By Steven T. Jones
We knew that SFSOS and other front groups that shill for downtown and right-wing interests would go hard after Sup. Chris Daly, but even we were surprised at the shrill and misleading hit piece “The Case Against Daly,” penned by Ryan Chamberlin, a former Republican political operative from the Midwest who did dirty tricks work for the Newsom campaign before becoming the errand boy and protege for SFSOS head Wade Randlett. And it was carried by the San Francisco Sentinel’s Pat Murphy, who is unapologetic about aggressively trying to oust Daly, although he claims it’s some kind of principled stand against incivility instead of the fact that downtown front groups make up the lion’s share of his advertising (and therefore get full access to publish their screeds without abiding those pesky journalistic standards like fairness and accuracy — such as the recent Committee on Jobs anti-government screed).
According to Chamberlin, Daly is bad because he is too hard on developers and because they’re supporting him, he isn’t nice enough to his political enemies, there are supposedly too many potholes in Dist. 6, he supports housing for the rich and the poor but not the middle class (despite Daly strengthening the inclusionary housing ordinance, which creates housing specifically for median income families), and that “he is manipulative and domineering.”
And Chamberlin ought to know a little something about being manipulative, seeming to have no sense of either fair political play, logical arguments, or the campaign finance laws that govern producing documents like this.
“Any reasonable citizen reading this collection should find that each of its contents truly stands on its own merits,” Chamberlin wrote. And on this point we agreed. This piece of garbage truly stands on its merits, or lack thereof. I don’t want to get into a point-by-point refutation of this thing, but if you read it and see any points that seem irrefutable to you, drop me and e-mail (steve@sfbg.com) and I’ll address them.