Elections

Adachi and the real politics of pension reform

Sasha Cuttler
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71
Adachi and the real politics of pension reform

While downtown-oriented politicos and out-of-touch corporate columnists tout the political potential of targeting public employee unions with pay reductions and pension plan take-aways – and say the Public Defender Jeff Adachi may be mayoral material for doing so – they forget that electoral success requires coalitions, particularly in savvy San Francisco.

Unlike his cheerleaders, Adachi seems to understand this, downplaying the personal political upside when he talked to the Guardian and other media outlets. Sure, he might just be sandbagging, as his boosters hope he is, but there’s good reason to believe that this move could hurt Adachi’s chances of becoming mayor more than it helps it.

Much has been written and said about how Adachi’s move alienated labor unions and much of the progressive movement. “They urged me not to do it,” Adachi told the Guardian in the final days of his successful signature-gathering effort for a measure that would save the city about $167 million per year by taking that amount out of employees’ paychecks.

It’s not that pension reform isn’t needed. Indeed, San Francisco voters just approved a measure in June to increase the pension contributions for all new city employees, and politicians ranging from Sups. John Avalos and David Campos on the left to Sup. Sean Elsbernd and Mayor Gavin Newsom on the right all agree that more needs to be done, pledging to work with unions on the issue. And given the surly mood of the electorate, Adachi’s measure will probably pass.

But that still doesn’t make him mayoral material. Unlike Newsom, whose Care Not Cash initiative to take money from poor people helped propel him into Room 200, Adachi doesn’t have a strong constituency behind him, unlike the full strength of downtown and the Willie Brown machine that Newsom had behind him.

Downtown will never get behind a mayoral campaign for Adachi, a heavily tattooed defender of criminals who has a strong independent streak, even if they like the fact that he’s socking it to the public employee unions, an effort they helped fund. And progressives will now have a hard time ever trusting Adachi to work with them, seeing him now as someone hostile to political process and coalition-building, much like Newsom.

And even Newsom has come out against Adachi and his proposal, even though he loves the pension reform issue and shares some stylistic similarities with Adachi, including a certain political petulance. “Mayor Newsom has been clear that effective, long-term pension reform will come by doing it with our public employee unions, in partnership, not to and against them, in contrast to the Adachi measure,” Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker wrote to the Guardian this week. It was a laughingly hypocritical statement from a mayor who has repeatedly demonized unions and refused to work cooperatively with them, but it’s a true statement nonetheless.

Finally, while socking it to public employees may be in vogue right now, during this moment of real economic uncertainty and political myopia, this sort of divisive politics might come to be seen more as opportunistic than courageous. And it’s hard to see how the approach that Adachi has taken will somehow add up to an effective political coalition capable of stealing the Mayor’s Office from wily politicians like Mark Leno, Leland Yee, or Aaron Peskin.

Consider the fact that even the Police Officers Association – the most conservative, downtown-oriented employee union in San Francisco – also opposes the Adachi measure and other efforts to blame the city’s fiscal problems on employees, rather than the large financial institutions that don’t even pay any kind of business tax to the city.

So I leave you with the words of POA President Gary Delagnes, writing in the May issue of the POA Journal, sounding a bit like a Guardian editorial writer on this politically sensitive issue: “Even more problematic is the rapidly developing notion that public employee pensions serve as the root of all evil, and are almost solely to blame for all of our economic woes.

“Opportunistic Wall Street insiders, politicians, and robber baron CEOs have manipulated and pilfered our country’s financial well-being. They have unconscionably – if not also illegally – lined their deep pockets with the hard-earned savings and pensions of the middle class working man and woman. Accountants from coast to coast have coached multi-millionaires on the art of avoiding paying their true tax obligations. Millions of people were allowed to qualify for mortgage loans by greedy bankers and mortgage brokers that led to trillions of dollars in bailout money. The result is a public incensed about fat cats taking advantage of them. Now, the backlash has set up public pensions and the unions that negotiated them as the scapegoats for his anger.

“Those of use who long ago made the decision to forgo large salaries in exchange for a life of public service, are now being portrayed as greedy and self-centered, taking unwarranted pensions and benefits after 30 years of service as firefighters, police officers, teachers, and nurses. These are shameful accusations, and utterly without merit.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, but unlike one of our editorials, this is the perspective of cops and other unions and progressive constituencies that will shape their actions in elections to come.

Hotel Fairness Initiative qualifies for fall ballot

Sasha Cuttler
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10
Hotel Fairness Initiative qualifies for fall ballot

By Brittany Baguio

The Department of Elections has announced that the Hotel Fairness Initiative was approved for the November ballot. Labor and community groups last week turned in 10,544 signatures, a little more than the required 7,168 signatures needed to put an initiative on the ballot. The Department of Elections did a sample of 500 signatures to check the validity and reported that 478 of the 500 signatures sampled were valid, resulting in a 95.6 percent accuracy rate.

The Hotel Fairness Initiative would increase revenue by imposing a 2 percent hotel tax on San Francisco hotel rooms temporarily for 4 years, with an average surcharge of $3 per hotel room per night, and close loopholes that let some visitors avoid paying the hotel tax. The hotel tax is currently 14 percent. According to the Controller’s Office, if the Hotel Fairness Initiative passes, it is expected to raise $25 million a year in revenue.

The hotel tax is one of five measures proposed to help close the budget deficit, which we discuss in more detail in this week’s paper. Mayor Gavin Newsom has also placed a measure of the ballot to also close the loopholes that lets airline employees and those who book hotels online avoid paying hotel taxes, as the Hotel Fairness Initiative would also do, but it includes a provision that would invalidate the hotel tax if his measure gets more votes.

Supporters of the Hotel Fairness Initiative claim that online booking companies and airline companies have been using corporate loopholes that have cost the city about $6 million per year. In total, online booking companies have escaped paying $70 million in hotel taxes through its loophole of taking the hotel tax out of a portion of the money the hotel receives, rather than the total amount the customer pays.

For example, Internet booking companies would charge customers $200 for a room and then pay the hotel $170. Internet booking companies argue that the hotel tax comes from a portion of $170, instead of $200. Similarly, airlines have avoided paying hotel taxes by renting blocks of rooms for its flight crews and claiming that airline companies are protected by the Permanent Resident Exclusion law. This law was originally intended to help the homeless and states that individuals who occupy a room for at least 30 days are tax exempted. However, airlines have been taking advantage of this law by moving different flight crews in and out of their hotel rooms rather than an individual person occupying the room for 30 consecutive days that is implied by the law.

Opponents of the Hotel Fairness Initiative, such as the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Hotel Council, contend that the hotel tax would hurt tourism to San Francisco as well as cause job cuts. In a press release, Steve Falk, President & CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce said, “This misguided effort will discourage travel to San Francisco, hurt our city’s largest industry, and eliminate many of the union jobs the Labor Council seeks to protect. Raising city revenue at the expense of hotels and hospitality workers is not the answer to the city’s fiscal problems.”

A Hotel Council press release states that “the Hotel Fairness Initiative will lead to 7.3 jobs lost for every million dollars in revenue gained.” If this is true, about 182 jobs could be lost as a result of this initiative, offset by the city being able to save many public sector jobs and services with the revenue. The hotel industry already fluctuates in the number of positions available as a result of the market. According to California Labor Market Info’s latest data, the average amount of hotel jobs lost per month in 2009 was 143 jobs.

Although the Hotel Council and the Chamber of Commerce claim that the initiative would eliminate jobs, one of the biggest supporters of the hotel tax is UNITE HERE LOCAL 2, a union of hotel workers. UNITE HERE representative Ian Lewis emphasized that opponents of the issue are conveniently ignoring the lack of fairness in current hotel booking practices. “Hotel workers live in San Francisco,” Lewis told the Guardian, “We’re taxpayers like everyone else. We are in a severe budget crisis and everyone needs to carry their fair share.”

Community groups, retirees, and hospital workers all volunteered their time to collect signatures supporting the Hotel Fairness Initiative. Community groups such as UNITE HERE collected 1700 signatures, Keep the Arboretum Free collected 1000, and a collection of nonprofit groups collected more than 4000. With the efforts of these community groups, the coalition was able to collect an estimated 15,000 signatures.

Family health advocate for the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, Bobbi Lopez, said she found that those who signed the petition saw the hotel tax as a necessary step in closing the budget deficit, “They understood that the necessity of fighting the cuts, particularly the cuts to MUNI, to parks, and to hospitals,” Lopez told us, “I think that they were getting the idea that in desperate budget times, we need a temporary solution and long term solution and that’s exactly what the Hotel Fairness Initiative is.”

Community groups remain optimistic that this grass roots effort will pass. Brenda Barrows, a health care provider at San Francisco General Hospital, told the Guardian, “My hope is that in November it passes and the city’s financial situation gets better so that people who live in the city don’t have to suffer and also people who work for the city don’t have to suffer.”

Lopez told us she thinks that the initiative will pass if there is an ongoing effort on the issue. “We want to remind folks that this is just the beginning and now we have to embark on a long term campaign,” Lopez told us, “so it’s really about sustaining the energy that we had on June 1 when we kicked off and reminding folks that its going to necessitate all the same volunteers to work together and make it reality.”

 

Local ballot measure campaigns reach the finish line

Sasha Cuttler
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5
Local ballot measure campaigns reach the finish line

The deadline for submitting enough valid signatures to quality local initiatives for the November ballot is today (July 6) at 5 p.m., which made for a busy holiday weekend for two San Francisco ballot measures that will be close calls: labor’s effort to increase the city’s hotel tax by 2 percent and the pension reform measure pushed by Public Defender Jeff Adachi.

“It’s going to be really close,” Adachi told the Guardian on Friday, referring to a measure to increase how much city employees contribute to their pensions and health care costs, which the labor movement is bitterly opposing.

But labor leaders say they have enough signatures for their Hotel Fairness Initiative after an all-hands-on-deck weekend of gathering and counting signatures, and they plan to hold a rally on the steps of City Hall at 1:45 pm on their way to turn the signatures in to the basement Elections Department. That initiative needed at least 7,168 valid signatures and officials say they turned in about 17,000.

Adachi says he’s also cleared the 44,799 signature threshold for qualifying a charter amendment and plans to turn them in at 4 p.m. He has yet to formally support the hotel tax increase (which could bring in about $30 million per year) or any of the other proposed revenue measures being considered by the Board of Supervisors, which still has a few more weeks to place measures on the ballot.

“It doesn’t deal with the train wreck that we’re in,” Adachi said of the proposed revenue measures, noting that they don’t come close to reaching the $167 million per year that he says his employee benefits reform measure would bring into the city, which labor leaders say will come directly out of the pockets of city employees and hurt the local economy.

But Adachi counters by telling us, “My message is there’s not going to be a city to run in a few years if we don’t do something.”

Meanwhile, Sup. Sean Elsbernd last week turned in about 76,000 signatures to remove Muni workers’ pay guarantees from the city charter, which would appear to easily qualify. The Board of Supervisors is working on a competing ballot measure that would also remove that guarantee, but include a more comprehensive reform that includes governance and oversight changes and new revenue.

Is there still a political machine in San Francisco?

Zelda Bronstein
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2

There’s some interesting discussion going on about Jane Kim, Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, and political machines here. Check it out if you haven’t read it already.

