David Chiu

About pragmatism

Zelda Bronstein
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8
About pragmatism

I want to say a word about pragmatism, about Sup. David Chiu’s contention that “we were voted into office to get things done.” 


I’ll all for pragmatism. I’ve even for compromise sometimes. And I’m certainly in favor of getting things done. But just for a moment, I want to take a step back and remember what Chris Daly (who was actually quite good at getting things done) said during his final board meeting:


“I’ve seen go along to get along. If you want to do more than that, if you think there’s a fundamental problem with the way things are in this world, then go along to get along doesn’t do it.”


Daly’s tactics weren’t always terribly helpful. And working with people who don’t always agree with you doesn’t necessarily mean “going along to get along.” But I share Daly’s basic premise: There are fundamental problemws with the way things are in this city, and “getting things done” has to be about changing the situation. It’s not enough to keep the lights on and the cogs spinning; the city under Mayor Newsom went in the wrong direction, and the new administration has to take a new path.


Civility is good, as far as it goes. Reaching across the aisle and forming a progressive-centrist alliance, as Paul Hogarth suggests, can be useful. But President Obama quickly learned the dangers of an obesssion with bipartisanship, and while we all try to work together, we have to remember: The financial interests that supported Newsom and the conservatives on the Board of Supervisors don’t want to compromise on the big issues. They don’t want substantive change. They want to win, on their terms. And sometimes you just have to fight back.


So the question for 2011 is this: How much is David Chiu a fighter who is willing to use his substantial political capital to push for a progressive agenda? At what point will he say, gee, love working with all of you but some things are right and some things are wrong and there really are two opposing visions of this city and only one of them can win?


I remain the optimist, as always. But naming Carmen Chu, who is strongly opposed to taxes and is one of the most fiscally conservative members of the board, as Budget Committe chair, is enough to make me nervous. 

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Former Mayor Willie Brown says that choosing a person of color for a leadership position should be a progressive value. Board of Supervisors President David Chiu says the new mayor, Ed Lee, is a progressive. Several supervisors and other political observers say the six-vote progressive majority on the board is gone.

And nobody really talks about what that word means.

Progressive is a term with a long political vintage, but it’s changed (as has the political context) since the 1920s. (Progressives these days aren’t into Prohibition.) So I’m going to take a few minutes to try to sort this out.

I used to tell John Burton, the former state senator, that a progressive was a liberal who didn’t like real estate developers. But that was in the 1980s, when the Democratic Party in town was funded by Walter Shorenstein and other developers who were happy to be part of the party of Dianne Feinstein, happy to be liberals on some social issues (Shorenstein insisted that the Chamber of Commerce hire and promote more women), and happy to promote liberal candidates like John and Phil Burton for state and national office — as long as they didn’t mess with the gargantuan money machine that was high-rise office development in San Francisco.

But these days it’s not all about real estate; it’s that the level of economic inequality in the United States has risen to levels unseen since the late 1920s. So I sat down on a Saturday night when the kids went to bed(yeah, this is my social life) and made a list of what I think represent the core values of a modern American progressive. It’s a short list, and I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve left off, but it seems like a place to start.

This isn’t a litmus test list (we’ve endorsed plenty of people who don’t agree with everything on it). It’s not a purity test, it’s not a dogma, it’s not the rules of entry into any political party … it’s just a definition. My personal definition.

Because words don’t mean anything if they don’t mean anything, and progressive has become so much of a part of the San Francisco political dialogue that it’s starting to mean nothing.

For the record: when I use the word "progressive," I’m talking about people who believe:
1. That civil rights and civil liberties need to be protected for everyone, even the most unpopular people in the world. We’re for same-sex marriage, of course, and for sanctuary city and protections for immigrants who may not have documentation. We’re also in favor of basic rights for prisoners, we’re against the death penalty, and we think that even suspected terrorists should have the right to due process of law.
2. That essential public services — water, electricity, health care, broadband — should be controlled by the public, not by private corporations. That means public power and single-payer government run health insurance.
3. That the most central problem facing the city, the state, and the nation today is the dramatic upward shift of wealth and income and the resulting economic inequality. We believe that government at every level — including local government right here in San Francisco — should do everything possible to reduce that inequality. That means taxing high incomes, redistributing wealth, and using that money for public services (education, for example) that tend to help people achieve a stable middle-class lifestyle. We believe that San Francisco is a rich city, with a lot of rich people, and that if the state and federal government won’t try to tax them to pay for local services, the city should.
4. That private money has no place in elections or public policy. We support a total ban on private campaign contributions, for politicians and ballot measures, and support public financing for all elections. Corruption — even the appearance of corruption — taints the entire public sector and helps the fans of privatization, and progressives especially need to understand that.
5. That the right to private property needs to be tempered by the needs of society. That means you can’t just put up a highrise building anywhere you want in San Francisco, of course, but it also means that the rights of tenants to have stable places for themselves and their families to live is more important than the rights of landlords to maximize return on their property. That’s why we support strict environmental protections, even when they hurt private interests, and why be believe in rent control, including rent control on vacant property, and eviction protections and restrictions on condo conversions. We think community matters more than wealth, and that poor people have a place in San Francisco too — and if the wealthier classes have to have less so the city can have socioeconomic diversity, that’s a small price to pay. We believe that public space belongs to the public and shouldn’t be handed over to private interests. We believe that everyone, including homeless people, has the right to use public space.
6. That there are almost no circumstances where the government should do anything in secret.
7. That progressive elected officials should use their resources and political capital to help elect other progressives — and should recognize that sometimes the movement is more important that personal ambitions.

I don’t know if Ed Lee fits my definition of a progressive. He hasn’t taken a public position on any major issues in 20 years. We won’t know until we see his budget plans and learn whether he thinks the city should follow Gavin Newsom’s approach of avoiding tax increases and simply cutting services again. We won’t know until he decides what to tell the new police chief about enforcing the sit-lie law. We won’t know until we see whether he keeps Newsom’s staff in place or brings in some senior people with progressive values.
I agree that having an Asian mayor in San Francisco is a very big deal, a historic moment — and as Lee takes over, I will be waiting, and hoping, to be surprised.

Power and pragmatism

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Power and pragmatism

steve@sfbg.com

After an epic week at City Hall, the political dynamics in San Francisco have undergone a seismic shift, with pragmatism replacing progressivism, longtime adversarial relationships morphing into close collaborations, and Chinese Americans as mayor and board president.

It was a week of surprises, starting Jan. 4 when City Administrator Ed Lee came out of nowhere to become the consensus choice for interim mayor, and ending Jan. 9 when Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed Police Chief George Gascón to be the new district attorney, Newsom’s last official act as mayor before belatedly taking his oath of office as lieutenant governor on Jan. 10.

In between, the outgoing Board of Supervisors held a special final meeting Jan. 7, at which progressive supervisors fell into line behind Lee, some of them reluctantly, and accepted the new political reality. The next day, the new Board of Supervisors took office and overwhelmingly reelected David Chiu as board president, with only the three most progressive supervisors in dissent.

After Chiu played kingmaker as the swing vote for making Lee the new mayor, the board and Mayor’s Office are likely to enjoy far closer and more cooperative relations than they’ve had in many years. And the sometimes prickly, blame-game relations between the Police Department and D.A.’s Office should also get better now that the top cop has switched sides. But what it all means for the average San Franciscan, particularly the progressive voters who created what they thought was a majority on the Board of Supervisors, is still an open question.

One thing that is clear is the ideological battles that have defined City Hall politics — what Chiu called the “oppositional politics of personality” during his closing remarks on Jan. 8 — have been moved to the back burner while the new leaders try a fresh approach.

Newsom — with his rigid fiscal conservatism and open disdain for the Board of Supervisors, particularly its progressive wing — is gone. Also leaving City Hall is Sup. Chris Daly, a passionate and calculating progressive leader whose over-the-top antics caused a popular backlash against the movement.

In a way, Newsom and Daly were perfect foils for one another, caustic adversaries who often reduced one another to two-dimensional caricatures of themselves. But they were each strongly driven by rival ideologies and political priorities, despite Newsom’s rhetorical efforts to turn “ideology” into a dirty word applied only to his opponents.

“This year represents a changing of the guard, a transition,” Chiu said, pledging to continue pushing for progressive reforms, only with a more conciliatory approach, a theme also sounded by Sups. Eric Mar and Jane Kim, who each broke with their progressive colleagues to support Chiu over rival presidential nominee Sup. John Avalos.

“I will always support policies that will make our city more equitable and just,” Kim said after being sworn in to replace Daly, although she also made a claim about the new board with which her predecessor probably wouldn’t agree: “I think we have a lot more in common than we don’t.”

With a focus on diversity and compromise, “respect and camaraderie,” Mar said, “I think this new board represents the evolution of the progressive movement in San Francisco.”

If indeed City Hall is enjoying a “Kumbaya” moment, the path to this point was marred by backroom deal-making and old-school power politics, much of it engineered by a pair of figures from the previous era who are by no means progressives: former Mayor Willie Brown and Rose Pak, head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce.

