By Tim Redmond
Sup. David Campos, who has been not only a solid progressive vote but a strong leader on city budget issues, is getting slammed today for his comments about white men — comments that were misquoted and taken out of context by the Chronicle.
Campos and Sups. Chris Daly and John Avalos have been pushing back — hard — against the bad priorities and brutal cuts in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s budget.
In fact, in a stunning political move that sets the tone for what will be a contentious budget debate, the supervisors Budget Committee yesterday sought to shift some $80 million from law-enforcement to social services. The move came during debate on what’s usually a routine issue — approving an interim budget to keep the city going for a few weeks, between the time the supervisors start discussing the budget and the time they finally approve it.
On a 3-2 vote, the committee declined to sign off on the mayor’s interim plan and instead set very different priorities. That won’t have any immediate impact (Newsom won’t have to cut police and fire spending in July) but it sent a message that this board isn’t going to simply tinker with the budget. There’s going to be a complete overhaul.
In the process, Campos blasted Newsom’s claim that the budget was nearly “pefect,” saying that “It’s a perfect budget only if you’re a wealthy, straight white man from Pacific Heights.” That’s possibly a bit of hyperbole, but it’s generally accurate — the budget is fine if you don’t want to pay more taxes and you don’t need the sort of city services that working-class and poor people rely on.
But the Chron got the quote completely wrong. In the edition that hit the streets this morning, Marisa Lagos quoted Campos as saying the budget was perfect “if you’re a straight, white male.” That, obviously, made the comment far more inflammatory — there are, as Campos well knows, plenty of poor people who are straight, white and male. “I’ve been getting hate emails, nasty calls, people calling me a racist,” Campos told us.
BeyondChron busted the Chron this morning for getting the quote wrong, and it’s corrected now in the online version. Campos isn’t backing down: “I stand by what I said. We are devastating services for poor people and people of color,” he said.
So the budget battle begins, with a bang. Good for Campos, Avalos and David Chiu, who voted to shift the budget priorities; they realize, as does anyone who goes beyond political soundbites and stops to think about it, that cutting health and human services leads to more crime, and that paying more for cops isn’t the only — or even the best — way to keep the public safe.