Powder keg

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Powder keg

news@sfbg.com

Ask any pollster, political consultant, or academic who studies the American electorate about the mood of the voters this year and you’ll get the same one-word answer: Angry.

Everyone’s pissed — the liberals, the conservatives, the moderates, the people who don’t even know where they fit in. It’s an unsettled time and, potentially, very bad news for a progressive agenda that seeks to address issues ranging from poverty and war to the long-term health of the public and the planet.

The Democrats, who swept into power with an enormously popular president just 18 months ago, may lose control of Congress. The tea partiers have driven the Republicans so far to the right that some candidates for Senate are openly talking about eliminating Social Security. The unemployment rate — the single most important factor in the politics of the economy — remains high and doesn’t show any signs of improving.

And the progressive left seems frustrated and demoralized, particularly in California. The Golden State, which once led the nation in innovation and enlightened social policy, now seems to be leading the politically dysfunctional race to the bottom.

The nation could be headed for a dangerous era, rife with the potential for right-wing demagoguery and other nasty political schisms. The state of the economy could easily fuel a more powerful movement to shrink the scope of government and a continuing backlash against the public sector — and the financial backers of the antitax and antiregulation movement are drooling at the prospect.

But there’s also a chance for progressives to seize a populist narrative and shift the discussion away from traditional disagreements and toward those areas, particularly the destructive influence on government by powerful corporations, where the grassroots right and grassroots left might actually agree.

The anger that voters feel toward a government that isn’t meeting their needs is starting to find other outlets. People are as mad about the abuses of big business — the Wall Street meltdown, the bailouts, the BP oil spill, the political manipulation — as they are about the failures of Congress and the president. If you ask Americans of every political stripe who they least trust — big government or big business — even conservatives aren’t so sure anymore.

For 30 years, the central narrative of American politics has revolved around the size and effectiveness of government. Now there’s a chance to shift that entire debate in American politics toward the largely unchecked power of corporations. It is, populist writer Jim Hightower told us, “an enormous opportunity handed to us by the bastards.”

But so far, none of the Democratic leaders in California are taking advantage of it to start dispelling damaging myths and crafting political narratives that might begin to create some popular consensus around how to deal with society’s most pressing problems.

 

THE PEOPLE WANT TAXES

There have been many polls gauging voter anger, but one of the most comprehensive and interesting recent ones was “Californians and Their Government,” a collaborative study by the Public Policy Institute of California and the James Irvine Foundation that was released in May.

It shows that Californians are mad about the state’s fiscal problems, disgusted with their political leaders, divided by ideology, and deeply conflicted over the best way forward. An astounding 77 percent of respondents say California is headed in the wrong direction and 81 percent say the state budget situation is a “a big problem.”

But the anti-incumbent message isn’t necessarily an anti-government message. Most Californians are willing to put more of their cash into public-sector programs, even during this deep recession. When asked to name the most important issues facing the state, 53 percent mentioned jobs and the economy . The state budget, deficit, and taxes only got the top billing of 15 percent.

And contrary to the conventional wisdom espoused by moderate politicians and political consultants, most voters say they are willing to pay higher taxes to save vital services. “Californians tell us they continue to place a high value on education and want education to be protected from cuts. And they’re willing to commit their money to help fund that,” PPIC director Mark Baldassare told the Guardian.

The survey found that 69 percent of respondents say they would pay higher taxes to protect K-12 education from future cuts, while 54 percent each say they would pay higher taxes to prevent cuts to higher education and to health and human services programs. In other words, voters seem to recognize where we’ve cut too deeply — and where we haven’t cut enough: only 18 percent of respondents would be willing to pay higher taxes to prevent cuts to prisons and corrections.

Baldassare said the June primary results also showed that people are willing to pay more in taxes for the services they value. “Around the state, there was a lot of evidence that people responded favorably to requests by their local governments for money, particularly for schools,” he said.

Both the California Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are held in very low esteem with voters, according to the PPIC study, and Schwarzenegger’s 23 percent rating is the lowest in the poll’s history.

Barbara O’Connor, political communications professor who heads the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at Sacramento State University, told us that voter unhappiness with elected leaders is no surprise. Right now, most people are afraid that their basic needs won’t be met over the long run.

“The common narrative is fear, and fear channels into anger,” O’Conner said.

And that fear is being tapped into strongly this year by the Republican candidates, who are trying to scare voters into embracing their promises to gut government and keep taxes as low as possible.

“If there’s any lesson to be learned from Meg and Carly’s early ads, it’s fear-mongering, fear-mongering all the time — and that doesn’t create a very positive narrative,” O’Connor said of gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.

O’Connor noted that Barack Obama’s campaign had great success in using a positive, hopeful message and said she believes the right leader can also do so in California. “I talked to Jerry [Brown]’s people about it and said you can’t just run a negative campaign because that’s what Meg is doing.”

Despite the tenor of the times, O’Connor said she’s feeling hopeful about hope. She also believes Californians would respond well to a leader like Obama who tried to give them that hope — if only someone like Brown can pick up that mantle. “I think the environment is right for a positive message. But the question is: do we have people capable of delivering it?”

She said the no-new-taxes, dismantle-government rhetoric has started to wear thin with voters. “The real fiscal conservatives are badly outnumbered in Californian,” O’Connor said. As for the corporate sales jobs, O’Connor said voters have really started to wise up. “They aren’t going to be scammed.”

The results of the June primary election showed that voters across the spectrum were also disturbed by big special-interest money. Proposition 16, backed by $46 million from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., went down to defeat — even in counties that tend to vote Republican.

And this fall, with two rich former CEOs spending their personal wealth to win two of California’s top elected offices and energy companies pushing a measure to roll back California’s efforts to combat global warming, there could be great opportunity in a narrative targeting those at the top of our economic system.

 

THE TOP AND THE BOTTOM

Some observers say that whatever their shared feelings about corporate scams, conservatives and liberals in the state are just too far apart, and that there’s little hope for any substantive agreement. “People are becoming more polarized,” said consultant David Latterman, who often works for downtown candidates and interests. “I think we’re beyond compromise.”

Allen Hoffenblum, a Los Angeles-based Republican strategist, agreed. “The voter are all mad, but they’re mad at different things. I just don’t see where they come together.”

But Hightower, who has spent a lifetime in politics as a journalist, elected official, author, and commentator, has a different analysis.

“As I’ve rambled through life,” he wrote in a recent essay, “I’ve observed that the true political spectrum in our society does not range from right to left, but from top to bottom. This is how America’s economic and political systems really shake out, with each of us located somewhere up or down that spectrum, mostly down.

“Right to left is political theory; top to bottom is the reality we actually experience in our lives every day — and the vast majority of Americans know that they’re not even within shouting distance of the moneyed powers that rule from the top of both systems, whether those elites call themselves conservatives or liberals.”

In an interview, he told us he sees a lot of hope in the fractured and potentially explosive political ethos. “There’s all this anger,” he said. “People don’t know what to do. And I think the one focus that makes sense is the arrogance and abuse of corporate executives.”

In fact, Hightower pointed out, the teabaggers didn’t start out as part of the Republican machinery. “Wall Street and the bailouts sparked the tea bag explosion,” he said. It wasn’t until big right-wing outfits like the Koch brothers, who own oil and timber interests and fund conservative think tanks, started quietly funding tea party rallies that the anti-corporate, anti-imperial edge came off that particular populist uprising.

“At first, the teabaggers didn’t even know where the money was coming from,” Hightower said. “You can’t be mad at the teabaggers; we should have been out there organizing them first.”

There’s plenty of evidence that anger at big business is growing rapidly — and rivals the distrust of big government that has defined so much of American politics in the past 30 years. The bailouts were “the first time in a long time that people have been slapped in the face by collusion between big business and its Washington puppets,” Hightower noted.

Then there’s the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. In January, a sharply divided court ruled 5-4 that corporations had the right to spend unlimited amounts of money supporting or opposing political candidates. Progressives were, of course, outraged — but conservatives were, too.

Polls show that more than 80 percent of Democrats think the decision should be overturned. So do 76 percent of Republicans. “This is a winner for our side,” Hightower noted. “But our side’s not doing anything about it.”

Sure, President Obama denounced the ruling in his State of the Union speech and promised reform. But the bill the Democrats have offered in response does nothing to stop the flow of money; it would only increase disclosure requirements. And in response to furor from the National Rifle Association, it’s been amended and is now so full of holes that it doesn’t do much of anything.

Political consultants advising Whitman are clearly looking for ways to direct the voter unhappiness into a demand for lower taxes and smaller budgets. She’s already vowed to fire 40,000 state workers, and her most recent campaign ad attacks Brown for expanding public programs and raising the state deficit.

So far Brown hasn’t challenged that narrative — and some Democrats say he shouldn’t. It would be safer, they say, for Brown to get out front and demand his own cuts in Sacramento. “Going after public-sector pensions is a winner,” one Democratic campaign consultant, who asked not to be named, told us. “If Whitman beats Brown on those issues, she wins.”

But that approach is never going to be effective for Democrats. If the argument is over who can better cut government spending, the GOP candidates will always win. The better approach is to see if progressives can’t shift the debate — and the anger — toward the private sector.

As Hightower put it: “You can yell yourself red-faced at Congress critters you don’t like and demand a government so small that it’d fit in the backroom of Billy Bob’s Bait Shop and Sushi Stand, but you won’t be touching the corporate and financial powers behind the throne.”

That’s where the discussion has to start. And there’s no better place than California.

The Golden State is a great example of what happens when the tax- cutters win. In 1978, the liberals in Sacramento, operating with a huge state budget surplus, couldn’t figure out how to derail the populist anger of property tax hikes. So Proposition 13, the beginning of the great tax revolt, passed overwhelmingly. Over the next decade, more antitax initiatives went before the voters, and all were approved.

Now the state is heading toward fiscal disaster. The schools are among the worst-funded in the nation. The world-famous University of California system is on the brink of collapse. Community colleges are turning away students. The credit rating on California bonds have fallen so far that it’s hard for the state to borrow money. And there’s still a huge budget gap.

The tax-cut mentality that led to the so-called Reagan revolution started in California; a political movement that shifts the blame for many of the state’s problems away from government and onto big business ought to be able to start here as well. And it’s potentially a movement that could bring together people who normally find themselves on opposite sides of the fence.

A case in point: the measure the oil companies have put on the November ballot to repeal the state’s greenhouse gas limits. The corporations backing the initiative, led by Valero, argue that California’s attempts to slow climate change will cost jobs. That’s a line we’ve heard for decades. Every tax cut, every move toward deregulation, is defended as helping spur job growth.

But the past four presidents have done nothing but cut taxes and reduce regulations — and the result is facing Americans on the streets every day. There is also growing evidence that even Republican voters don’t believe everything big businesses tell them anymore. And they’re starting to grasp that sometimes deregulation leads to outcomes like larcenous CEOs and unstoppable oil leaks.

So the potential for a successful progressive populist movement is out there. But it’s not going to happen by spontaneous combustion.

 

SF SHOWS THE WAY

On the national level, one of the factors creating this gloomy electorate is the failure of President Obama to keep the coalition that elected him active and engaged. The intense partisanship in Washinton has turned off many independent Obama voters, while his progressive supporters have been disappointed by issues ranging from his escalation in Afghanistan to tepid reforms on health care and Wall Street.