Pak was seated front and center — literally and figuratively — during the board’s Jan. 7 vote for Lee and its Jan. 8 vote for Chiu, following media reports that it was she and Brown who persuaded Lee to take the job and city leaders (particularly Newsom, Chiu, and outgoing Sups. Bevan Dufty and Sophie Maxwell) to give it to him.

It all seemed sneaky and unsettling to board progressives, who questioned what kind of secret deal had been cut, even as they voiced their respect for Lee’s progressive roots and long history of service to the city. The sense that something unseemly was happening was exacerbated on Jan. 4 when Dufty abandoned a pledge of support for Sheriff Michael Hennessey — who five progressive supervisors supported for interim mayor — and left the meeting to confer with the Mayor’s Office before returning to announce his support for Lee.

Sups. David Campos, Ross Mirkarimi, and Avalos pleaded with their colleagues for time to at least talk with Lee, who was traveling in China since he reportedly changed his mind about wanting the interim mayor job. Maxwell was the only Lee supporter in the 6-5 vote for delaying the interim mayor item by a few days so the supervisors could speak with Lee by phone.

Pak and other Chinatown leaders put together a strong show of force by the Chinese American community at that Jan. 7 meeting, where the board voted 10-1 for Lee, with only Daly in dissent. Afterward, some of Lee’s strongest supporters — including the Rev. Norman Fong and Gordon Chin with the Chinatown Community Development Center — admitted that the process of picking Lee was flawed.

“Part of the problem was Ed’s because he couldn’t make up his mind. The process was bad,” Fong told the Guardian after the vote. Although Fong said he knows Lee to be a strong and trustworthy progressive, he admitted that the way it went down raised questions: “Some people were concerned about who he’ll listen to.”

Specifically, the concern is that Lee will be unduly influenced Brown and Pak, who each represent corporate clients whose interests are often at odds with those of the general public. And both operate behind the scenes and play a kind of political hardball that runs contrary to progressive values on openness, inclusion, and accountability.

“If there is a phone call from Willie Brown to Rose Pak, Ed Lee is going to go along with it,” predicted a knowledgeable source who has worked closely with all three, recalling the way they did business during Brown’s mayoral administration. “There was no real discussion of issues. The fix was always in.”

But Pak insisted that there was nothing wrong with the process of selecting Lee, and that all concerns about the nomination were driven by anti-Asian racism. “You have a plantation mentality,” Pak told the Guardian as she held court in front of a crowded press box before the Jan. 8 meeting. “The Bay Guardian has never given people of color a fair shot.”

While Newsom, Chiu, and Pak-allied political consultant David Ho all insisted “there was no deal” to win support for Lee, Pak seemed to revel in the high-profile role she played, with Bay Citizen reporter Gerry Shih labeling her “boastful” in his Jan. 6 article “Behind-The-Scenes Power Politics: The Making of Ed Lee,” which ran the next day in The New York Times.

“This was finally our moment to make the first Chinese mayor of a major city,” Pak reportedly told Shih. “How could you let that slip by?”

Chiu downplayed Pak’s influence, telling the Guardian that Lee was his top choice since November, and telling his colleagues before the Jan. 7 vote, “Ed is someone who does represent our shared progressive values.” But he also made it clear that helping the city’s progressive movement wasn’t what drove his decision.

“This is a decision beyond who were are as progressives and who we are as moderates. It’s about who we are as San Franciscans,” Chiu said. “This is a historic moment for the Chinese-American community,” calling it “a community that has struggled, a community that has seen discrimination.”

The next day, shortly after being elected to a second term as board president, Chiu acknowledged the “very real differences” in ideology among the supervisors, “but leadership is about working through those differences.” Ultimately, he said, “none of us were voted into office to take positions. We were voted into office to get things done.”

What progressive means

Zelda Bronstein
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85
What progressive means

Willie Brown says that choosing a person of color for a leadership position should be a “progressive” value. David Chiu says Ed Lee is a progressive. Several supervisors, and other political observers, say the six-vote progressive majority on the board is gone.

And nobody really talks about what that word means.

Progressive is a term with an excellent political vintage, but it’s changed (as has the political context) since the 1920s. (Progressives these days aren’t into prohibition.) So I’m going to take a few minutes to try to sort this out.

I used to tell John Burton that a progressive was a liberal who didn’t like real estate developers, but that was in the 1980s, when the Democratic Party in town was funded by Walter Shorenstein and other developers, who were happy to be part of the party of Dianne Feinstein, happy to be liberals on some social issues (Shorenstein insisted that the Chamber of Commerce hire and promote more women) and happy to promote liberal candidates like John and his brother Phil for national office – as long as they didn’t mess with the gargantuan money machine that was highrise office development in San Francisco.
Arguing that Shorenstein’s economic agenda was driving up housing prices, destroying low-income neighborhoods and displacing tenants was a waste of time; the liberals like Burton (who also represented real estate developers as a private attorney) weren’t interested.

But these days it’s not all about real estate; it’s about the fact that the level of economic inequality in the United States has risen to levels unseen since the late 1920s, and the impacts are all around us. And it’s about (Democratic) politicians in San Francisco blaming Sacramento, and (Democratic) politicians in Sacramento blaming Washington, and the Democratic Party in the United States abandoning economic equality as a guiding principle.

So I sat down on a Saturday night when the kids went to be (yeah, this is my social life) and made a list of what I think represent the core values of a modern American progressive. It’s a short list, and I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve left off, but it seems like a place to start.

For all the people who are going to blast me in the comments, let me say very clearly: This isn’t a litmus-test list (we’ve endorsed plenty of people who don’t agree with everything on it). It’s not a purity test, it’s not a dogma, it’s not the rules of entry into any political party … it’s just a definition. My personal definition.

Because words don’t mean anything if they don’t mean anything, and progressive has become so much of a part of the San Francisco political dialogue that it’s starting to mean nothing.
For the record: When I use the word “progressive,” I’m talking about people who believe:

1. That civil rights and civil liberties need to be protected for everyone, even the most unpopular people in the world. We’re for same-sex marriage, of course, and for Sanctuary City and protections for immigrants who may not have documentation. We’re also in favor of basic rights for prisoners, we’re against the death penalty, and we think that even suspected terrorists should have the right to due process of law.

2. That essential public services – water, electricity, health care, broadband – should be controlled by the public and not by private corporations. That means public power and single-payer government run health insurance.

3. That the most central problem facing the city, the state and the nation today is the dramatic upward shift of wealth and income and the resulting economic inequality. We believe that government at every level – including local government, right here in San Francisco – should do everything possible to reduce that inequality; that means taxing high incomes, redistributing wealth and using that money for public services (education, for example) that tend to help people achieve a stable middle-class lifestyle. We believe that San Francisco is a rich city, with a lot of rich people, and that if the state and federal government won’t try to tax them to pay for local services, the city should.

4. That private money has no place in elections or public policy. We support a total ban on private campaign contributions, for both politicians and ballot measures, and support public financing for all elections.

5. That the right to private property needs to be tempered by the needs of society. That means you can’t just put up a highrise building anywhere you want in San Francisco, of course, but it also means that the rights of tenants to have stable places for themselves and their families to live is more important than the rights of landlords to maximize return on their property. That’s why we support strict environmental protections, even when they hurt private interests, and why be believe in rent control, including rent control on vacant property, and eviction protections and restrictions on condo conversions. We think community matters more than wealth and that poor people have a place in San Francisco too — and if the wealthier classes have to have less so that the city can have socio-economic diversity, that’s a small price to pay. We believe that public space belongs to the public, and shouldn’t be handed over to private interests; we believe that everyone, including homeless people, has the right to use public space.

6. That there are almost no circumstances where the government should do anything in secret.

7. That progressive elected officials should use their resources and political capital to help elect other progressives – and should recognize that sometimes the movement is more important that their own personal ambitions.

I could add a lot more, but I think those six factors are at the heart of what I mean when I talk about progressives. We support a lot of other things; I put the right of workers to unionize under Number 3, since unions (along with public schools and subsidized higher education) are one of the major forces behind a stable middle class and a more equal society. We think racism and homophobia are never acceptable, and we support affirmative action, but that goes under Number 1.

This is not a socialist manifesto; I never mentioned worker control of the means of production. Progressives don’t oppose private enterprise; they just think that some things essential for the good of society don’t belong in the private sector, and that the private sector should be regulated for the good of all of us. We trust and support small businesses much more than big corporations – and we think their interests are not the same.

I don’t know if Ed Lee fits my definition of a progressive. We won’t know until we see his budget plans, and learn whether he thinks the city should follow Gavin Newsom’s approach of avoiding tax increases and simply cutting services again. We won’t know until he decides what the tell the new police chief about enforcing the sit-lie law. We won’t know until we see whether he keeps Newsom’s staff in place or brings in some senior people with progressive values. We know that the people who pushed him to take the job aren’t progressives by any definition, but you never know. I agree that having an Asian mayor in San Francisco is a very big deal, an historic moment — and when Lee takes office, I will be waiting, and hoping, to be surprised.

