“He remained popular with voters (if not insiders) throughout the whole of his first term (after gay marriage), even through some trying personal times. Effectively, with an absence of challenge, his high poll numbers transferred directly to the ballot—rare in American politics.” David Latterman on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2007 reelection.
Photo from sfgov.org’s Mayoral homepage.
“Trying personal times!” Don’t you just love how Fall Line Analytics President David Latterman tiptoes round the eggshells scattered on Newsom’s reelection path in Spring ‘07, following the news that Newsom had had an affair with the wife of his campaign manager, Alex Tourk?
And you’ve got to give it up to Latterman when it comes to analyzing quantitative and graphical political data, as he has just done for the November 2007 election. Plus, his scatter graphs look mighty festive
Latterman’s “trying times” comment also reminds me why I missed the initial media frenzy that news of Newsom’s affair broke. I was attending a day-long, ground breaking climate change conference, convened by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
I remember it well, because that was the day that SFPUC General Manager Susan Leal kicked off the conference by announcing that we’d be drinking from decanted water that day, since bottled water was bad for the environment–and we have all that great clean water coming from Hetch Hetchy.
Then Newsom made a few comments, before scampering back to the City Hall, where, as it later turned out, all hell was about to break loose, although it took Newsom 24 hours to talk about it.
Who would have thought back then, on January 31, 2007, that by year’s endr, we would see Newsom handily reelected—and Leal, who has worked hard to bring San Francisco’s water and power policies into the 21st Century, with her head on the chopping block?
Now, there’s an explanatory scatter graph I’d like to see, showing Leal’s popularity with the Mayor decreasing, I guess, as her efforts to make San Francisco’s utilities truly public increased, and as the Mayor, I suppose, increasingly took the credit for many of the initiatives that Leal has led the way on? Sweet. Now there’s justice.
The Road to Newsom’s rise and Leal’s demise is as winding as the City’s map of how water gets to San Francisco.