenues back to headquarters. That’s because money spent at local businesses tends to stay and circulate in the community and create more local jobs and economic activity and of course more tax dollars for the city. The Guardian is also leading a national Shop Local campaign among alternative papers that would put several billion dollars in total into local economies all over the country. As Guardian Executive editor Tim Redmond puts it, “A sustainable community needs a sustainable economy, and that starts with locally owned, independent businesses.”

Unsolicited advice for the mayor and anybody else at City Hall who keeps sending our money outside of town: check the policy of the San Francisco International Airport that mandates locally owned small businesses get most of the juicy airport franchises. That policy works and works well. When I go through the airport, I always stop to get something to eat at Klein’s Deli. Klein’s was named after Deborah Klein, a Guardian circulation manager in the mid- 1970s who became a restaurant entrepreneur in San Francisco. For many years, she ran Klein’s Deli on 20th Street atop Potrero Hill. B3

Click here to watch yesterday’s KPIX newscast.

Click here to see Guardian photo coverage of the press conference.