Chiu and pragmatism win over the new board

Sasha Cuttler
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13

Despite the re-election of David Chiu as president of the Board of Supervisors today, there was a palpable shift in the political dynamics at City Hall. “Ideology” has been deemed a dirty word by a majority of the Board of Supervisors, while the politics of identity and “getting things done” is the new imperative.
That shift was most evident in the 8-3 vote for Chiu, with progressive Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi supporting Avalos for the post through two rounds of voting. Chiu won it on the second round after fiscal conservative Sup. Sean Elsbernd withdrew his nomination, with he and his other three backers – Sups. Carmen Chu, Scott Wiener, and Mark Farrell – all supporting Chiu in the second round.
“This year represents a changing of the guard, a transition,” Chiu told us, noting the departure of both Mayor Gavin Newsom and supervisors that include Chris Daly. “We’re going to have to get past the oppositional politics of personality.”
In place of a progressive politics based on principled positions and aggressively challenging the influence that powerful downtown interests still exert on City Hall, Chiu is advocating for more pragmatic solutions to the considerable challenges facing the city, starting with a projected budget deficit of almost $400 million.
“None of us were voted into office to take positions, we were voted into office to get things done,” Chiu said.
His approach has occasionally earned him the scorn of progressives over the last two years, particularly in Chiu’s high-profile compromises with Newsom over cuts to Muni and city programs, business tax breaks, and other issues, as Avalos noted. But as Avalos told Chiu, “Clearly today, you have been validated in your hard work.”
Chiu was backed in both rounds of voting by progressive Asian-American Sups. Jane Kim and Eric Mar, both of whom also struck pragmatic notes in their comments. But they also noted that the board’s new civility and diversity are progressive values. “I think this new board represents the evolution of the progressive movement in San Francisco,” Mar said.
Newsom has been pointedly criticizing the notion of ideology for years – apparently unaware that his anti-tax, pro-business philosophy is an ideology – and it was echoed by several supervisors, including Farrell, who said he wants “to turn City Hall into a place based on issues and ideas and not ideology.”
Now, we’re all left to wait and see what kinds of issues and ideas take root. We’ll have much more on an extraordinary week at City Hall – with a new board and new incoming Mayor-select Ed Lee – in next week’s Guardian.

Highlights of Ed Lee’s nomination

Mary Magee
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25

An awful lot went down at City Hall today: four Board members were termed out, new Board members were moving into their offices, the old Board nominated Ed Lee as interim mayor, and Gavin Newsom revealed he’ll be gone as mayor by Monday afternoon. Here in no particular order are some of the highlights:


When termed-out D6 Sup. Chris Daly suggested that Rose Pak be nominated mayor, since she apparently managed to broker the Lee deal in three short days, Pak shot back, “I would do it, only if Chris Daly would be my Chief of Staff.”


Pak told me that she persuaded Lee to take the job, over the cell phone, while he was at the airport in Hong Kong.


Pak outlined her reasons for supporting Ed Lee as mayor. “Ed Lee has devoted 35 years to San Francisco. He’s earned his stripes. He’s the most qualified, the most unifying agent, and the most talented.”


 The crowd of seniors from the Self Help for the Elderly non-profit who crammed City Hall today are a likely preview of things to come during the mayor’s race.


 Board President David Chiu’s insistence that there were no back room deals. “Shortly after Gavin Newsom was elected Lt. Governor, I said Ed Lee should be considered as a candidate,” Chiu told me. “There was never a deal.”


The strong sense that Chiu is running for mayor in November, though he hasn’t filed. Asked if he was running, Chiu said. “I’m here at the Board focused on the work.” Asked if he wasn’t running, Chiu said, “I’m here at the Board focused on the work.” (That’s not a very convincing denial, David!)


On being reminded that the Year of the Rabbit kicks off in February, Chiu added,  “Hopefully, this will be a very fortunate year for San Francisco.”


Oakland and San Francisco will both have Asian American mayors—160 years after Chinese immigrants first settled in San Francisco and 129 years after the Chinese Exclusion Act sought to prevent these immigrants from rising to the top.


The rejoicing that reportedly is going in the Asian community, right now.“Chinatown is excited,” a reporter for Sing Tao Daily told me. “Ed Lee is a low-key kinda guy. No one really knows him, but as former DPW director, he was always filling up pot holes.”


The stated hope that Lee will support Sup. Avalos local hire ordinance, which kicks in Feb. 23, implement Sup. David Campos’ due process for immigrant youth ordinance, and enforce the recommendations of the Mayor’s African American Out Migration Task Force.


The growing sense that Sup. John Avalos is a strong contender as new Board President.


Sharen Hewitt’s observation that burgeoning racial tensions between African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos need to be addressed. Now.


Julian Davis’ observation that while the way Lee was appointed is not something San Francisco should be proud of, the fact that we now have an Asian American mayor with the almost unanimous support of the old Board is (Daly was the lone dissenter).


Newsom’s reminder that the old Board’s vote was symbolic.“Today was an extraordinary historic vote,” Newsom said. “But remember, it’s symbolic. The new Board will make the appointment.”


 Newsom’s description of Lee as a ‘recruitment” as he, too, insisted there were no backroom deals. “There were no deals, no backroom deals,” Newsom insisted. “He’s the right person at the right time.”


Newsom’s claim that this isn’t about Lee (or anyone else who’d been nominated.) “It’s not about you,” Newsom said, recreating a conversation he allegedly recently had to convince Lee, who’d just been guaranteed five more years employment as City Administrator, to become interim mayor for the rest of 2011. “You are that something more, that something better. You’re the one guy who can pull it altogether, including if disaster strikes, which is my biggest fear.”


Newsom’s relief that he only needs to prepare a 3-page budget brief. “Someone who understands so much of the process doesn’t need 20 pages,” he said.


Newsom’s claim that ideologues make terrible mayors.”If this city gets off track, plays some ideological game, it impacts the entire region,” he said. “I love that Lee is not even in the country. If he had been here, he’d probably have been convinced not to do it. Ideologues make terrible mayors, and mayors make terrible ideologues.”


Newsom’s explanation of how Lee will be able to get back his job, though the charter prohibits people who served in elected office from working for the city for at least a year.
”Hopefully, the Board will make it easy for him. Four members of the Board can put a charter amendment on the ballot. Or Lee can do it himself.”


Newsom’s revelation that he will be sworn in as Lt. Governor at 1:30 p.m, Jan. 10, and San Francisco will find out who the next District Attorney is by then.


Newsom’s claim that 2010 was an “incredible” year. “The Shipyard, Treasure Island, the America’s Cup, Doyle Drive, the Transbay Terminal. All these things are groundbreaking,” he said.


 


 

Historic mayoral vote followed a flawed process

Sasha Cuttler
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6

Ed Lee would be San Francisco’s first Chinese-American mayor right now – if Mayor Gavin Newsom wasn’t delaying his swearing in as lieutenant governor. And Lee might also have had 10 votes on the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, as he had today, if the process hadn’t involved backroom deals and moderate, lame-duck supervisors kowtowing to the outgoing mayor. In other words, this historic occasion just didn’t need to be sullied the way it was this week.
There was real jubilation at City Hall when I left there a few minutes ago, and for good reason, even though today’s vote will have to be repeated by the new board after Newsom officially resigns. “This is a historic moment for the Chinese-American community,” Board President David Chiu told a packed board chambers, calling it, “a community that has struggled, a community that has seen discrimination.”
Chiu braved the taunts of Sup. Chris Daly and some progressive activists for supporting Lee on Tuesday, steadfastly maintaining that Lee is progressive and the best candidate for this job, despite his five progressive colleagues voting for Sheriff Michael Hennessey. And Lee does have progressive roots and support, as the progressive supervisors have attested publicly.
Once the progressive supervisors were given the chance to talk to Lee – whose openness to accepting the nomination came out of nowhere, reportedly at the urging of Chinatown power broker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie Brown – all but Daly voted to support Lee.
Yet all of them also publicly noted how the process was deeply flawed and contrary to progressive principles of openness and accountability. “I have questions about the process and how we got to this point,” Sup. John Avalos said before announcing his support for Lee based on a half-hour telephone conversation yesterday (Lee has been in China through his public consideration as interim mayor).  
Sup. David Campos said he nominated Hennessey as a compromise caretaker mayor based on the representation from Newsom that he was acceptable and after being told by Sup. Bevan Dufty that he would support Hennessey. Instead, Dufty refused to vote until calling for a recess and marching down to the Mayor’s Office on Tuesday, returning to be the swing vote for Lee.
“I’m very disappointed in the way this process has gone down,” Campos said, adding that Hennessey “did not deserve the kind of treatment he received.” Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Eric Mar echoed the point, with Mirkarimi saying he still doesn’t understand why Dufty flipped or what happened when he went to visit the Mayor’s Office.
Through the whole hearing, Dufty – a candidate for mayor himself – didn’t say a word. At one point, he even started clearing out his desk in Board Chambers, throwing away recycled papers and filling a big envelope full of paper clips. He didn’t stick around the hallway for the celebration that he helped enable, instead going straight into his office, where I found him and asked for a reaction to his colleagues’ questioning of his motives and integrity.
“My actions speak for themselves,” was all Dufty would say.
Perhaps they do, but even Lee’s strongest supporters acknowledged that the process of picking him was flawed. “Part of the problem was Ed’s because he couldn’t make up his mind,” Rev. Norman Fong told the Guardian. “The process was bad.”
Without a public discussion or the ability of reporters or supervisors to talk to Lee, Fong acknowledged why some progressives worried that a deal had been cut to continue with Newsom’s policies and personnel. “Some people were concerned about who he’ll listen to,” Fong said, but he said, “I’ve fought with Ed Lee and I know his heart…He’ll do the right thing.”
Gordon Chin of Chinatown Community Development Center said he has worked closely with both Lee and Hennessey and both would have been good interim mayors, and he said this should not have been a partisan fight. “Who nominated Mike Hennessey as the nominee of all of progressive San Francisco?” Chin asked, noting that few progressive constituencies were consulted on the choice or offered their buy-in.
Yet he also acknowledged the unseemly way in which Lee came out of nowhere to get the nomination, with little public vetting, “If Ed was out there a week earlier, it would have been a lot better. It was a flawed process,” Chin said.
So flawed that Daly and many progressive activists are still smarting about what happened and wary of what kind of mayor Lee will be. “No more backroom deals,” queer activist and blogger Michael Petrelis repeatedly shouted at Rose Pak as she was being interviewed outside board chambers.
But Fong just shrugged and told me, “There’s backroom deals on the left too.”

