By Tim Redmond
And while I’m raving about the D1 race: The attempts to link Eric Mar to Chris Daly would be laughable if they weren’t so toxic.
This ad
despite its pretty lame graphics and production values, suggests that the three progressives in the swing districts are all Daly “puppets.”
A little reality here:
Chris Daly is not much of a power broker these days. You could argue that Aaron Peskin, board president and chair the Democratic Party, is pushing a slate of candidates, and that would be accurate. But Daly’s off in the wings. He’s termed out in two years, he knows he’s not that popular outside of his district and, while I like and respect Chris, none of these candidates (except possibly John Avalos, his former aide) would owe him anything.
Peskin, the DCCC and the Labor Council are the ones pushing Avalos, Mar and Chiu. But nobody wants to run ads in San Francisco saying that a candidate would be a puppet of the Democratic Party or the Labor Council. So they’ve picked a guy who polls badly in those districts.
I had this argument with Eric Jaye the other day. He kept telling me that there’s a “Peskin Machine” and that the DCCC is now Peskin and Daly’s personal political operation. Nobody who understands the San Francisco left would ever believe that.
The left is notoriously fractious. We fight with each other, we fight with our elected leaders – and most of us never do what we’re told unless we want to. Peskin has very little ability to enforce his will on the DCCC or the progressive movement; his constituents in both areas are just too independent.
That’s the problem with building a left machine. The left in San Francisco doesn’t follow orders.