By Steven T. Jones
So everyone knew that downtown financial interests (such as the Committee on Jobs, Chamber of Commerce, Police Officers Association, the Association of Realtors, BOMA, PG&E, etc., not the mention their enablers at the Chronicle and Examiner) would be spending big money this election to try to buy the Board of Supervisors. And we knew they’d fight dirty, particularly in the swing districts of 1, 3, and 11.
But a couple of revelations from the past 24 hours show that the attacks that are filling mailboxes and the airwaves aren’t simply dirty – they’re dishonest, unethical, and perhaps even illegal. The Fog City Journal stumbled onto a great story that appears to show illegal political collusion between Dist. 11 supervisorial candidate Ahsha Safai (the real estate developer candidate of Mayor Gavin Newsom who refused our request for an endorsement interview and won’t return our phone calls) and the POA.
And the Chronicle reports on the complaint that Dist. 3 candidate David Chiu filed with the Ethics Commission after a television ad falsely claimed that he supports legalizing prostitution, despite his consistent opposition to Prop. K, the ballot measure that would do so. The commercial and several mailers also falsely claim that Dist. 11 candidate John Avalos still works for Sup. Chris Daly, who downtown is trying to make the poster child for all that’s wrong with San Francisco.
Of course, PG&E and downtown’s bagman, attorney Jim Sutton, have already been the subject of the biggest fines that the Ethics Commission has ever levied for illegal campaign behavior. So perhaps they’re content to just keep lying now and worry later about paying fines with their seemingly bottomless reservoirs of cash.