“One of the narratives now is where are the Obama voters and will they participate?” Jim Stearns, a San Francisco political consultant who works mostly on progressive campaigns, told us. “They still love Obama but they’re not moved by him anymore.”

Perhaps more important, they have lost the sense of hope that he once instilled. The Republican Party’s descent into right-wing extremism and the strong anticorporate narratives that have emerged in the last year — from BP’s oil spill to PG&E’s political manipulation to Goldman Sachs’ self-dealing to the prospect of unrestricted corporate campaign propaganda unleashed by the Citizens United ruling — have created the possibility that the negative narratives by the left may crowd out the positive ones.

“Meg Whitman is someone you can hate. She’s the rich Republican CEO trying to buy her way into office,” Stearns said. “But it’s a depressing message.”

But Stearns said there is another, most hopeful political narrative that is emerging in San Francisco, one that might eventually grow into a model that could be used at the state and federal levels. “We’re lucky in San Francisco. Progressive voters are engaged.”

He noted that San Francisco’s voter turnout was higher than expected in the June primary, and far higher than the record low state number, even though there really weren’t any exciting propositions or closely contested races on the local ballot — except for the Democratic County Central Committee, where progressives maintained their newfound control. And it’s because of the organizing and coalition-building that the left has done.

“What you’ve seen over the last few years is a coalition of labor, neighborhood groups, environmentalists, and the progressives now operating through the Democratic Party. That’s a great coalition with a lot for people to trust,” Stearns said.

Meanwhile, downtown has all but collapsed as a unified political force. “They don’t really have a political infrastructure,” Stearns said of downtown. “Normally it would be the mayor who gets everyone in line and working together.”

Even Latterman, the downtown-oriented consultant, agrees that the business community is no longer setting San Francisco’s agenda because it’s become fractured and unable to push a consistent political narrative: “There’s certainly been a lack of coordination.”

He also agrees that progressives have become more organized and effective. “Clearly, the Democratic Party of San Francisco has become a conduit for progressive politics and politicians, but not issues,” Latterman said. “What a lot of people get wrong in the city is the difference between politics and policy.”

Part of the reason is economic. With scarce resources, a high threshold for approving new revenue sources, and a fiscally conservative mayor unwilling to talk taxes, it’s been difficult to move a progressive agenda for San Francisco. And in Sacramento, it’s barely part of the discussions.

“The people of California have been held hostage by a handful of Republicans who are making us cut everything we care about,” while in San Francisco “Newsom is taking an entirely Republican approach to the budget,” Stearns said.

Looking toward the fall races, Stearns said the progressive coalition and majority on the Board of Supervisors will be tested on issues such as Muni reform, and the question will be whether fiscal conservatives like Sup. Sean Elsbernd can blame Muni’s problems on drivers, or whether progressives can create and sell a broader package that includes new revenue and governance reforms.

“The drivers are going to get their guarantee taken out of the charter, that’s going to happen. But people know that isn’t all that’s wrong with Muni,” Stearns said.

But to craft a more comprehensive solution, he said the progressives are going to need to use their growing coalition to connect the dots for voters. “We need to run a citywide campaign around a whole constellation of issues,” Stearns said, citing Muni, schools, taxes, resistance to mean-spirited measures like sit-lie, and the larger issues raised by the Brown and Barbara Boxer campaigns. “We need to figure out a way to put all that in the same coalition and run one campaign around it. And we can do that because progressives retained control of the DCCC.”

 

THE STRUGGLE AHEAD

Although they’ve made great strides, San Francisco progressives are still struggling with a mayor who sees the solution to every budget crisis as cuts — and with a growing number of efforts to blame public employees for the city’s fiscal problems. Even Jeff Adachi, the public defender once considered a standard-bearer for progressive causes, is pushing a ballot measure that would require city workers to pay more for their pensions.

Gabriel Haaland, who works with Service Employees International Union Local 1021, made the right point in the pension debate. “Big financial institutions crashed the stock market,” he said recently, “and now they want to blame city workers.”

In a blog post on the political website Calitics, Robert Cruickshank put it clearly: “The notion that ‘everyone needs to give back’ just doesn’t make sense given our economic distress. We’ve already given back too much. We gave back our wages. We gave back our ability to afford health care and housing and transportation. We gave back the robust public- sector services that created widespread prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s. We gave back affordable, quality education. And too many of us have given back our future.

“No, it’s time for someone else to give back. It’s time for the wealthiest Californians and the large corporations to give back. For 30 years now they have benefited from economic policy designed to take money and benefits from the rest of us and give it to those who already have wealth and power.”

That’s a message that ought to appeal to anyone who’s hurting from this recession. It ought to cross red and blue lines. It ought to be the mantra of a new progressive populism that can channel voter anger toward the proper target: the big corporations that created the problems that are making us all miserable.

If Jerry Brown could adopt that narrative, he could change the state of California — and the state of the nation.

Kaiser workers seek election between rival unions

Sasha Cuttler
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34
Kaiser workers seek election between rival unions

Thousands of Kaiser Permanente workers have filed petitions to change unions in what could be the biggest battle yet between Service Employees International Union and its upstart rival National Union of Healthcare Workers. If called by federal regulators, the election would involve more than 45,000 workers, the biggest private sector organization since Ford Motors employees joined United Auto Workers in 1941.

“This is the election everyone has been anticipating for the last year and a half,” NUHW spokesperson Sadie Crabtree told us.

That was when Sal Rosselli and other former leaders of the Oakland-based United Healthcare Workers were ousted by former SEIU President Andy Stern and other leaders of their parent union, SEIU, and formed NUHW. Since then, the two unions have clashed bitterly and regularly, in various workplaces, through the media, in leadership battles, and in a San Francisco court case that ended in April.

“The NUHW petition, if the National Labor Relations Board agrees it was filed appropriately, could force an election between SEIU-UHW and NUHW at Kaiser. Voting for NUHW would risk all the gains SEIU-UHW members made in a hard-fought four-month contract campaign against takeaways by Kaiser,” was how an SEIU-UHW press release cast today’s action.

NUHW opted for a nod to the Fourth of July in its release: “Thousands of Kaiser healthcare workers fired the first shot today in a long-anticipated battle for independence that will determine the future of California’s largest union, SEIU. They filed a petition that will trigger elections for 45,000 SEIU members to choose between the troubled incumbent and the state’s fastest-growing union, the new National Union of Healthcare Workers.”

About 2300 Kaiser workers – representing three of the seven bargaining units – already voted in January to join NUHW, but the petitions now being turned in by the remaining four unions represent the most significant segment of Kaisier workers, including the 44,000-member service, technical, and clerical unit.

Federal law calls for elections when at least 30 percent of a union’s members ask for one, and Crabtree told us, “We have more than we need.” Now, the NLRB must verify the petitions and schedule the election.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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23
Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

Jane Kim, the San Francisco school board president running for supervisor in District 6, has a tough question to answer. When there’s already a solid progressive in the race, Debra Walker, someone who has lived in the district for years and agrees with Kim on almost all the key issues, why is Kim running?

She gave a hint at her campaign kickoff June 24 on how she’s going to portray herself: "I’m not part of anyone’s machine, and I’m certainly not part of anyone’s master plan." It’s an attractive statement — nobody likes machine politics — and the idea that she’s an independent candidate makes her all the more appealing.

Except that it also says something about the progressive movement in San Francisco — and that’s a little disturbing. Because no matter how you try to spin it, when you say you aren’t part of anyone’s machine, you’re implying that maybe your opponents are.

Let me take a step back here, because this is important stuff. There’s a fine line between an effective, organized political coalition that can actually win elections and a political machine, which stifles political innovation and grassroots candidates. And in part it’s about motivation.

When Willie Brown ran San Francisco, it was all about Willie Brown. I’ve never believed the guy had much of an ideology or that any political cause really mattered to him; he loved power, he knew how to use it and he didn’t want to give it up. That was the bottom line.

Now that he’s pretty much out of the picture — although he was at Kim’s party, he’s not a factor anymore — there’s a very different power balance in this city. There’s nobody at City Hall (or in Sacramento, or Washington, or downtown, or anywhere else) who has machine-style control of local politics.

There are people who can build coalitions that work — Aaron Peskin, for example, did exceptionally well with putting together a campaign to elect progressive Democratic County Central Committee elections. And there are people who would love to be power brokers.

But I’ve been around politics here a long time, and I can tell you: Aaron Peskin doesn’t have a machine. Neither does Mark Leno, or Gavin Newsom, or Tom Ammiano, or David Chiu, or anyone else. Thanks in part to district elections, there aren’t many call-up votes on the Board of Supervisors these days. In fact, the left in San Francisco is famously unable to agree on much of anything half the time. Note, for example, the fact that Chiu — often called a Peskin ally — is not supporting Peskin’s candidate in D-6. He’s with Jane Kim.

The thing is, unlike the players in a typical political machine, most of the progressives care about issues. It’s about a shared ideology more than it’s about power. That’s a hugely important difference.

The way the mainstream media has it, the San Francisco left is either fatally fractured and can’t do anything — or it’s becoming a machine. For the moment — a great moment — neither is true. Let’s all keep that in mind. Because when we beat each other up with words like "machine," we undermine the whole progressive movement.

Bad way to start a campaign.

Newsom’s plan for DCCC domination

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Newsom’s plan for DCCC domination

Gavin’s not quite ready to take over the world, or even California, but he’s not leaving office without trying to mess up the progressive majority on the Democratic County Central Committee. The plan he hatched June 15: Ban elected city officials from sitting on the DCCC. The idea: Get rid of Supervisors David Campos, David Chiu, John Avalos and Eric Mar. The overall plan: With the progressive supervisors — who have high name recognition and thus get easily elected — gone, the Newsom allies can take back control of the local Democratic Party.


It’s a pretty blatant move — far beyond Aaron Peskin’s so-called coup. And I must say, it’s a bit hypocritical.


See, the DCCC isn’t just made up of 24 elected members. Every San Francisco Democrat who holds state or national office — or who is a candidate for state or national office — is also an automatic member. So Senator Diane Feinstein is a DCCC member; so is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Sen. Mark Leno. And guess who gets a seat this fall? Lt. governor candidate Gavin Newsom. People like Feinstein and Pelosi never show up; at best, they send a proxy. They rarely pay much attention to the local party, don’t help out much with party fundraising, don’t even come to the party’s annual dinner (Newsom didn’t show this year, even though he’s the mayor of a Democratic city.)


There have been members of the Board of Supervisors on the DCCC for years. The late Sue Bierman was always a member, and actually cared about and paid attention to the local Democratic Party. Leslie Katz was a member as a supe, and still is. It’s never been that big a deal to anyone — until the progressives starting winning seats. Then suddenly it’s a horrible conflict.


The real conflict has nothing to do with city officials sitting on the committee; it’s the fundraising issue. The city’s campaign finance rules don’t apply to DCCC races, so candidates for DCCC who are also running for supervisor — Scott Wiener, Rafael Mandelman, Debra Walker — can raise unlimited money for their DCCC races and use that additional name recognition for the fall elections. The thing is, I think most of the candidates who benefit from this loophole agree that it needs to be fixed; Mandelman certainly does, and he’s told me that several times. I couldn’t reach Walker or Wiener this morning, but I’d be very surprised if both of them wouldn’t endorse some kind of contribution limits for DCCC races.