Congratulations to Ed Lee

Zelda Bronstein
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5

Congratulations to Ed Lee, who, unless Gavin Newsom still refuses to leave or the next board does something terribly surprising, will be the city’s first Asian mayor. This, as Sup David Chiu pointed out, is an historic moment, a watershed event in San Francisco history. And we shouldn’t forget that.


Now Lee will face a massive challenge, starting with a terrifying city budget — and a need to reassure progressives that he can be trusted. It’s not Lee’s fault that Rose Pak and Willie Brown settled on him as their candidate — but starting from Day One, he is going to have to demonstrate independence.


I have no doubt that, true to his roots, he will be solid on sanctuary city and local hire — two major issues that the supervisors mentioned today. And on those issues, and on civil rights in general, he will be vastly better than Newsom. He won’t deport high school kids and break up families.


But I have to wonder if he’ll be true to progressive values on the city budget — because the willingness to accept that, as Chris Daly just said, something is very wrong in this country and this world, and it includes (perhaps starts with) the vast income and wealth disparities that are making our society unsustainable, and that it’s the responsibility of every official at the federal, state AND local level to try to address that problem … that’s what separates out the real progressives.


Good luck, Mayor Lee, we sincerely wish you the best, look forward to working with you and can’t wait to hear your ideas on new city revenues.

Chinese community out in force for Lee

Zelda Bronstein
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Chinese community out in force for Lee

Well, Rose Pak promised a big demonstration and she’s got one: City Hall is mobbed with Ed Lee supporters pushing the supervisors to vote for the city’s first Asian mayor. Lee is still out of town, so he can’t answer questions, although he’s talked to several supervisors by phone. One said he seemed a little overwhelmed by all of this; he wasn’t even sure he wanted the job until Pak and Willie Brown talked him into it.


The revelations that the vote for Lee was a backroom deal orchestrated by Pak and Willie Brown (and from years of Brown watching, I can you this was a classic Brown move) will put Lee supporters like David Chiu and Eric Mar in a tough situation. Aaron Peskin, former supervisor, wasn’t mincing words when I talked to him jost before the meeting started:


“This is no so much about left and right, it’s about democracy and how power is transitioned,” he said. “This is disgusting, not because Ed Lee is or isn’t left or right or a progressive or a liberal. This is about the politics of power, and conservatives and moderates should be just as revolted as anyone.”


Meanwhile, my old friend Rev. Norman Fong, a leading Chinatown progressive, says he supports Ed Lee, as do a lot of progressives in the Asian communtity. I get that, and he’s a decent guy with a good history as a civil rights and housing lawyer, and he might even be a decent mayor. But this process stinks. There’s no other way to put it.

City Hall’s mad political swirl

Sasha Cuttler
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City Hall’s mad political swirl

It was common knowledge around City Hall that Chinatown power broker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie Brown were lurking behind the sudden emergence of Ed Lee as the pick for interim mayor, but Bay Citizen reporter Gerry Shih does an excellent job showing how it actually went down in a story that appeared in today’s New York Times.

Pak is also expected to orchestrate a big show of Chinese-American power during this afternoon’s Board of Supervisors meeting, and progressive supervisors tell the Guardian that they have been personally lobbied by Pak to get behind Lee. Some supervisors hold out the hope that Michael Hennessey might still have a shot, or that Ed Harrington might be put back in play, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Lee seems like he’ll be the guy, at least with this board.

In addition, the rumor mill is buzzing that David Chiu will declare his candidacy for mayor in the coming weeks, although other sources indicate he hasn’t made a final decision yet. And given that the new board still has to confirm the current board’s selection, don’t be too surprised if someone makes a play to name Chiu as interim mayor, but that’s a longshot.

Following right on the heels of today’s interim mayor vote will be tomorrow’s swearing in of the new board and vote on president, which Chiu would like to hold onto. But after crossing his progressive colleagues on Tuesday to support Lee over Hennessey, most progressives are expected to push for Sup. John Avalos, while fiscal conservative Sup. Sean Elsbernd is also expected to make a bid for the presidency. None appear to have six votes yet.

Despite media reports about the board’s “progressive majority,” the current political dynamics don’t really give any faction a majority, with identity politics holding heavier sway than ideology right now. So the only prediction that political watchers can make right now is that it’s going to be interesting.

Daly goes down swinging

Sasha Cuttler
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The League of Pissed of Voters made a Daly roast video honoring the “biggest asshole in San Francisco politics”

Between last night’s epic Chris Daly Roast and Daly’s crazy-man antics on Tuesday night, Daly is ending his 10-year tenure on the Board of Supervisors in fitting fashion: as a passionate leader of the progressive movement who has also been its – and his own – worst enemy.

A huge crowd packed The Independent to honor and make fun of Daly and other political figures, and it definitely had the feel of an alcohol-fueled progressive love-fest, right down to conservative Chronicle columnist CW Nevius taking a pie in the face after stepping off the stage for the evening’s most tedious session behind the microphone.

Well, at least it was until Daly took the mike, going on and on in often tasteless fashion and resisting efforts by his wife, Sarah Low, and others to get him to give up the spotlight. Daly just isn’t ready to leave the stage yet, despite buying and running the Buck Tavern, soon to be renamed Daly’s Dive. He’s even half seriously talking about running for mayor.

But for all of Daly’s many accomplishments – he is the most productive supervisor of his era and the most passionately progressive – his personal grudges also create problems for the movement. On Tuesday, Daly led the effort to name Sheriff Michael Hennessey as interim mayor, twisting Sup. Eric Mar’s arm to get him to come along, only to fall one vote short.

Even though Hennessey and Ed Lee are similar figures, Daly turned Board President David Chiu’s support for Lee into an act of epic ideological betrayal, aggressively menacing Chiu at the meeting and shouting at him, “I will haunt you! I will politically haunt you! It’s on like Donkey Kong.” He spoke over his colleagues as they had the floor and tried to talk, including repeatedly yelling at Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, “You are a representative of the rich!” And when the board reconvened after a short recess, Daly remained in the audience, periodically flipping the bird to the board.

But for all Daly’s current ire toward Chiu, it should be noted that Chiu became board president two years ago because Daly led the opposition to Sup. Ross Mirkarimi becoming board president, giving Chiu far more political power than he would otherwise have. Daly has long prided himself on his good political instincts, and at times he has indeed been a masterful political tactician, but his ego sometimes gets the better of him. He’s hyper competitive and just wants to win, even when victory carries an unacceptable price.

When the new Board of Supervisors takes the oath of office at noon on Saturday, the progressive movement will lose a passionate leader in Chris Daly. But as it elects a new president and its political dynamics take shape, someone will need to take Daly’s role as the whip and conscience of the board, a role even his enemies acknowledged that he played.

“Chris, I think San Francisco is better because you served,” Sup. Sophie Maxwell said on Tuesday, gritting her teeth in praising someone who has at times scorned and belittled her. It will be interesting to see how Daly’s role is filled on the new board, and whether we can still have the passion without its pitfalls.

Chiu rejects DA job and defends his support for Lee

Sasha Cuttler
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Amid speculation that he was angling to be appointed district attorney – and questions about whether that goal influenced his support for Ed Lee to be named interim mayor – Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has issued a press release announcing that he’s withdrawing from consideration for the DA’s job.

“Right now my strong belief is that I can best serve San Francisco from City Hall. The challenges ahead of us will require a new level of collaboration between our elected leaders—many of them new to office—and all San Franciscans who care about the future of our incredibly diverse and inclusive City,” Chiu said in the prepared statement, thanking Mayor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris for their consideration and for recent meetings with Chiu on the appointment.

