When I interviewed Chris Daly for this week’s cover story on David Chiu and the political realignment at City Hall, Daly said we were putting the wrong guy on the cover.
“If the story is about political realignment, it’s about David Ho,” Daly told me of the political consultant who once worked on his and other progressive campaigns, but who helped engineer a split in the progressive movement with the help of consultant Enrique Pearce and District 3 Sup. Jane Kim, whose campaign they worked on together last year, beating early progressive favorite Debra Walker.
Daly said the political realignment that has taken place at City Hall has more to do with Kim and Ho – in collusion with former Mayor Willie Brown, Chinatown Chamber head Rose Pak, and Tenderloin power broker Randy Shaw – than it does with Chiu, who Daly considers simply a pawn in someone else’s game. Ho is seeking to be Pak’s successor as Chinatown political boss, and he and Pearce have been out there doing the ground work Pak’s effort to convince Lee to remain mayor.
“Any realignment that exists is about David Ho and I think it has more to do with the District 6 race than the District 3 race,” Daly said. “As far as David Chiu and realignment, they are separate things.”
While Ho and Pearce have traditionally worked on progressive campaigns – particularly in high-profile contests like this year’s mayor’s race, where John Avalos is the clear progressive favorite – they are now some of the strongest behind-the-scenes backers of the campaign to convince Ed Lee to run. Neither Ho nor Pearce returned our calls for comment.
“That’s the whole realignment,” Daly said, explaining that it was the peeling of entities like Chinatown Community Development Corporation and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic away from the progressive coalition of the last decade that has cast progressive supervisors into the wilderness and empowered Chiu and Kim, who in turn brought Lee to power.
“It’s not a seismic realignment, it’s a minor realignment, it just happens to be who’s in power,” Daly said. “It was a minor political shift that caused a big change at City Hall.”
Power has now consolidated around Mayor Lee, as well as those who convinced Chiu to put him there, including the powerful players who helped elect Kim. “These people, as far I can tell, have disowned Chiu,” Daly said. “He did what they wanted but he failed the loyalty test in the process.”
Chiu has so quickly fallen from favor that even Planning Commission President Christina Olague, who spoke at Chiu’s campaign launch event on the steps of City Hall just two months ago, is now one of the co-chairs of a committee pushing Lee to run, along with others connected to CCDC and the Pak/Brown power center.
Kim has also notably withheld her mayoral endorsement. She tells us that she’s waiting until after budget season, but the real reason is likely to wait and see whether Lee gets into the race. Daly said this new political power center has been playing the long game, starting with supporting Chiu back in 2008.
“Peskin kind of brought him up, and then I – tactically or a strategic blunder – I made the mistake of not bringing someone up,” Daly said, insisting that he’s always questioned Chiu’s political loyalties. “I had doubts from the beginning. Ultimately, it was Jane Kim and David Ho who tag teamed me and got me on board.”
Daly said Chui’s last-minute move to cross his progressive colleagues and back Lee for mayor “irreparably harmed him with progressives,” while doing little to win over a new political base. “He miscalculated the damage it would do to him,” Daly said.
Chiu’s dependability was also called into question when he was openly considering a deal with Gavin Newsom to be named district attorney, which would have allowed Newsom to appoint his replacement in D3, a move that he didn’t check with Pak.
“He gave control of his political base to someone else,” Avalos told us, offering that if Chiu was going to be so narrowly ambitious then he should have taken Newsom’s offer to become district attorney.
Even those around Chiu have emphasized his independence from Pak, who has desperately been looking for someone she could count on to back and prevent Leland Yee from winning the mayor’s office. And if Lee doesn’t run, sources say she’s likely to back another political veteran such as Dennis Herrera or Michela Alioto-Pier.
But given how deftly Ho and his allies have grabbed power at City Hall, I’d say they have a pretty good chance of convincing Lee to run, despite the mayor’s resistance. And if Lee runs, Daly, USF Professor Corey Cook, and others we interviewed say he would probably win.