I asked Newsom’s press spokesperson, Tony Winnicker, if the mayor would support fundraising limits. Apparently he doesn’t (or at least, he doesn’t want to push the issue):


“For this November’s local ballot, which the Mayor can place an initiative on, we propose eliminating the potential conflict that exists between City officeholders also holding office as elected County Party Committee members.”


How about getting rid of all the elected officials, and creating a real grassroots county committee? No, that won’t fly with Newsom either. Winnicker:


It’s appropriate for state and federal Democratic elected officials from San Francisco to serve on the Democratic County Central Committee.


The city/local offices — Mayor, Board, Treasurer, Assessor, City Atty, Sheriff, District Atty, Public Defender — are nonpartisan offices who have direct oversight over City business. That’s the difference and conflict. This is a local initiative, so our focus and concern is local good government and local conflicts or appearance of conflicts.


From everything I can figure, Newsom doesn’t want campaign-finance reform and doesn’t want to put the party in the hands of local activists; he just wants to get rid of the supervisors who take positions he doesn’t like. That seems like a pretty bad way to make public policy. 


UPDATE: Just talked to Scott Wiener, who told me he agrees that the whole issue of DCCC campaign spending ought to be on the table. And he said he is not at this point prepared to support Newsom’s initiative. “I have concerns with the number of elected officials on the DCCC,” he said, “but there are times when it’s entirely appropriate to have people who have a demonstrated commitment to the DCCC and then get elected supervisor to stay on it.”

Voters are pissed

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Voters are pissed

By Guardian News Staff

news@sfbg.com

After spending more than $70 million, two big corporations failed to convince Californians to vote their way. After spending nearly $70 million, the former head of a big corporation easily convinced Californians to vote her way. And that outcome is not as schizophrenic as it sounds.

On one level, the outcome of the June 8 election was a sign of the anti-corporate anger seething through the California electorate. “BP, Goldman Sachs, PG&E — anything that seems connected to a big corporation is in serious trouble right now,” one political insider, who asked not to be named, told us.

Yet two candidates who were very much corporate icons — Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina — won handily in the Republican primaries and now have a real chance to become the state’s next governor and junior senator. What’s happening? It’s fascinating. The voters in the nation’s most populous state are pissed off — at big business, at government, at the oil spill, at 10 percent unemployment, at Washington, at Sacramento, at Wall Street. It’s an unsettled electorate, uncertain about its future and looking for something new, and definitely despising power.

There’s a populist fervor out there, and it’s going to define this fall’s expensive, dirty, and high-stakes battle for California’s future.

 

THE MAYOR GOES STATEWIDE

Addressing a crowd of supporters gathered at Yoshi’s San Francisco on election night, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom — who easily beat opponent Janice Hahn to claim the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor — said he was excited to be part of a crucial political year for the Golden State.

“We’re very proud to be in a position to be the Democratic nominee and to work with the other Democratic nominees,” Newsom told supporters. He lavished praise on the Democratic nominee for governor, Jerry Brown — the man who just last year he was trying to beat in a primary — telling stories about his father’s long relationship with the former governor and expressing his admiration. “I couldn’t be more proud to quasi- be on a ticket with Jerry Brown,” he said.

The race for lieutenant governor may prove one of the most interesting this election season — and not just because a victory for Newsom would transform San Francisco politics. Newsom’s opponent is Abel Maldonado, a moderate Republican who enjoys popularity among the growing, influential Latino community, and who Newsom’s team said will be a formidable challenge.

The campaign could revolve around an intriguing question. At a time when the Republican Party has been taken over by virulent anti-immigrant politicians — Whitman and Fiorina have both made harsh statements about illegal immigrants and vowed never to support “amnesty” (that is, immigration reform) — will Latino voters go for a white Democrat over a Latino Republican?

“You talk to them about all the same issues you talk to all voters about: jobs, education, and health care,” Newsom political strategist Dan Newman said when asked whether Newsom could win over Latino voters. “Latinos, like all voters, will appreciate someone with a proven record of success.”

Pollster Ben Tulchin also downplayed the trouble Newsom could encounter in winning the Latino vote. “With what’s going on in Arizona, they are very wary of Republicans,” Tulchin said, but then added: “We don’t want to underestimate the challenge we have. There’s never been a moderate Latino on the statewide ballot.”

Newsom sounded another alarm. If Whitman decides to help Maldonado, the race will get even tougher. “We’re running against Meg Whitman’s checkbook,” the mayor said.

“Expect to see Meg and Abel together a whole lot in the next few months,” one consultant predicted.

If Newsom wins, San Francisco will get a new mayor a year early — and the district-elected Board of Supervisors will choose the person to fill out the last year of Newsom’s term. Technically, the current board will still be in office then, but the task may well fall to the next board — which makes the local November elections even more important.

“Everyone is gaming this out and trying to figure out what happens,” political consultant Alex Clemens said during a post-election wrap-up at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association office. “There will be a lot of dominoes to fall and deals to be cut.”

Meanwhile, Newsom’s nomination for lieutenant governor places many San Franciscans in an uncomfortable position, one that was illustrated well by Newsom’s victory speech, in which he proudly rejected taxes. Although most San Francisco progressives are disenchanted with their fiscally conservative mayor, few would rather vote for Maldonado.

Tim Paulson, the SF Labor Council president, was at the Newsom event gritting his teeth as he talked about the opportunity progressives now have to work with “a mayor of San Francisco we have issues with.” Now, he noted, “There is going to be a real campaign around this man. It could establish a narrative for what California is about.”

 

POWERFUL WOMEN

At Delancey Street on election night, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris talked about getting “tough and smart on crime,” addressing gang-related criminal activity but also focusing on corporate criminals. She talked about cracking down on predatory lenders, supporting health care reform, and protecting California’s environment. And she made a point of dragging in BP.

“It must be the work of the next attorney general to ensure that the disaster and tragedy that happened in the Gulf of Mexico never happens in California,” she said, warning of attacks on AB 32, which set California’s 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal into law in 2006.

Of course, Harris now has to take on her southern counterpart, Los Angeles DA Steve Cooley, who is a moderate but comes in with much stronger law enforcement support. If Harris wins, it will go a long way to prove that opposition to the death penalty isn’t fatal in California politics, and that voters are finally ready for a women of color as the top law enforcement official — a first in state history.

But she and Newsom will both have to overcome likely attacks for the San Francisco’s crime lab scandal, one of many hits to be magnified by the size of Whitman’s war chest.

Whitman, who trounced opponent Steve Poizner in the primary, is riding the crest of a new wave of Republican-style “feminism,” starring her, Fiorina, and Fox news pundit Sarah Palin as female champions of the right-wing agenda. A few short months ago, it looked as if Brown was in serious trouble. But that was before Whitman and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner got into an $85 million bloodbath that left the winner of the GOP primary badly wounded. Whitman wants to play off the populist uprising by portraying herself as an outsider running against a career politician; Poizner gave her a huge scare by hammering her ties to Goldman Sachs.

That Wall Street narrative is one Democrats will push against Whitman and Fiorina. “I think it is stunningly politically tone deaf to nominate two Wall Street CEOs to the top of the ticket,” Newman said. Voters will decide whether they are fresh voices with new ideas or corporate hacks who laid off Californians and made fortunes with dubious stock market deals.

Brown leads in the polls — narrowly — but he’s vulnerable. He’s taken so many stands over so many years and Whitman’s fortune will hammer any openings they see. Brown is only slowly getting into campaign mode, but it’s no secret what he has to do. If the campaign is about Jerry Brown, unconventional politician, against Meg Whitman, Wall Street darling, then he wins.

But to take advantage of that, Brown has to offer some concrete solutions to the state’s problems — and he has to start acting like the progressive he once was. “If I were him, I’d run hard to the left,” a consultant who isn’t involved in any of the gubernatorial campaigns said.

The conventional wisdom had Barbara Boxer in trouble, too — but she’s a savvy campaigner who has beaten the odds before. And while the senator appears ripe for attack — almost 30 years in Washington, a voting record perhaps a bit more liberal than the state as a whole — her opponent, Fiorina, has baggage too.

For starters, Fiorina’s entire pitch is that she — like Whitman — would bring business-world savvy to politics. But as CEO of HP, “she was about perks and pink slips,” Newman said. “She laid off Californians and shipped those jobs overseas while enriching herself.”

Her own primary pushed her far to the right (at one point, in an embarrassing sop to the National Rifle Association, she actually argued that suspected terrorists on the federal no-fly list should be able to buy handguns). And speaking of feminist values, her anti-abortion positions won’t help her in a decidedly pro-choice state.

 

PROP. 16 GOES DOWN

The defeat of Proposition 16 will go down in history as one of the most remarkable campaigns ever. It was, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi noted, “a righteous win:” The No on 16 campaign spent less than $100,000 and still captured 52 percent of the vote. Another narrow corporate-interest measure, Mercury Insurance’s Prop. 17, faced a similar fate.

One reason: PG&E’s $50 million campaign backfired, making voters suspicious of the company’s propaganda. Another: it lost overwhelmingly in its own service area, the company rejected by those who know it best.

Now PG&E CEO Peter Darbee, who pushed to mount the expensive campaign, must return to his shareholders empty-handed — and that’s going to cause problems. “I assume the leadership of PG&E will be called to task,” Clemens said. “They truly rolled the dice.”

The day after the election, PG&E shares dropped 2.2 percent, a possible sign of shaken investor confidence. Mindy Spatt of the Utility Reform Network (TURN), a nonprofit that worked on the No on 16 effort, described the situation succinctly. “Peter Darbee’s got egg on his face,” she said. “Big-time.”

Mirkarimi has witnessed other battles with PG&E, and said this probably wouldn’t be the last. “PG&E, every time we want to have a seat at the table, tries to take us out, like assassins,” he said. “If they were smart, they would take us up on what we asked many years ago, and that is to abide by peaceful coexistence.”

On the statewide level, the bold and expensive deceptions pushed by PG&E and Mercury Insurance were countered by only a handful of super-committed activists and a broad cross-section of newspaper editorials, a reminder that newspapers — battered by the economy and technological changes — are neither dead nor irrelevant.

One of the wild cards of the election was Prop. 14, which will eliminate party primaries for state offices — and potentially shake up the state’s entire political structure. “This is a big deal even if we don’t know how it’s going to play out,” consultant David Latterman said at the SPUR event.

Interestingly, the only two counties that voted No on 14 were the most progressive — San Francisco — and the most conservative, Orange.

Progressives did well in San Francisco, expanding their majority on the Democratic County Central Committee. “In an environment where it was about hundreds of millions of dollars from PG&E and Meg Whitman and Chris Kelly outspending us, we showed that San Francisco is San Francisco and we support San Francisco values,” DCCC chair Aaron Peskin told us.

Money used to define the debates in San Francisco, but the dominant narratives are now being written by the coalition of tenants, environmentalists, workers, social justice advocates, and others who backed a progressive slate of DCCC candidates, which took 18 of the 24 seats on a body that makes policy and funding decisions for the local Democratic Party.

“This time it was the coalition that really made the difference,” DCCC winner Michael Bornstein said on election night. “Frankly, our people worked harder.”