When I spoke with Chiu yesterday afternoon, he said that he was leaning against taking the job, partly out of concern that Newsom would replace him with a fiscal conservative like Joe Alioto Jr. “I would not want to leave my seat to someone whose perspective on issues is drastically different than mine,” Chiu told me.

He also strongly emphasized that there was no connection at all between his discussion with Newsom over the DA appointment and with Chiu’s pivotal support for Lee, and Chiu said Newsom did not raise the issue during their conversations. On Tuesday, Chiu broke with his progressive colleagues to be the sixth vote in favor of Lee.

Chiu said that he has long been supportive of Lee and Chiu disagrees with the assertion that Lee is a less progressive pick than Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who had the support of five progressive supervisors. “He’s someone who has tremendous progressive roots,” Chiu said of Lee, noting that Chinese-American progressives have long considered him one of their own. “We have been working with Ed Lee for years and we know where his heart is.”

Chiu argued that Lee is experienced in a broad range of city functions and issues while Hennessey’s knowledge of city government issues is limited mainly to law enforcement. While the strong and sudden support for Lee among fiscal conservatives has been worrisome to many progressives, Chiu noted that “unfortunately, the moderates are far more disciplined than we are on the progressive side.”

“We have many competing and diverse constituencies that led us to be unable to get to consensus around one candidate,” Chiu said.

The current Board of Supervisors will convene for a final time at 3 p.m. tomorrow to vote on Lee after progressive supervisors successfully pushed for a delay in the vote on Tuesday. In addition to Chiu and the five supervisors to his ideological right, Sup. Eric Mar has announced that he will also support Lee, and Sups. John Avalos and David Campos said they are open to backing Lee after they get the chance to speak with him.

Is Chiu really set to roll into D.A.’s office?

Mary Magee
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Last month, when I wrote about the game of musical chairs in the D.A.’s office that Kamala Harris’ victory in the Attorney General’s race triggered, Board President David Chiu said he wanted to stay put, “for now.”

But is it possible that Chiu was referring to December 2010, or the first week of January 2011, when he said “now”.

Today, his chief of staff Judson True acknowledged that Chiu’s name “is in the mix” when it comes to the conversation about appointing someone to replace Harris. But True also noted that Chiu’s “focus is still on the Board.”

And if I were Chiu, I’d be biting my nails over the prospect of trading my seat as an elected official for an appointment that only lasts until year’s end. Especially since this trade-off would be happening against the backdrop of the November election in which Harris’ chief of staff Paul Henderson and criminal justice reform advocate David Onek have already filed paperwork.

Either way, True says not to expect any announcement about the D.A. appointment until an interim mayor has been selected, so stay tuned.

And Chiu just told Guardian city editor Steve Jones that the D.A.’s office isn’t where his head right now.

“Chiu told me he doesn’t think he wants it and wouldn’t take it without assurances that someone who didn’t share his values would be appointed to D3,” Jones just told me, as he prepared to head for Daly’s roast at the Independent tonight.

 

Chris Daly’s Final Say

Mary Magee
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Chris Daly’s Final Say

As part of my effort to compile a list of most roastable moments of Sup. Chris Daly‘s decade-long career at City Hall, I asked the termed-out D6 supervisor if he would sit down for an exit interview. And shortly before Christmas, when there was still hope the Board would select a progressive interim mayor, and Daly had not yet vowed to politically haunt Board President David Chiu with shouts of, “It’s on like Donkey Kong” , we arranged to meet me at the Buck Tavern on Market Street, which Daly, who now holds the liquor license, is threatening to rename “Daly’s Dive.”

As it happens, the lion’s share of our conversation ended up taking place by cell, since Daly got stuck in late afternoon commuter traffic, as he drove to San Francisco from Fairfield, where his wife and children have lived since April 2009, making him a fitting symbol of the East-Bay-and-beyond migration pattern of couples who live in San Francisco, until they have more than one kid.

Except not all couples with two small kids get to move into one of two foreclosed properties that the in-laws bought with $545,000 cash in spring 2009. At the time, Daly’s critics accused him making such a mess of governing the city that he had decided against raising his own family here. Daly predictably disagreed. “There are few people who think about the future of San Francisco and the health of the city more than me,” Daly told reporters, explaining that his wife wanted family support raising their children, so she had moved to the same cul-de-sac as her parents, as Daly continued to live in a condo in San Francisco with roommates and to see his family on weekends.

Anyways, on the dark and stormy night that I interviewed Daly in mid-December, he acknowledged that he was going to be in for one helluva roast at the Independent on Jan. 5. in the worst possible sense of the tradition.
“Will there be controversial subjects, things that on the face of it, are not very nice? Yes,” Daly said.

And then he claimed he had agreed to this ordeal, because, under the roast’s traditional format , he would get to go last—and thus would get to have the last word.
“Why would I want to end my City Hall career like this? Because I get to go last, and can really say what’s on my mind,” Daly said. “Unless the D.J. wants to say something as he’s spinning.”

Daly’s comment suggests that folks who attend his roast at the Independent will witness a historically vicious verbal drubbing on all sides, since no one has ever accused Daly of holding back from saying what was on his mind. Even if it has led to seemingly counterproductive “We are shocked, SHOCKED!” responses. Like the time Sup. Michela Alioto Pier introduced an ultimately doomed etiquette ordinance, after Daly swore at a constituent during a City Hall meeting, in 2004.

Daly said at the time that he comes from a background as a housing-rights organizer on the streets of Philadelphia and San Francisco, where confrontation was an effective political tool. But he also claimed that he had learned an important lesson.
“In the future it’s going to be better for me personally and politically to focus my energy positively on the people I care about instead of negatively on the people I think are doing them harm,” Daly reportedly said.

Fast forward six years, and Daly is unrepentant about his record of fighting for low-income people, while openly defying City Hall’s unwritten rules of etiquette.
“Etiquette always seemed a little silly, something for the ‘other’ San Francisco, for the prim and the proper and that’s not what I am concerned about,” Daly said. “I’m aware of the turn-the-other-check philosophy, and, if I were religious, I’d be out of the Old Testament. I’d be, if someone pokes you in the eye, I’d poke back.”

Daly says he stopped caring about etiquette towards the end of his first year in office. “When those in power use that power to put down those who are less advantaged, when I see that, I respond quickly and with as much force as I can to prevent them from doing that kind of thing again,” he said. “ If you want to attack homeless people for political advantage, I’m going to attack you right back. That’s not ‘proper,’ but I think it’s just.”

Daly says he also soon realized tthat the truth wasn’t the driver.
“I already knew that money, power and significant forces would be pushing back against me but then I discovered that the actual truth wasn’t what played out there in the world of spin. It’s like when the Examiner’s Josh Sabatini asked me how I want to be remembered, and I said, “Not as the caricature the Examiner created of me.”

Daly, who moved to San Francisco in 1993 to work on homeless and affordable housing issues, was at the heart of the movement around Ammiano’s 1999 write-in campaign for mayor, and part of the progressive sweep onto the Board, in 2000.

“For me, it’s never been about being a ‘good’ vote. I breathe leftist progressive politics,” Daly said. “Where I can make more of a mark is in terms of setting the stage for those votes and holding the line in districts that are not progressive. I’m very proud of my attempts to hold the line on issues, but the work doesn’t make any friends.”

Daly noted that after he made comments about Newsom’s alleged cocaine use during the 2007 Mayor’s race, downtown interests threw everything they had left at him.
‘They got a lot of hits in, but no total blows,” he opines. “Last time I checked, I saved the city $150 million on the Americas Cup deal that they were going to ram rod through.”

And so, as he prepares to begin life as a bar owner, don’t expect Daly to pass up opportunities to launch verbal attacks, if he believes they are warranted, political consequences be damned.

“People want to have the power without any of the negativity they associate with all the shit we have to deal with to build this power,” Daly added. “So, it’s all, Daly and [former Board President Aaron] Peskin took control of the Democratic Party at midnight. Well, how did you want us to take over? “

Daly claims if you take away “negatives” attributed to him, you take away his wins. “People call me a lot of things, but I’m not a loser, I win a lot” Daly added, noting that Democrats being nice to Republicans has led to losses in D.C., not gains. “So, yes, I’ve got a lot of negatives, and they’ve clearly been made into a target, but if I can take the hits, and help people I care about, I’m happy to do it. That’s what I’ve done for ten years.”

Daly says he’s become “pretty desensitized to criticism,” even as he admits to being a sensitive person, deep inside. “I don’t think I’d have quite the visceral response to poverty and oppression, if I wasn’t sensitive,” he said. “I care deeply about people’s struggles. That’s why I’m here, but I also have a pretty solid critique of capitalism and I know how to follow the money, so when I get criticized by some downtown mouthpiece, I know what time it is.”

Daly says he started the Daly Blog several years ago, to push back against what he felt was unfair treatment in the media. And he says he endorsed outgoing mayor Newsom for Lt. Governor, despite their long and antagonistic history, so progressives could have a shot at installing a mayor in Room 200.

“My money now is on the selection of the mayor going to the new Board, and Avalos getting it in the 13th round of voting,” Daly said.

Daly made that prediction three weeks before the progressives on the Board seem poised to hand the keys to R.200 to City Administrator Ed Lee—thereby eliciting Daly’s ballistic “Donkey Kong” outburst.

