By Tim Redmond
So now it’s official: Just when San Francisco political junkies needed something other than the generally dull November election to talk about, Bevan Dufty has done us all a favor and fired the opening gun in the 2011 mayor’s race.
It’s no surprise, really — everyone knew that Dufty was running. Just as everyone knows that City Attorney Dennis Herrera and state Senator Leland Yee will be in the race, and that Assessor Phil Ting is looking at it, and that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and Public Defender Jeff Adachi are mulling their prospects.
With public financing in place, and ranked-choice voting, the race will be fascinating. Dufty has never run citywide, but he’s a nice guy who can be funny and charming and he’s built a reputation as a nuts-and-bolts supervisor who takes government seriously. “Ross Magowan [of KTVU] asked me what my biggest single issue was, and I said Muni,” Dufty told me today. “He said that Muni was getting better, but hey — crime is down 30 percent citywide and still up on Muni.”
Fixing Muni is a Dufty kind of thing — not a grand civic vision, but a basic public service that people use that has problems. (A classic Dufty story: When the city got rid of the crossing guard at the school my kids go to a couple of years ago, which is in Dufty’s district, the principal called Dufty, and the guard was back the next day. He loves that sort of thing.)
“What I try to be is a collaborator,” he said. “I’ve never had the luxury of knowing I had six votes on the board, so I’ve had to reach out to people.”
He also promised that Mayor Dufty would always show up for question time at the board. He joked that “it’s easy for me to promise that because Chris Daly will be off the board by them” but in the next breath told me how much he likes and respects Daly, who he called “incredibly talented.” (Again, classic Dufty.)
It’s going to be a challenge for him to stand out in this race. He’s not going to get a lot of progressive support; he simply hasn’t been there on a lot of progressive votes and issues. It’s rare to see him defy Mayor Newsom and he’s been on the wrong side of many of the key battles of the past ten years.
He has a lot of support in his district, and among the more centrist parts of the gay community. But he’s not a big downtown guy, not a prodigious fundraiser and won’t be the next Newsom, who ran the first time with the unwavering support of the big-business community and all the money he could ever need.
And Herrera and Yee — both with a proven track record of raising money, both with citywide name recognition — will also be sitting in that political center. Neither of them can claim the support of the majority of the progressive supervisors (although Herrera will no doubt have former Board President Aaron Peskin on his team).
If Mirkarimi or Adachi runs, they’ll take the left flank. Yee will be the more conservative candidate, especially when he’s working the west side of town. I don’t see how Dufty finds his niche.
He doesn’t either, right now — except to say that “I’m not running for anything else. I have no desire to go to Sacramento or Washington. I’m humble and I’m going to run a grassroots campaign.”
What he has, clearly, done is given a kind of shit-or-get-off-the-pot push to the other candidates. The race is a long way away, but with Dufty out there, raising money and seeking endorsements, Mirkarimi is going to have to decide if he’s serious, and if not, the progressives are going to have to decide if Adachi is their man, and the race is going to start firming up. There won’t be a Matt Gonzalez late entry this time around. What you see is what you get, and the late-comers will be at a disadvantage.