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu agreed, telling us, “For the Central Committee, the message is people power wins.”

The lesson from this election is that people are starting to get wise to corporate deceptions. And they’re realizing that with hard work and smart coalition-building, the people can still prevail.

Steven T. Jones, Rebecca Bowe, Sarah Phelan, and Tim Redmond contributed to this report.

 

Reading the June election tea leaves

Zelda Bronstein
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0
Reading the June election tea leaves

Everyone’s reading the tea leaves after the local election. The November supes races will be a huge deal, and it’s really tempting to try to figure out what the DCCC results mean for the fall. Paul Hogarth at BeyondChron takes it on here. Chris Daly (no surprise) disagrees.


Let me see if I can sort some of this out.


Hogarth’s basic argument is that the progressives didn’t really do so well in the election:


“In District 8, moderate Scott Wiener finished 1,400 votes ahead of progressive Rafael Mandelman – as the two face the same electorate in November. The renters’ financial hardship measure, Proposition F, lost badly citywide – and finished far worse in neighborhoods that are usually pro-tenant. Debra Walker fared well in her run for DCCC, but most of her votes were not in District 6 – and results there suggest that another candidate for Supervisor could make such a race highly competitive.”


Hogarth is completely upfront and honest about disclosing that he’s a supporter of one of Walker’s opponents, Jane Kim — a former Green who is now a Democrat (and is very much a progressive), but wasn’t in the DCCC race. Theresa Sparks wasn’t in the DCCC race either. Nor was Jim Meko. There are several strong candidates in that race, and they don’t break down along easy political lines. So looking at how many votes Walker got in D6 seems a little off point; there’s nobody to compare her to.


Back to D8. Hogarth:


“Now we know [the D8 breakdown], and the numbers are even worse for Mandelman. Scott Wiener finished approximately 1,400 votes ahead in District 8 (my vote count shows him at 5,954 to Mandelman’s 4,561.) As a comparison, in December 2002 – the last time District 8 saw a hotly contested race on “moderate v. progressive” lines – Bevan Dufty got 11,000 votes, Eileen Hansen 10,000.”


That would seem to make Wiener the much stronger candidate going into the fall.


But there’s another key factor here: turnout. Low-turnout races are mostly (not always, but mostly) better for the more conservative candidate, and in this case, the turnout was really low. Just 32 percent of the voters went to the polls.


Let’s take a look at the 2002 election, the last time we had an open seat in D 8 with a progressive and a moderate running. In the general election in November, progressive Eileen Hansen came in first, with 9,820 votes to Bevan Dufty’s 8,795. But another progressive, Tom Radulovich was also in the race, and this was before ranked-choice voting. Radulovich got 5,221 votes, the majority of which probably would have gone to Hansen.


Turnout was a little over 50 percent.


In the runoff, in December, turnout dropped to 38.8 percent. Dufty got 11,096 votes, and Hansen 9,995. You could argue that most of the Radulovich votes went to Dufty — possible — but more likely, in the runoff, the more liberal voters who had come out in November to vote for Gray Davis for governor and also voted for Hansen just stayed home in December.


And this fall, Wiener will be more in the position that Hansen was in: There’s a third candidate in the race, Rebecca Prozan, and she’s more likely to take votes from Wiener than from Mandelman. And, of course, there’s RCV this time around — and with two gay men and a lesbian in the race, nobody really knows how the second-choice votes will play out.


Daly plays with the turnout numbers:


For the sake of argument, let’s concede that Mandelman starts out 1000-1400 votes behind Wiener among the 11,000 or so District 8 Democrats who voted for DCCC last week. Given that over 31,000 District 8 residents voted in the 2006 Supervisor race (in a contest that was not the most competitive,) we can assume that at least 20,000 additional people will vote this November. In a 2-person contest, Mandelman would need to win 53.5% of these votes in order to win. Given that less frequent voters trend significantly more progressive, and with the addition of Democratic Party branding and the weight of its mail program, 53.5% is almost assured.


Well, I dunno — in 2002, with a contested governor’s race and a contested D8 race, only 26,600 people voted, but it’s safe to say the numbers will be well above 11,000. And it’s not a two-person contest. But I think it’s also safe to say that those higher-turnout voters are the votes most likely to swing toward Mandelman.  


Jim Stearns, a political consultant with long experience in San Francisco (and no candidate in the D8 race), has another interesting analysis he sent over to me:


“Mandelman’s strategy was to spend his limited resources as part of a team effort to maintain progressive leadership on the DCCC. In so doing, he focused more heavily on slate cards that went district-wide than on mailers in District 8 promoting his own candidacy.


 Wiener, on the other hand, abandoned his fellow moderates and spent his money mostly on his own candidacy. This shortsighted strategic blunder will be extremely costly for Wiener in November.


 The result? Wiener got more votes in District 8, but lost his bid to regain his position as chair of the DCCC. Mandelman got fewer votes, but has significantly increased his chances of winning the Democratic Party endorsement this November. That endorsement is worth far more than the mere 1,000 vote difference between Wiener and Mandelman today.”


 


None of this means Walker will beat Kim and Sparks in November, or that Mandelman will beat Wiener and Prozan. It just means that I suspect the DCCC results don’t really say much about the relative strengths of any of the candidates when it comes to a focused, district-centered race in a high-turnout fall election.


I emailed Hogarth and ran the turnout argument by him. His response:


I tried to caution in my piece that there’s only so much you can see in the numbers — and that you’re right; voter turnout in November will be a lot higher.  Maybe I should have made this a bigger point.  But progressives are deluding themselves if they think turnout will be as high as it was in November 2008.  And if I were Rafael, I would have reason to worry that Scott did so much better than me in D8.  Also keep in mind that, despite the drop-off of DCCC voters, 48% of people in D8 who participated in this election cast a ballot for Scott Wiener.


Correct — turnout won’t be as high as it was in the presidential race. But it might very well be as high as it was in 2002, when there was a contested race for governor, as there will be this fall. Lots of Democratic candidates — particularly Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris — will be doing GOTV operations in the city, and while Newsom and Harris won’t be supporting Mandelman, I don’t think either of them will limit their turnout efforts to precincts that run toward Wiener. The more liberal dems who vote in November, the better Harris and Newsom do against Republicans; that’s what they care about.


There’s no question that Scott Wiener will be a formidable contender in November. He’s got money, he’s got Mark Leno, and he’s running in a district that has elected moderate gay men since the return of district elections. But it’s remarkable how well the progressives have done in swing districts of late (see: Eric Mar, John Avalos), and Mandelman will, as Daly says, be the consensus candidate of every progressive group in town. He’ll almost certainly have the Democratic Party — which matters even more when Democrats at the top of the ticket are driving turnout. And he’ll have the same sort of boots on the ground that gave Mar a victory in a very tight race.


At this point, I think Mandelman and Wiener both have a shot at finishing first; it will probably be very close. And Rebecca Prozan runs third.


Oh, and the tenant measure? It lost because there wasn’t an effective campaign behind it. Tenant measures don’t automatically win in tenant-heavy San Francisco; time and again over the years we’ve seen that when there’s a measure that pushes the edge (and face it, I strongly supported Prop. F, but it was pushing the edge) and there’s landlord money against it, you need a full-scale concerted campaign for it. Progressives were paying a lot of attention to the DCCC, and to defeating Props. 16 and 17. Prop. F got lost. I’m not happy about that, but I’m not terribly surprised, either — and I don’t think it means much in the long run.


Chris Daly went a bit too far attacking Hogarth for his connections to Mark Leno, who is a Wiener supporter, and suggesting that the folks at BeyondChron — who are, after all, first and foremost tenant lawyers — are going to be backing Scott Wiener in the fall. I don’t see that happening; I can’t imagine it happening. I just think they read a little too much into the DCCC results.

Bread and Circuses: Mexico and the World Cup

Zelda Bronstein
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Bread and Circuses: Mexico and the World Cup

MEXICO CITY (June 11th) — The Caliente Sports Book down the street is buzzing with betters studying dog and horse races, Major League Baseball, even golf, on the multiple screens. Of particular interest are those channels running wrap-ups of the afternoon match between Mexico and 2006 World Cup champion Italy, from which the national team emerged victorious in a final prelim before this year’s edition of the Copa del Mundo gets underway later this week.


Italy, it may be remembered, won the much-coveted cup four years ago on penalty kicks after France was reduced to playing with ten men on the field when super-star Zenedine Zidane was disqualified for ferociously head-butting a rival who purportedly called his mother and sister “whores.” Beating Italy was a decided plus for Mexico’s downtrodden spirits as the Mundiales approach.


One group of aficionados was not much interested in Mexico’s fortunes in the upcoming fandango in South Africa. Instead, they gathered around a big screen in one corner of the betting parlor cheering on the Los Angeles Lakers in a National Basketball Association Finals match-up with the Boston Celtics. “Forget about football,” sneered “El Guerro” Gonzalez, a regular, “this is where the real money gets made.” Because pro basketball games routinely rack up hundred-point scores, betters have multiple opportunities to wager on winners and losers, over and under point spreads, total points in a quarter, and whether Kobe Bryant will hit the next three-pointer.


But the basketball euphoria will dissipate post haste as the World Cup takes center stage. Although the NBA’s despotic commissioner David Stern promotes his product as the world game, basketball hardly holds a candle to what the U.S. provincially terms “soccer” and the rest of the Planet Earth calls football.


Indeed, the “Copa del Mundo” (“Cup of the World”) will soon sweep every other sporting event from the screens — let alone political scandal, of which there is plenty in this distant neighbor nation, including the upcoming Super Sunday gubernatorial elections July 4th, and even droughts, floods, and other natural disasters. The interminable drug war that has taken 23,000 lives in the past three years will move to the backburner. Ditto an economy that is tailspinning out of control — a million workers lost their jobs in the first three months of this year alone despite President Felipe Calderon’s rosy claims of “recovery.”


Speculation about the disappearance of one of the nation’s most powerful politicians will fade from the primetime news, and the first year anniversary of the incineration of 49 babies in a government-run day care center owned in part by the first lady’s cousin will not even be noticed. The military takeover of the great Cananea copper mine and the dissolution of the miners union, is not news. New revolutions — this is, after all, the hundredth year anniversary of our landmark revolution — could rock the land, but for the next month, Mexico will live and die on what happens to the national team in South Africa.
“In football, we find our revenge against the adversaries of our lives,” philosophizes sociologist Jose Maria Candia in a recent Contralinea magazine interview, “if it goes badly at work, in the economy, politics, the project of the nation, when 11 boys put on the green jersey and do well in an international tournament, we feel vindicated by life.”
With 32 national teams from all five continents in the competition for the World Cup, the fate of the “seleccion” will have palpable impact on domestic tranquility. The political outfall of the Mundiales is unpredictable. Pumped up on toxic nationalism and xenophobia, football is a blood sport in southern climes. Honduras and El Salvador once fought a full-fledged war over soccer.


If the national team wins or acquits itself well, success will strengthen the government in charge no matter how poorly it has served the country. Likewise, a shoddy performance can topple rulers. In Mexico, increasingly unpopular president Felipe Calderon, who won high office in fraud-marred elections three years ago, is banking on the national selection’s triumphs in the opening round to invigorate his deteriorating image. Calderon’s bet is hardly a sure thing.