With the outgoing Board set to meet Friday to make a selection, here’s another Daly roastable moment, this time from Peskin, related to the fall-out that ensued after Daly made two appointments to the SFPUC, while serving as acting mayor for one day, while then Mayor Willie Brown was out of the country, on a trip to Tibet.

“When Mayor Willie Brown left office, Charlotte Schultz had an unveiling ceremony of Brown’s picture. Newsom, who by then was mayor, was presiding. And Charlotte had a beautiful easel with a golden drape over it. When she pulled back the curtain there was a picture of Daly, who was listed as “41st and a half” mayor presiding from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on October 22,” Peskin recalled, noting that under Daly’s picture there was another curtain that contained Brown’s actual portrait.”

And while Daly’s controversial statements and outbursts always make headlines, there is no denying that he helped make the progressive agenda, including establishing mandatory paid sick days, universal healthcare, and forcing developers to contribute in affordable housing or services for poor, an integral part of city policy.
 “The Chronicle used him as the poster child to try and dissuade anyone from supporting a progressive agenda,” former Sup. Jake McGoldrick observed. “He was used to smear any of our good ideas. And Chris never seemed to understand that some of us needed to be a little more sensitive, since we needed to get re-elected and didn’t represent districts that were as progressive as his. Personal attacks make the whole situation smell bad.”

Sup. John Avalos, who served as Daly’s legislative aide until he was elected as D11 supervisor, acknowledged that a lot of folks have accused Daly of doing irreparable harm to the progressive movement and being a gift to Newsom and the moderates at City Hall.
“People try and make hay out of it,” he said. “But his antics have probably hurt him more than anyone,” Avalos added, noting that he ran in 2008 as Daly’s former legislative aide.
‘And it didn’t hurt me, and I made no bones about where I came from.”

And then there’s the fact Daly defeated the Chamber ’s Rob Black in the 2006 election. “We don’t do enough to have better relationships between ourselves,” Avalos added , reflecting on the divided progressive movement. “It’s more than just one person.”
 
Peskin for his part acknowledges that Daly will be missed on the Board.
 “He sucked the oxygen out of the room and made it all super lefty and caustic, and it certainly did not allow a better conversation to evolve,” Peskin said. “But it’s still going to be a pretty profound loss.”

Backroom Ed Lee mayoral deal raises suspicions

Sasha Cuttler
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Last night’s dramatic eight-hour Board of Supervisors meeting, at which six supervisors suddenly came together around naming City Administrator Ed Lee to succeed Gavin Newsom as mayor, was a classic case of backroom dealing making, the full results of which the public still doesn’t know. And it is those unknowns that have progressives rightfully pissed off and distrustful of the choice.
On the surface, both Lee and the progressives’ preferred pick, Sheriff Michael Hennessey, are similar figures who fit Newsom’s demand for a nonpolitical caretaker mayor. He has publicly said both would be acceptable, and both have some impressive progressive credentials as well.
Lee was a civil rights attorney who help run the Asian Law Caucus before being hired by then-Mayor Art Agnos as an investigator for whistleblower complaints, and he’s worked for the city ever since, serving as executive director of the Human Rights Commission and director of the Department of Public Works. Newsom moved him in the powerful post of city administrator in 2005 and he was recently approved for a second five-term for that job, unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors.
Sup. Bevan Dufty and other supervisors had even talked to Lee about being interim mayor, and he has consistently said that he didn’t want it – until a couple days ago. That’s when Newsom and the fiscal conservatives on the board suddenly coalesced around Lee, who apparently changed his mind while on a trip to China, from which he is scheduled to return on Sunday, although that might be moved up now that the board has delayed the vote choosing him until Friday afternoon.
That delay was won on a 6-5 vote, with moderate Sup. Sophie Maxwell heeding progressive requests for an opportunity to at least be able to speak with Lee before naming him the city’s 43rd mayor. “I don’t think we should make such a decision blindly,” Sup. John Avalos said.
It was a reasonable request that neither the fiscal conservatives nor Board President David Chiu, the swing vote for Lee in what his progressive supporters angrily call a betrayal, would heed. And the question is why. What exactly is going on here? Because it’s not just progressive paranoia to think that a deal has been cut to maintain the status quo in the Mayor’s Office, as Newsom’s downtown allies have desperately been seeking.
Just consider how all of this went down. Sources have confirmed for the Guardian that Chiu met with Newsom at least twice in recent days, and that Newsom offered Chiu the district attorney’s job, hoping to be able to put a fiscal conservative into the D3 seat and topple a bare progressive majority on the board. Chiu reportedly resisted the offer and tried to influence who Newsom would name to succeed him, and we’ll find out as soon as today who the new district attorney will be.
Closed door meetings also apparently yielded Lee as Newsom’s choice for successor mayor, with both Chiu and Sup. Eric Mar initially inclined to back Lee, who would be the city’s first Chinese-American mayor. After pushing his colleagues for weeks to name a new mayor, Daly tried to thwart the Lee pick by initially seeking a delay, then finally persuading Mar to go with Hennessey as his first choice.
“Politically, he will work for the other side, my progressive colleagues,” Daly said at the hearing, calling it “the biggest fumble in the history of progressive politics in San Francisco.”
As the deliberations began, Mar called Lee his mentor at the Asian Law Caucus and someone whom he respects, but that he preferred to keep Lee in his current post and to support Hennessey, who got five votes on the first round, while Lee got four, including Chiu.
Dufty – who said that he would be supportive of Hennessey for mayor – and Sup. Sophie Maxwell abstained from voting for anyone during the first round. On the second round, Maxwell went with Lee, leaving Dufty as the kingmaker. But rather than decide, he asked for a recess at 8:45 pm, and he and Maxwell went straight to Room 200 to confer with Newsom.
When the board reconvened, Dufty announced his support for Lee. Dufty denies that Newsom offered him anything, but he did confirm that Newsom indicated a preference for Lee and a willingly to help Lee return to his current post next year, which requires some tricky maneuvering around city ethics laws. Similarly, Chiu denies that his support for Lee was anything less than his unconditional preference.
But it’s hard to know. After weeks of Newsom playing games with leaving the Mayor’s Office to assume his duties at lieutenant governor (a stand egged on by his downtown allies and Chronicle editorial writers), it seems likely that Lee has given them some kind of assurance that he won’t rock the boat or side with board progressives on key issues.
Some progressives aren’t ready to accept that Lee will be our next mayor, believing that Chiu, Dufty, or Maxwell can still be shamed into changing their minds, but that seems unlikely. Instead, progressive Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi just want to talk to Lee and they hope to be convinced that he’ll work cooperatively with the board and not simply be a Newsom puppet.
“I have been open and I remain open to supporting Ed Lee,” Campos said in support of the motion to continue the meeting to Friday at 3 pm, the day before the new Board of Supervisors is sworn in.
But he and the other progressives are openly questioning the Lee power play. After all, Campos said, his nomination of Hennessey was already an olive branch to Newsom’s side, saying he wasn’t the progressives’ first choice but simply the most acceptable from Newsom’s list. “It was in the spirit of one side of the political spectrum saying to the other side, ‘We want to come together,’” Campos said.
Instead, it was a backroom political deal with carried the day, a deal that Chiu went along with.
“I feel amazingly betrayed right now,” Jon Golinger, Chiu’s campaign manager, told us after the meeting. “It’s a shock…Process-wise, Ed Lee came out of nowhere.”
And that’s antithetical to the progressive values on transparency and public process. So now, it’s up to Lee, Chiu, and the other involved in this deal to fill in a few of the many blanks, and to assure the public that this choice is in the best interests of the whole city.

The problem with Ed Lee

Zelda Bronstein
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Is not just that he’s the candidate of the conservatives on the board; I don’t even know at this point how to describe his political inclinations, and Eric Mar thinks he’s got progressive credentials (from the past, though, not from anything recent.) The problem is that we don’t have any idea how he would handle any of the central issues facing the city, starting with the budget mess.

Although I’m pissed that the other candidates didn’t show up for a Milk Club forum, at least Art Agnos and Mike Hennessey have been talking to people, meeting with supervisors and activists and giving some indication of how they might handle the job. If Ed Lee has been doing that, it’s been very, very quiet — and if he wants to be mayor of the entire city, he can’t just ignore the progressives.

So at the very least, David Chiu ought to allow the board to recess until tomorrow so a few of the people who will be voting for the next mayor can talk to the guy they may be electing.

 

A swing to Lee — Daly ballistic

Zelda Bronstein
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45

Bevan Dufty emerged from his meeting in the mayor’s office to say he was ready to vote for Ed Lee. The deal was cut; we don’t know what it is, but that’s what happened. And Sup. Chris Daly is ballistic.

“This is,” he just said, “the biggest political fumble in the history of progressive politics in San Francisco” and he put the blame directly on Board President David Chiu, the sixth progressive vote who went with Lee over Hennessey. As much as he liked Ed Lee as a person, Daly said, “politically, he will work for the other side.” He then told Chiu he would “haunt” him politically and announced, “it’s on like Donkey Kong.”

Then Avalos asked for a recess “to go in some back room” and with minor disagreements, the board is in recess until 10:15.

Wow. What a moment. What a totally bogus way for a new mayor to be chosen for this city. Ed Lee wasn’t even on the radar, wasn’t under consideration, had said he didn’t want the job, until some deal was cut at the last minute. Nothing against Ed Lee, but you can’t be an effective mayor of this city when you jump into things at the last minute, with no chance for anybody to talk about or evaluate your credentials. And he’s clearly the mayor of the conservative board members — and David Chiu has joined them.

I’m not as angry as Chris Daly — that would be hard — but I’m disappointed.

 

Dufty the swing vote — and talking to Newsom

Zelda Bronstein
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5

The Board of Supervisors has gone into recess with a split vote on either Ed Lee or Mike Hennessey as interim mayor. One supervisors have voted no on both nominees — and now holds the power to decide who the next mayor will be.

And Bevan Dufty, the wing vote, along with Sophie Maxwell, was just seen walking into the mayor’s office.

Not the way anyone thought this would come down; David Chiu wasn’t even nominated, and Art Agnos, who at one point looked close to the magic number of 6, only got 3 votes. It’s going to be close, with all the conservative supervisors voting for Lee and all the progressives except Chiu voting for Hennessey. It’s entirely possible that we’ll have at least a prospective new mayor tonight — that is, if Newsom ever decides to leave town.

 

 

Backroom meetings precede today’s mayoral succession vote

Sasha Cuttler
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Backroom meetings precede today’s mayoral succession vote

There’s been a flurry of political speculation and backroom discussions leading up to today’s final meeting of the current Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled to consider appointment of a successor mayor to Gavin Newsom starting at 3 p.m., despite Newsom’s refusal to vacate the office and assume the duties of lieutenant governor as he was supposed to yesterday.

After Kamala Harris took her oath of office as attorney general yesterday, Newsom now has the power to appoint a new district attorney, which he’s likely to wrap into his efforts to thwart progressive supervisors from appointing an interim mayor of their liking. So all eyes are on Newsom, as well as Board President David Chiu, and sources tell the Guardian that the two men met this morning behind closed doors.

Could Newsom appoint Chiu as the new DA in exchange for his support on naming a moderate as caretaker mayor? That possibility has progressives bristling with anger and privately threatening to aggressively go after Chiu if he cuts that kind of deal. The other way that Chiu might earn the progressive wrath is if he cuts a deal to become interim mayor that involves lots of support from the moderates.

But it’s also possible that most board progressives would back Chiu for interim mayor, although Sup. David Campos has so far been the most reluctant among progressives to support Chiu, who generally votes with progressives but who has cut a few high-profile deals with Newsom. Sup. Chris Daly told us that he will nominate Aaron Peskin for interim mayor today and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is backing Art Agnos, who appears to have five votes but probably not six. The moderates are likely to push for Sheriff Michael Hennessey, although Newsom’s stated hope that the board consider his Chief of Staff Steve Kawa is a fantasy that only Newsom is seriously entertaining.

So far, Chiu and his people have been playing their cards fairly close to their vests, so it will be high drama going into today’s meeting. But what happens today is anyone’s guess, with the possibilities ranging from a deal to name a new mayor and DA to another anticlimactic punt of the decision on to the next board, which will be sworn in this Saturday.

Stay tuned.

Spoiled mayor wants to get his way

Zelda Bronstein
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10
Spoiled mayor wants to get his way

I guess it’s no surprise that Gavin Newsom takes his political cues from the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board. But this spoiled-kid choose-a-mayor-I-like-or-I-won’t-leave attitude isn’t pretty. Newsom has chosen a new office; it’s no longer his business who the folks he left behind want to put in Room 200.


And here’s what’s silly: If he wants a caretaker mayor, he’s not helping things with this approach. I actually think the incoming board is less likely to pick a caretaker. And the overall political leaning of the new board isn’t that different than the current board.


Newsom even seemed to acknowledge that: “I wonder what the big difference is now the more I work through the math.”


So why exactly is he doing this? Just to make the Chron folks feel important? Just to leave us with one last show of petulance? Or has he cut some sort of deal with the incoming supervisors? And which candidate does he want, anyway? because if it’s Ed Harrington, I hope he’s worked through the math — there’s no way Harrington gets six votes on the new board, unless either David Chiu or Jane Kim goes totally south and decides to support a pro-PG&E candidate who will only continue the worst of Newsom’s policies.


Frankly, I don’t see it happening.


Gavin: You’re done. You can’t choose the next mayor; you don’t have the votes. So quit whining and move on.


 




 


 


 


 


 


 

Newsom’s delay tactic would create a legal mess

Sasha Cuttler
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22
Newsom’s delay tactic would create a legal mess

In this week’s Guardian, I lay out the latest political dynamics surrounding who will become San Francisco’s next mayor. But in reporting out that story, I stumbled across some interesting potential implications to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s petulant promise to delay his swearing in as lieutenant governor.

There is little precedent and scant caselaw on the legality of Newsom’s gambit, as most lawyers and political observers have said, so Newsom would be taking the city and state into uncharted territory just the deny his nemesis, Sup. Chris Daly, a chance to vote on the successor mayor. And it could backfire on Newsom.

For example, what if the excitement of returning to the governor’s office gives Jerry Brown, 72, a fatal heart attack after he and the rest of the state constitutional officers (except Newsom) are sworn in on Jan. 3? If Newsom had taken the oath of office as he was supposed to, he would realize his dream of becoming governor.

Instead, here’s what California Government Code 12058 says would then happen: “In case of vacancy in the office of Governor and in the office of Lieutenant Governor, the last duly elected President pro Tempore of the Senate shall become Governor for the residue of the term,” so Darrell Steinberg would become governor. Having covered Steinberg when I worked in Sacramento, I think he’d make a far better governor anyway, so this is probably a good outcome.

Here’s another unlikely scenario I like even better: what if Gov. Jerry Brown suddenly remembers all the nasty things that Newsom said about him while running for the Democratic Party gubernatorial nomination and declares the lieutenant governor’s office vacant because of Newsom’s no-show at the constitutionally mandated swearing-in ceremony and decides to appoint a grown-up to the office.

Newsom’s stand also carries risks for San Francisco, beyond just the sudden transfer of power that Newsom and moderate supervisors have already created. The City Charter calls for the newly elected Board of Supervisors to be sworn into office at noon on Jan. 8. But, as I’ve learned in interviews with officials in the Clerk the Board of Supervisors Office, there’s a strange quirk in the charter that makes it unclear who the president of the board is between when the new supervisors are sworn in and when they elect a new president, which is their first order of business.

After all, oftentimes the outgoing president isn’t even a supervisor anymore, as was the case two years ago when Aaron Peskin yielded his D3 supervisorial seat to David Chiu. This year, the Clerk’s Office says Chiu will preside over the Jan. 8 meeting for ceremonial reasons until a new president is elected (which could take minutes, hours, or days depending on a nominee’s ability to get six votes).

Now, under normal circumstances, the city would have a duly elected or appointed mayor during that transition period, so it’s not terribly important that there is a gap in who serves as president of the board. Even when the mayor moves on to higher office, as is the case this year, the City Charter calls for the president to serve as acting mayor until the board can appoint an interim mayor.

But because of Newsom’s extralegal meddling in city affairs after his scheduled departure, Chiu doesn’t become acting mayor as he should for those five days. So what happens if Brown has his sudden heart attack at 12:05 pm on Jan. 8 and Newsom, seeing that his stunt may cost him the chance to be governor, rushed to Sacramento to take his oath of office before Brown flatlines?

In that circumstance, the Mayor’s Office would be vacant and so would the board presidency, leaving San Francisco leaderless until the board can come up with six votes each for a new mayor and board president.

Now, is any of this likely? No, but this and lots of other hypothetical possibilities illustrate just how selfish and irresponsible that Newsom and the downtown-based instigators of this drama are being, despite their hypocritical public claims to caring about the city and trying to prevent political games.

But as Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters recently wrote: “It’s impossible to predict how Newsom’s power play will turn out. It’s a stormy beginning for his new career in state politics – but given the irrelevance of his new office, it may also be the high point.”

The next district attorney

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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34
The next district attorney

sarah@sfbg.com

By the time District Attorney Kamala Harris declared victory in the razor-close California attorney general race, two candidates had already filed to replace her. And their candidacies further complicate the delicate process of appointing a new district attorney when Harris gets sworn in Jan. 3 as the first woman and racial minority to become attorney general of California.

David Onek, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice and a former police commissioner, filed in July and has raised $130,000 and collected 1,000 signatures.

Paul Henderson, a veteran prosecutor whom Harris tapped in 2007 as her chief administrator, filed Nov. 22 when his boss’ victory in the attorney general’s race looked assured.

And now Alameda County Assistant D.A. Sharmin Bock, a human trafficking expert, is reportedly mulling a bid.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has said that if Harris resigns before him, he’ll heed her recommendation for her successor. But whoever Newsom, or his successor, appoints will have a major advantage as the incumbent if he or she runs in November 2011.