Mexico, Number 17 on the Federation of World Football Federation’s rankings (now the Coca Cola FIFA rankings), plays host South Africa in the inaugural match of the tournament, and “His Excellency” Felipe Calderon (dixit South African president Jacob Zuma) will be a guest of honor. The “Bafana Bafana” (“Boys Boys”) as the locals are worshipped, have won their last four prelim matches and in the 2009 Confederation Cup took Spain, which some football gurus fix as the best team in the world, into overtime. Their fanatics’ incessantly droning “vuvazelas” or plastic trumpets are said to drive opponents mad.


On the other hand, should Mexico beat sentimental favorite South Africa, it will make Calderon few friends on the African continent — five other African teams are in the draw, with war-torn Cote d’Ivoire the cream of the crop.


Aside from the Bafana Bafana, France and Uruguay are the real class of Mexico’s four-team group — while the French have appeared lackadaisical of late, whipping the South Americans is improbable. Anything less than reaching the quarterfinals will not rehabilitate Calderon’s popularity.


Mexico has a young team that fluctuates between indifference and playing out of control. It is anchored by seven Mexican players from the European and Turkish leagues, and the wily but slow-footed veteran Cuauhtemoc Blanco. Burned repeatedly by the national team’s poor performances in the Mundiales, many fans such as Manuel Garcia, a waiter at the old quarter Mexico City eatery Café La Blanca, consider that only divine intervention can save Mexico — and Calderon — from ignominious elimination.


When and if Mexico wins its matches though, wild celebrations are guaranteed to erupt around the gilded Angel of Independence on the bustling Paseo de Reforma — drunkenness, fisticuffs, and hooliganism are de rigor. Flag-draped caravans of honking cars will jam the boulevards of this conflictive megalopolis. On game days, half the population of Mexico, led by its president, will don green jerseys and play hooky from work and school. Saloons will fill to the brim with fans spilling out into the streets, jostling for a peek at the plasma screens. Masses to insure that God is on Mexico’s side will be pronounced from the altars and saints dressed up in the national colors.


Although football is tantamount to religion in this country where 70% of the population lives in and around the poverty line, only the super rich will have the wherewithal to jet off to Africa. Instead, the underclass will monitor the Mundiales at the “FIFA Fan Fest” on giant screens erected in the great Zocalo plaza from which nearly a hundred hunger-striking members of the Mexican Electricity Workers Union (SME), near death after a month of voluntary starvation, will no doubt be evicted so as not to dampen the fiesta.


Televisa and TV Azteca, Mexico’s two-headed television monopoly, which will transmit the games (the premium package includes 3-D) will have the nation eating out of its hands (and guzzling Corona beer.)  The TV monoliths have leased rights to broadcast the Mundiales from the Swiss-based FIFA, the absolute dictator of the sport for the past 106 years that counts 204 out of 208 football federations worldwide on its roster. FIFA TV revenues are expected to top $167,000,000 for the 2010 World Cup.


This year’s Copa del Mundo is awash with drama. Will the Argentine selection, a perennial favorite, graced by the world’s best player, Leonel “the Flea” Messi, blow up under their sometimes psychotic coach Diego Maradona, himself a Mundiales’ immortal? Will the first round match between England and the U.S. (14th on the FIFA listings with a world-class star, Landon Donovan, to prove it) invoke the star-crossed Yanqui upset of the Brits 60 years ago in 1950 in Brazil, the only time these two teams have ever met in the World Cup?


If the U.S. gets by England, a match between Mexico and its hated gringo rival would up the drama quotient here considerably. A face-off between South Korea and North Korea, both of which are in the draw albeit in separate groups, could lead to nuclear confrontation.


How will tiny, bruised Honduras, which played through a coup d’etat to qualify, fare against the big guns? What kind of karmic reward is in store for France, which slimed its way into the World Cup with mega-star Thierry Henry’s illegal hand-slap goal against the Irish? Will Germany be dispirited by the suicide of its troubled veteran goalie (is this a Wim Wenders’ film)? Will five-time champ Brazil, which is hosting both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, be so overloaded with hubris that the selection will forget to play football?


But unquestionably the drama of dramas is focused on host South Africa, the land of blood and gold, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, Joe Slovo, and the last great struggle for liberation from colonialism.


South Africa, an unlikely site for the World Cup, was promised the games by Swiss football impresario Joseph Batter during his 1998 campaign to become the czar of the FIFA. Blatter, who was said to have been backed by Middle East oil money, needed African votes to put him over the top. Although Nigeria and Morocco were also proposed to host the 2010 Cup, South Africa, the continent’s fastest-growing economy, was chosen both as a tribute to African football and to Nelson Mandela. Blatter even flew the frail, aging apostle of African liberation, to London to ballyhoo the designation.
Whether the beloved Mandiba will be well enough to attend the inauguration is the drama within the drama.


In his youth, Nelson Mandela was a keen amateur boxer and enthusiasm for sports has colored his life. Football is indeed the national sport of black South Africans, 75% of the population. During Mandela’s 28 years of imprisonment on Robbin Island for the crime of defying apartheid, his fellow prisoners and comrades in the African National Congress (ANC), played football incessantly, taping up rags into balls, and booting them up and down the narrow prison corridors. But Madiba was held in isolation and could never participate.


Nelson Mandela’s vision for the new South Africa encompassed sports as a path to racial reconciliation. If football was a black sport in South Africa, rugby is an Afrikaner obsession — the Springboks were the maximum icon of the apartheid regime. As president, Mandela brought the 1995 World Rugby Cup to Johannesburg, a story fictionalized in the film “Invictus,” and won the hearts and minds of his former persecutors. Now the World Cup 2010 is slated to project South Africa before the world as a dynamic, multi-racial powerhouse.


The truth is always more diffuse. Jacob Zuma, the country’s very corruptible third president, and his predecessors have sunk between $3.7 and $6 billion USD in infrastructure to burnish their images in a nation where 43% of South Africa’s 45.000.000 peoples live on $2 or less a day. The gleaming $300,000,000 Soccer City Stadium where the July 11th finals will be staged, abuts Soweto, the festering high-crime enclave of 3,000,000 mostly threadbare citizens, 30% of whom suffer from AIDS, according to the World Health Organization. Gangs of orphaned children rule the street.


Similarly, the stadium at Port Elizabeth on Nelson Mandela Bay, which came in at $287,000,000, was built over a slum from which hundreds were evicted. A school complex was demolished to make way for the Neusprot venue (only $140,000,000) — 13 such stadiums have risen from the dust amidst a storm of charges of kickbacks, bribery, and favoritism.
If recent history is any hint, the new stadiums will quickly become certifiable white elephants. Even Beijing’s much-praised “Birds’ Nest” coliseum designed for the 2008 Olympics is reportedly tenantless, and the Greek economy just collapsed in part thanks to  the burden of debt incurred for infrastructure for its Olympic Games. 


With a population scuffling just to feed itself, filling all this dazzling stadia with paying customers is problematic. Even the $18 cheap seats — a week’s wages in the cities and a month’s income in some rural areas — are mostly out of reach in a country where 50% of the work force is out of work. To deflect a grave social crisis in the making, the FIFA is offering 120,000 free admissions, about 2,200 seats for each of the World Cup’s 62 contests. Riots have already occurred at “friendly” preliminary games.


Ever since the bad old days of ancient Rome, bread and circuses have been a powerful formula for social control. In South Africa, as in Mexico, the World Cup is designed to make the discontented forget their discontent. For the next month, the violence, corruption, and class and race hatreds that dominate daily life in Mexico, South Africa, and the rest of what used to be called the third world will disappear beneath the social surface.


Although conflict is my bread and butter, I’m not going to miss the 2010 Mundiales for the world. 


John Ross is at home in the maw of the Monstruo watching the World Cup. You can complain to him at johnross@igc.org


–

“A righteous win.”

Zelda Bronstein
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1

I just called Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, one of the leaders of the No on 16 campaign. He’s cautious; we’ve both seen PG&E steal elections before. But the numbers are looking good: $50 million later, PG&E is behind and losing ground. “If 16 goes down, this will be such a righteous win,” Mirkarimi said. “We will have defeated their scorched earth greed.”


 

Nevius family values

Zelda Bronstein
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6
Nevius family values

The Chron’s C.W. Nevius has made a big deal of moving back into town from the suburbs — and the offhand comment by Steve Jones in an email to Nevius has almost become a sticky nickname. In fact, his own newspaper’s website, sfgate, headlined his column “Suburban twit moves to city.”

But Chuck’s got some work to do before he starts to understand San Francisco values.

Take his latest column, about the Democratic County Central Commitee. Now, any Chron columnist (or anyone else) has the right to endorse and advocate for any candidates he or she wants. And Nevius is absolutely right to point out that the DCCC race is crucial, that control of the committee will have a significant impact on the fall supervisorial elections.

Here’s what made me want to scream:

“So, if you’re happy with the far-left agenda, check out the Bay Guardian. (Progs with name recognition like Peskin, David Campos, David Chiu, and John Avalos are probably shoo-ins. Daly is not running.) For those who’d like to see a swing to families, kids, and civility on the streets, here are some suggestions.”

 A swing to families and kids? You must be kidding.

The single greatest issue facing families and children in this city is the cost of housing. That’s why Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, which almost everyone agrees is the premier family-advocate group in the city, has made affordable housing a huge priority.

Some of what a recent Coleman report says:

 “Two-thirds of all children in the city do not have a secure future in San Francisco

More families in San Francisco are low-income (43%) than middle-income (23%), and face economic hardship even when working full-time jobs.

Extreme racial disparities in family income and access to opportunity mean that the majority of children who do not have a secure future in SF are children  of color, and the majority of children who do have a secure future are white.”

Coleman’s recommendations: Build and preserve affordable housing for families — not market-rate condos, not condo conversions, but below-market-rate housing.

From the report:

“1. Prioritize the needs of 45,000 children growing up in 20,000 extremely-poor and low-wage working families.  trategies must combine investing in a stronger social safety-net for families now, and investing in anti-poverty strategies that will prepare today’s poor children to become economically secure San Franciscans of the future. The city’s housing and educational policies must focus on the children and families with the greatest need, and not get sidetracked by the demands of middle-income or upper-income families whose needs are legitimate but not as urgent.

 2. Invest in affordable homeownership programs for middle-income families, but focus the vast majority of limited housing resources on building permanently affordable family rental housing.”

That is exactly what the progressives — the “far left” folks that Nevius decries — have been talking about all these years. The candidates Nevius endorses are of the political camp that advocates more market-rate housing, more condo conversions, fewer tenant protections — more of the kind of things that drive lower-income families out of the city.

The next priority is education. Families that don’t have a lot of money have no option other than the public schools, and a lot of us who might be able to afford private schools still think public education is the way to go. What the schools need in San Francisco is pretty simple: They need more money. The “moderates: Nevius endorses — who actually count as fiscal conservatives, by San Francisco standards — are generally against raising taxes, as is our mayor. The San Francisco city government doesn’t oversee the schools, and most of the education money in California comes from the state — but San Francisco’s Rainy Day Fund, and the willingness of the supervisors to put money into the local schools, has saved hundreds of teacher layoffs and helped the quality of the local public schools.