Unlike the interim mayor, who will have to make unpopular cuts to balance the budget, the person who fills out Harris’ term will have a strong presumption of holding onto the office.

So far Harris has been silent on the topic of a replacement to the post she held since 2003, when she defeated two-term incumbent District Attorney Terence Hallinan.

A possible reason for Harris’ silence is that until recently San Francisco Superior Court Presiding Judge Katherine Feinstein, the only daughter of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was thought to be a front-runner for the post. This perception was based on the assumption that Sen. Feinstein wanted her daughter appointed, that Newsom would obey the senator’s wishes, and that no one in Democratic circles would dare to challenge Judge Feinstein in November given her mother’s political influence.

But it turns out that Feinstein, 53, whose peers unanimously elected her to succeed James J. McBride for a two-year term effective Jan. 1, 2011 as the Superior Court’s presiding judge, couldn’t legally accept an appointment anyway and would have to run in the November race.

And Superior Court spokeswoman Ann Donlan told the Guardian that Feinstein does not intend to give up her position as presiding judge. “Judge Feinstein has told court employees and her judicial colleagues that she has no intention of relinquishing her judicial duties in San Francisco,” Donlan stated.

 

THE HEIR APPARENT

That leaves Henderson as Harris’ presumptive heir; Onek, who is married to the daughter of Michael Dukakis, is a political force to be reckoned with; and former prosecutor Bill Fazio and police commissioner and former prosecutor Jim Hammer are possible appointments.

District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Erica Derryck would say nothing on the record about the appointment other than that it’s the mayor’s decision to make. But former D.A. Office spokesperson Debbie Mesloh noted that Harris has outlined the qualities she is seeking.

“Kamala has mentioned publicly that she is looking for someone with integrity who understands how the office works and will take over in such a way that allows people to continue their work,” Mesloh said. “That may sound like small potatoes, but it’s a big deal given how many folks work in the D.A.’s Office.”

Public Defender Jeff Adachi told us he finds it interesting that neither Harris nor Newsom has issued an endorsement in favor of anyone. “The silence is deafening,” Adachi said, “But what’s absolutely missing is a process to select a new district attorney. The D.A’s job involves major responsibilities in terms of running and managing a large law office, so I think there should be some kind of process.”

Adachi said the most important qualification is an understanding of how the D.A.’s Office operates and the respect of line staff. “That’s where trial experience comes in. You want someone with experience of homicide trials and serious cases. You’re overseeing a staff of trial attorneys, investigators, and their support staff — who are all litigators.”

Adachi warns that having a caretaker in that office for 11 months would create havoc. “The best choice would be someone who would allow for a smooth transition and have the qualifications and interest in running for office,” he said.

Sup. David Chiu, who became the first Chinese-American Board of Supervisors president in January 2008 and previously worked as a criminal prosecutor in the D.A.’s Office, has often been mentioned as a candidate. He told the Guardian that he enjoyed his time as a prosecutor but wants to stay put, for now.

“Kamala Harris did a good job in terms of her prosecutorial approach, and I understand she is anxious to make sure her legacy is not repealed,” Chiu said. “I’m happy to serve wherever to further the public interest, and the board is in a fragile and unstable place.”

 

IT WON’T BE SUP. ELSBERND

Former D.A. Terence Hallinan, who served two terms as a supervisor before being elected D.A., thinks it’s a big advantage to come from the board. “I knew how to use the budget process to get what I needed,” he said. “I held the key to that door.”

But a city insider who asked to remain anonymous said that if Chiu is thinking D.A., he’d be setting his sights too low. “The brass ring is right there for Chiu as mayor,” the source said.

According to the city charter, the D.A. must be a San Francisco resident who has been licensed to practice law in all California courts for at least five years. Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who qualified for the bar in 2000, has been mentioned in some circles. But Elsbernd told us that the rumors that Newsom would appoint him as D.A. and Newsom’s Chief of Staff Steve Kawa as D7 supervisor are baseless.

“They are just saying that because I’m an attorney,” said Elsbernd, who worked as a law clerk with Nielsen, Merksamer, Parinello, Mueller, & Naylor and with the D.A.’s Office prior to his August 2004 appointment to the board by Newsom and his November 2004 election.

So now the money remains on Newsom to appoint Henderson, who is a gay African American. “It’s important to take the diversity of the city into account,” our City Hall source said. “And Henderson can do the job. He’s extremely capable; the lawyer types like him; he reaches out to all groups and political factions; and his appointment would be a signal to the Democratic Party that whoever appoints him takes diversity seriously.”

Hallinan said he thinks Henderson will get the nod. “I think Kamala wants to keep a hand in that office,” Hallinan said. “And Paul is a nice guy, very competent, a good administrator — though not real experienced at trying cases.”

The D.A. doesn’t have time to try cases because there are administrative matters to deal with every day, Hallinan noted. “But trial experience is good because, although the job is administrative, you are selecting who should try what case,” he said. “So unless you have experience, it’s hard to judge what resources you have to be devoted.”

Fazio, who lost to Hallinan in the D.A.’s race in the 1990s, says he wants Henderson to get the appointment. “Henderson has been a loyal deputy. Onek has never been in a courtroom, and he doesn’t even work in San Francisco,” Fazio said.

Fazio doesn’t think Henderson’s bid will be hampered by ongoing crime lab and prosecutorial scandals in the D.A.’s Office since he wasn’t directly involved in the crime lab and police misconduct cases. “The biggest challenge for Paul will be turning all that around and running for office,” Fazio said. Insiders agreed that unless something highly unusual happens, an incumbent Henderson would get widespread political support in November.

But Onek sounds like he’s in the race for the duration, and he downplayed his lack of trial experience. “The bottom line is that I’m not going to be the chief trial attorney,” Onek said. “The role of the D.A. is to set policy, have a vision for the office, manage the office, work collaboratively with the community and law enforcement agencies, and finally, bring resources in from outside.”

“I’m spending my time building a criminal justice movement and not focusing on the politics of it all,” he added. “It’s speculation and the winds change every day.”

Onek observed that his entire career has been about criminal justice reform. “Kamala Harris did a great job of starting on that reform, and we need someone who can step in and continue the reform.”

Chiu, the mayor and the next board

Zelda Bronstein
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12
Chiu, the mayor and the next board

Matier and Ross today ran a piece saying exactly what everybody who follows local politics already knew: Board president David Chiu will have considerable influence over the choice of the next mayor. The thing is, Chiu has to make a decision, soon: Does he want to be interim mayor (thus giving up his board seat and risking losing in November) or go for the district attorney job (thus giving Newsom a swing-vote appointment to the board and pissing off the progressive constituency that got him elected and will be critical to his political future) or move to keep his position as board president (which means working some deals with the incoming board)?


He has to decide pretty soon, too.


Chiu can almost guarantee that the current board doesn’t choose a mayor. that will take six votes, and without Chiu, neither the progressives nor the moderates can count to six. That would put his fate (both as a potential mayor and board president) in the hands of the new board.


And while everyone at the Chron seems to accept at face value the notion that the new board will be more centrist, I don’t think we know that yet. The only way this board moves to the center is if Jane Kim, a former Green Party member  who replaces Chris Daly, starts to abondon her progressive principles. If that doesn’t happen, then all this talk of a more centrist new board is bunk.


Remember: D2, Farrell replaces Alioto-Pier — a wash. D4: carmen Chu re-elected. D6: Kim replaces Daly. D8: Wiener replaces Dufty — a wash. D 10: Cohen replaces Maxwell — probably a wash, since Maxwell was never part of the progressive majority.


The only twist is that Chiu supported Kim and they’re close, so she would back him for mayor. But Daly might, too.


The bottom line: Chiu has to decide pretty soon what he wants to do, and let the rest of us know.

Newsom tries to defy City Charter

Zelda Bronstein
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31
Newsom tries to defy City Charter

Gavin Newsom knew that if he got elected lieutenant governor, the supervisors would be able to choose his replacement. That was part of the deal. Now he wants to game the system, and delay his swearing in until the new board takes over. The claim: “The board should pick a caretaker, not a politician.”


A politician? In the mayor’s office? Um, dude: What are you?


This is not only annoying and dubiously legal, but stupid. Does Newsom really think the incoming board is more likely to choose a caretaker? No such luck. The incoming board is likely to choose David Chiu — a politician who will likely run in November.


Besides, the state Constitution says the lite guv takes office Jan. 3rd. So if Newsom refuses to take the oath of office, one could certainly argue that he has vacated that position, meaning the governor, Jerry Brown, could appoint a replacement. I think if Newsom carries through with his lame threat that Jerry should do exactly that.


PS: Newsom also said he “can’t just walk away and see everything blow up and there are a few politicians in this town that want to serve on ideological agenda.” Let’s be clear here: Newsom also has an ideological agenda. He thinks same-sex marriage should be legal and taxes should be low. He thinks it should be illegal to sit on the sidewalk. He’s got plenty of ideology.


He just doesn’t want a mayor whose ideology he disagrees with. Too late, Gav: You decided to leave the city. Now leave the rest of us alone to deal with the consequences. 


 

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