 Where did that idea come from? Progressive leader Tom Ammiano.

I’m a San Francisco parent with two kids, and I have a lot of friends who are San Francisco families, and none of us see the Nevius agenda as family-friendly. That’s why we’re supporting the progressives.

Political juggernaut

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Political juggernaut

sarah@sfbg.com

City officials are scrambling to secure final approvals to allow Lennar Corp. to move forward with its 770-acre Candlestick/Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment of San Francisco’s impoverished and polluted southeast sector. But the community remains divided on the project, raising concerns that wary residents will end up being steamrolled by this politically powerful juggernaut.

Some groups say the project needs major amendments, but fear it will be rushed to the finish for political reasons. Others say they are hungry to work and desperate to move into better housing units, so they don’t want all the myriad project details to slow that progress. And Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration is arguing that approving the project’s final environmental impact report by June 3 is crucial if San Francisco wants to keep the San Francisco 49ers in town.

But many observers fear Lennar wants its entitlements now before its project can be subjected to greater scrutiny that could come with the November elections. Newsom, who made Lennar’s project the centerpiece of his housing policy, will be replaced as mayor if he wins the lieutenant governor’s race. And a crowded field of candidates, many of them progressives concerned about the project’s impacts on the poor and the environment, are vying to replace termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes Lennar’s massive territory.

“It’s 180 percent about the 49ers,” land use attorney Sue Hestor told the Guardian, referring to the city’s proposed rush job, as evidenced by a rapid entitlement schedule that the Newsom’s administration wants city commissions and the board to follow.

Under that schedule, which Hestor procured from the Mayor’s Office, Planning and Redevelopment commissioners are expected to certify the project’s final 6,000-page EIR, adopt California Environmental Quality Act findings, approve amendments to the project’s original disposition and development agreement, and authorize land trust and open space reconfigurations — all during a June 3 meeting where public comment will likely last for many hours.

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, a community-based nonprofit that tracks the development, says this schedule stretches the credulity that this is a deliberative process. “There’s no way anyone could make a functional reasoned assessment,” Bloom told us. “How do you have any meaningful public conversation under those circumstances?”

Michael Cohen, Newsom’s chief economic advisor, asserted in an April 29 article in The New York Times that Lennar’s plan is a “really, really good project,” echoing the glowing praise he’s heaped on the project since its conception.

“But there’s nothing new in their proposal,” Bloom told us. “That’s because they haven’t been listening to the public’s concerns. [Cohen] says, ‘Haven’t we talked enough? The community’s been waiting all these years!’ But waiting to get what done?”

Lennar’s project — which had early backing from Newsom, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and other political power brokers — was sold as creating “jobs, housing, and parks” and “revitalizing the abandoned shipyard” when voters approved the Lennar-financed Proposition G in 2008.

“Proposition G is from the community and for the community,” Lennar’s campaign promised. “You can turn the abandoned Hunters Point Shipyard into a clean, healthy, sustainable, livable neighborhood — a place where people can raise their children.”

The shipyard once employed thousands of workers, including African Americans who were recruited from the South in the 1940s and ’50s. But the district’s economic engine fell into disrepair when the military left in 1974. Today the neighboring Hunters Point and Bayview neighborhoods have the highest unemployment and crime rates and the largest concentration of African American families in the city.

But the city’s final EIR for the project, which the Planning Department released mid-May, shows that 68 percent of the developer’s proposed 10,500 new housing units will be sold at market rates unaffordable to area residents, and that many of these units will be built on state park land at Candlestick Point.

Lennar is also proposing to build a bridge across the environmentally sensitive Yosemite Slough, significantly changing the southeast waterfront. Lennar says it plans to develop the project’s remaining 3,000 units at below market prices, including one-for-one replacement of rundown Alice Griffith public housing units. Its proposal includes a dozen high-rise towers, 2.7 million square feet of commercial space, 1 million square feet of retail space, a performing arts theater, and an artists colony.

Lennar claims its proposal will create 1,500 construction jobs annually during the project’s 20-year build-out, along with 10,000 permanent jobs, thanks to a United Nations Global Compact Sustainability Center and a vaguely defined green technology office park.

The project and its impacts are already an issue in this year’s District 10 supervisor’s race (see “The battle for the forgotten district,” Feb. 23). Candidate Chris Jackson says Lennar’s proposal is weak when it comes to creating well-paying, low-skilled green collar jobs. He supports Arc’s proposal to including green maritime industrial use at the shipyard.

Arc recommends that the city’s final EIR allow recycling and repairing of ships, including the Suisun Bay Ghost fleet — decommissioned U.S. Navy, cruise, and ferry ships — arguing that “ship recycling and repair are resurgent strategic industrial activities yielding employment opportunities for our existing pool of skilled and unskilled workers.”

Jackson, who was elected to the Community College Board in 2008 and recently jumped into the District 10 race, wants the city to assert that the project is not a regional housing plan.

“It’s a local housing plan for local residents,” Jackson asserts. “It’s not here to provide housing for Silicon Valley. It’s for Bayview-Hunters Point and District 10 residents.”

Jackson understands why some local residents want no delays on final EIR approval: “I can never blame folks in Alice Griffith public housing for coming out and saying ‘no delays.’ They really want something real, housing that is not rat and cockroach infested.”

As a policy analyst (a position he’s quitting to focus on the District 10 race) for the San Francisco Labor Council — which gave key backing to the project in the 2008 election — Jackson knows labor is frustrated by all the project meetings. “I try to tell them it’s better to get this project right than rush it through and find out later that it goes against the interests of labor,” Jackson said.

In May 2008, the Labor Council signed a community benefits agreement (CBA) with Lennar. Since then labor leaders have urged no delays on the project’s draft EIR review. But Jackson believes the city must demand that financial consequences, such as liquidated damages, be a project approval condition if the developer reneges on the CBA.

“Right now the only push-back the city has is to threaten to kill the whole project if Lennar doesn’t meet its timeline,” Jackson said. “But people are really invested in this project, and I don’t believe anyone would pull the trigger and end the entire development. We don’t need to throw everything out; we just need to change them.”

Jackson wants to see the inclusion of a special-use district that would create a cooperative land trust to ensure affordability and home ownership opportunities for local residents. “I love open space and sustainability, but I also want affordable housing and real light-industrial opportunities that can employ people living in the district now.”

Special-use districts, Jackson argues, give city commissioners a way to amend this project to make it more acceptable.

Jackson wants to see strong tenant protections for public housing residents. “The vast majority of those residents are African American. At the end of the day, I want to see economic and environmental justice, so we can say we brought the right change to our community.”

Jackson also would like to see a more independent Mayor’s Office. “Don’t you feel like its 2002/2003, and that if you speak out against the project, it’s like you are speaking out against the Iraq war, and all of a sudden you are not patriotic?”

Fellow District 10 candidate Eric Smith concurred. “The powers that be are definitely moving this thing forward,” he said. “And this is a monster train, a juggernaut that is gathering steam. But how it shakes out down the road remains to be seen. My whole mantra is that there needs to be greater transparency down the line. If I become the sheriff, I’ll be shining a light on all this stuff.”

Smith warned that the community needs to work together or it won’t win a better deal. “It’s clear that folks in the city are hoping against all odds that Lennar can pull this stuff off so they can prove all the naysayers wrong and these community benefits can be realized, and that scrutiny of the projects can go on while all this happens,” he said.

But Arthur Feinstein, the Sierra Club’s political chair, worries that the city’s rush job is resulting in seriously flawed documents and decision-making. “It’s difficult for folks to digest 6,000 pages of comments and responses on the draft EIR in the three weeks since planning posted them online,” Feinstein said. “And nothing has changed despite all the comments, which is why it continues to be a nonsense process.”

Feinstein says the Sierra Club’s top concerns are the Parcel E-2 cleanup on the shipyard, a deal to transfer 23 acres at Candlestick Park for development, and the bridge over Yosemite Slough.

“You can cover most of the site,” he said. “But when it comes to Parcel E-2, where the dump burned for six months in 2002, that’s only 20 acres, it could and should be removed. This is the environmental justice issue that has the community up in arms.”

Feinstein worries about the precedent that selling a state park for condos sets. “This is our park, and they are shrinking it.” He is also concerned that the developer wants to bridge Yosemite Slough for cars.

How many of these concerns will be addressed at the June 3 hearing, which is just days before Santa Clara County voters decide whether to try to lure away the 49ers with a new publicly financed stadium? We’ll see.

The politics of sit/lie

Zelda Bronstein
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91
The politics of sit/lie

It’s no surprise that Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to put a sit/lie law on the ballot, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the supervisors are moving slowly on his proposal. It has nothing to do with any facts — the cops could enforce existing laws and address the problem.


No, this is all about politics. Newsom never wanted the supervisors to approve a sit.lie law; he and his operatives want to put it on the November ballot, so they can use it as a wedge issue to attack progressive candidates. They can also use it to raise money, which can be spread around through slate cards to support his supervisorial picks.


Remember, this is how Newsom got elected mayor: He picked a wedge issue (general assistance payments to homeless people), created a slogan (“care, not cash”), raised a ton of money, and made it his signature campaign strategy. It worked, so he’s trying again.


Before Arthur Evans leaps in and attacks me, let me say: I know there are people in the Haight who want this law. (There are also people in the Haight, including the venerable Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, who oppose it.) But I don’t think Newsom really cares about that; if he did, he’d work with the supervisors on a compromise or alternatives. Instead, he’s refusing to participate in the board’s debates.


This is all about November’s board elections. Sorry, Arthur, but your pet cause is now the mayor’s political tool.

SFBG.COM Radio: Johnny and Tim on the collapse of the GOP

Zelda Bronstein
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1
SFBG.COM Radio: Johnny and Tim on the collapse of the GOP

Today Tim and Johnny talk about all the nutty candidates that the Republican party will be fielding in the fall, from Nevada to Kentucky — and how that will alter the midterm elections. Listen after the jumpSFBGRADIO5/24/2010 by SFBG

The Governor and the condemned man

David Talbot
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0

Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based columnist, covered the Caryl Chessman case as a reporter for The Associated Press, correspondent for The Nation
magazine, and commentator for Pacifica Radio, which won a Peabody Award for its coverage. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.

It’s February 19, 1960. Caryl Chessman, tall, broad-shouldered, hawk nosed, sits on the edge of a hard, narrow bed. Clenching his fists and biting his lips, he stares at the bare walls of Cell 2455, Death Row, then out through a small, barred window and across the dark waters of San Francisco Bay – from San Quentin Prison to the lights of the city.

One-hundred miles north, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, the pudgy, owlish 32nd governor of California, also sits alone, perched on the edge of an overstuffed arm chair. Puffing incessantly on a cigar, he studies the ornate design in the pale green wallpaper that covers the walls of the Victorian parlor of the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, as he agonizes over whether to spare Caryl Chessman from execution the next morning.  Outside, I and a half-dozen other reporters, chilling in the harsh night air, anxiously await his decision.

It’s been fifty years. Yet the events of that cold February evening and those immediately preceding and following them, remain vivid in my memory, and surely in the memories of many others, as among the most dramatic in modern California history.  Californians weren’t alone in their concern over whether Chessman should be executed, for the Chessman case had become a major issue internationally, with millions urging Gov. Brown to spare Chessman.

Pat Brown was one of California’s finest governors. He was, as he once said of John Kennedy, a chief executive who carried out a strong belief  “in people and the political process for solving human problems.” Brown’s contributions were many, and among the most important were those stemming from that agonizing night. The evening was as significant for Chessman, whose courage and determination inspired people throughout the world to actively oppose capital punishment. His actions, as those of Brown, had a profound and lasting impact.

Brown was convinced that Chessman had been unjustly condemned. “They got him on technicalities,” the governor noted – not on charges of killing anyone, but under a law, since repealed, that made kidnapping for the purpose of robbery, with bodily harm a capital offense. Two cases were involved. In both, Chessman was charged with sexually attacking women, taking money from them and “kidnapping” them by, in one case, forcibly moving the woman from one room in a house to another and, in the other case, driving the alleged victim a few miles in a car.

Chessman insisted, at any rate, that he was not guilty, and for almost a dozen years up until that night 50 years ago, he had fended off execution. Six other times he had been scheduled for death but each time he had won reprieves from the courts, largely on the basis of his own carefully researched arguments against errors in the trial proceedings that had led to his death sentence. Finally, as he faced his seventh appointment in San Quentin’s gas chamber, Chessman appealed to the governor for executive clemency that would free him at last from the threat of execution.

Pat Brown was an avowed foe of the death penalty. But he insisted that as long as capital punishment was on California’s statute books, he had no choice but to “uphold and faithfully execute” the law, even including its unjust technicalities.

That’s what Brown had done earlier in his political career as district attorney for San Francisco and later as state attorney general, calling for the death penalty in legally appropriate cases. True, Brown had granted clemency to 22 of the 62 people who were scheduled for execution during his two terms as governor, but none of them attracted the public attention that Chessman drew.

None of the other condemned men had so loudly, so arrogantly and so eloquently proclaimed their innocence and disdain for the law that threatened them with death. Only Caryl Chessman had managed to stave off a death sentence for so long, damning and exposing in court and in the books he wrote from his prison cell, the serious failings of a legal system that relied on the gas chamber. Only Caryl Chessman rallied millions of people to support him and to oppose the law and those pledged to “uphold and faithfully execute” it.

Chessman, Brown complained at the time, sought “only vindication.” That the governor would not grant. Nor would he grant clemency to Chessman – because, said Brown,”the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming.” Many who were familiar with the case, including prominent lawyers and law enforcement, disagreed strongly with that assessment. But like the complaint that Chessman’s death sentence was based on “technicalities,” that was almost beside the point.

Much more important were the political considerations involved. Politically, Brown’s course was by far the wisest he could have taken. Virtually every newspaper in the state, virtually every politician and a clear majority of the general public were clamoring for the death of a man who so boldly had defied their system of justice, a man who had in effect dared them to “kill me if you can.”

“The mob may applaud treating me arbitrarily and arrogantly, history won’t,” Chessman wrote the governor. “But, then, history can’t vote.”

Chessman obviously had little reason for hope, as he sat on the edge of his hard prison bed on that February night a half-century ago, awaiting the morning and death.

But Gov. Brown was having second thoughts as he sat staring at the parlor wall in Sacramento. Brown flipped through a tall stack letters and telegrams from all over the world urging clemency for Chessman, some from close political allies such as Eleanor Roosevelt.
There also were petitions, including one from Brazil with more than two million signatures. Among the hundreds of telegrams was one from an assistant secretary of state warning there might be anti-American rioting throughout South America if Chessman went to the gas chamber. There was a telephone call from Brown’s 22-year-old son Jerry – who would one day be governor, too – arguing that Chessman be spared.

Most of all, there was Brown’s very troubled conscience. He began ‘”doubting the righteousness” of his position, he later told some reporters privately, now that he was “the one man on God’s green earth between another man and death.” Brown knew very well, however, that sparing Chessman would subject him to severe criticism that could do great harm to his extremely promising political career.

Finally, after two hours of hard, painful thought, Brown reached a decision.

The governor could not commute Chessman’s death sentence to life imprisonment or to any other lesser penalty. Under California law that would have required approval by the State Supreme Court, since Chessman had been convicted of more than one felony. And the court had previously voted 4-3 against commutation.  But the governor was able to grant Chessman a 60-day reprieve, in the meantime calling the State Legislature into special session to consider Brown’s proposal for abolition of the death penalty in California.

The furor was immediate and fierce. Letters poured into Brown’s office at the rate of 1,000 a day, attacking the governor and Chessman in foul, violent language. Newspaper editorialists were as outraged over Brown’s reprieve of a man they called a “depraved fiend . . . filthy monster . . . psychopath,” an example of “the scum among us which should be pushing up the daisies.”

Abortive movements for Brown’s impeachment or recall were begun, and legislators from both parties complained bitterly because the governor had in effect tossed the Chessman case to the Legislature, where 100 of the 120 seats were to be contested in the fall elections later that year.

Brown’s political influence dwindled rapidly, and he backed off on his promise to “do everything in my power” for the abolition proposal. He merely submitted it for the Legislature’s consideration.

 The abolition bill didn’t make it out of committee, even after Chessman urged that, if necessary, it be amended “in such a way as to exclude me.”  He told legislators, “I am willing to die if that will bring about this desperately needed social reform.”

Caryl Chessman was executed 50 years ago this month, on May 2, 1960.

Dick Meister covered the Caryl Chessman case as an Associated Press reporter.

DTS voters must re-register to cast DCCC ballots

Sasha Cuttler
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10

Like nearly 30 percent of San Franciscans, I’m not registered with a political party, but when I got a letter from the Department of Elections a few weeks ago letting me know that I had the option of choosing either a Democratic or Republican ballot, I thought that I was all set to be able to vote for my favorite Democrats in the June 8 primarily election.

So last night, I sat down with my “(NP) Democratic Party” absentee ballot to vote, I made strong and clear “No” votes on state Propositions 16 and 17, I voted for Jerry Brown and other Democrats for statewide office, and I flipped the ballot over and over to find the Democratic County Central Committee race – but it wasn’t there.

It turns out, only registered Democrats are allowed to vote for the DCCC, the body that controls San Francisco’s Democratic Party operations and will be hugely influential in the fall elections for the Board of Supervisors. Even some DCCC candidates weren’t aware of the restrictions and are now scrambling to let their supporters know to re-register as Democrats.

May 24 is the deadline to register – or to re-register – for the June 8 primarily election. And Elections officials say that if you’ve already received your absentee ballot, it’s best if you bring it with you down to the Department of Elections in the basement of City Hall and turn it in as a spoiled ballot as you re-register.

And once you do, click here to vote for the Guardian’s slate of progressive DCCC candidates.

East Bay endorsements

David Talbot
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0
East Bay endorsements

EDITORIAL There’s not a lot to bring voters out to the polls in Berkeley and Oakland, but two important races deserve attention. Proposition C, a bond act to replace the city’s aging public pools, has widespread support, but needs two-thirds of the vote to pass. And in a race for an open judicial seat, Victoria Kolakowski has the opportunity to become the first transgender person to serve on a trial court in the United States.

OUR ENDORSEMENTS


YES ON PROPOSITION C


Berkeley has four public pools, three outdoors and the indoor Berkeley High School Warm Pool. All four are badly in need of repair, but the Warm Pool faces imminent closure. That would primarily affect the disabled and senior communities, who use the pool for exercise, recreation, and therapy. It’s not a wealthy group overall, and having a place to go year-round to swim (or in some cases, just do physical therapy in the water) is a big deal.

The remaining pools are used by kids, adults, local swim clubs, and Berkeley residents who can’t or don’t want to spend the money on private gyms. Prop. C would provide the money to build a new Warm Pool and fix the cracks and do seismic upgrades and needed repairs on the other facilities. It’s the kind of measure that’s hard to oppose (it would cost the typical homeowner less than $100 a year in increased taxes) and every member of the City Council has endorsed it.

But with no major local issues on the ballot, progressives may not turn out in large numbers, which means the more conservative voters (who tend to dominate low-turnout elections) could account for enough votes to deny Prop. C a two-thirds majority. So Berkeley residents need to get out and vote — yes on C.

KOLAKOWSKI FOR JUDGE


Three people are contending for Seat No. 9 on the Alameda County Superior Court. It’s a rare open seat, and all three candidates have strong legal records and appear to be qualified for the job. But Kolakowski is our pick, in part because she’d make history — but more so because of her long history of public service and her progressive values.

John Creighton, a career prosecutor, has 25 years experience in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. He has the support of a lot of local law enforcement groups and a long list of judges. Louis Goodman, a defense lawyer, also served as a deputy D.A. before going into private practice. All the judges who haven’t endorsed Creighton are backing Goodman. We have nothing against either candidate — except that the bench is already full of former prosecutors.

Kolakowski is a different type of candidate. She’s spent much of her career as an administrative law judge, and for two years she helped the state try to recover some of the money that private utilities and energy traders stole during the 2000-01 energy crisis. She also has been deeply involved in community activities, serving as chair of Berkeley’s Human Welfare Commission, working with the city’s Police Review Commission on LGBT sensitivity training for police officers, and sitting on Oakland’s Budget Advisory Committee. She’s been on the Board of San Francisco’s Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center and is currently co-chair of the Transgender Law Center Board.

She’s an advocate for openness in the courts and wants to push for more transparency in how the Administrative Office of the Courts spends its budget. She also wants to make the courts more accessible to people who can’t afford lawyers.

Her election would be more than an historic statement — it might help change the way courts deal with transgender people (who often wind up in court, either for what ought to be simple things like identification changes or for the more serious problems facing a marginalized community with high unemployment). She has the support of Oakland City Attorney John Russo, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, Oakland City Council Member Rebecca Kaplan, and many other progressive leaders. Vote for Kolakowski.

Pelosi needs to support the Fair Elections Act

Zelda Bronstein
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8
Pelosi needs to support the Fair Elections Act

In the wake of the horrible Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, Rep. John Larson of Connecticut has introduced a bill that would reform substantially the way members of Congress are elected. It’s not perfect, but it’s a big step. The Fair Elections Now Act, H.R. 1826, would create partial public funding for Congressional races, with a 4-1 match for contributions of $100 or less. The money would come from a small fee on goverment contractors.


There are now more than 130 co-sponsors in the House, and they’re pusing for a floor vote. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn’t decided whether to allow the bill to come to the floor.


The politics of that are crazy. If the Democrats want to keep control of the House, they need to have something to campaign on this fall. During the presidential campaign, the party promise reform — but so far, other than a mild health care bill, there’s no real reform on the table.


“If Democrats don’t have a real reform agenda that includes election reform — and that shows the party wants to change how business is done in Washington — we could be in big trouble in the fall,” Steve Hildebrand, a former Obama strategist who is helping the Fair Elections Now Act folks, told me.


So what’s up. Nancy?  Why not at least give the bill a chance.


 

ENDORSEMENTS: Judicial races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
ENDORSEMENTS: Judicial races

SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE, SEAT 6


LINDA COLFAX


It’s rare to see an open seat on the Superior Court; judges typically retire midterm and allow the governor to appoint their replacement. And with a Republican governor, the more progressive Democrats have had a hard time getting even close to judicial appointments. Four highly qualified candidates are seeking this seat, and all of them make good cases for election.


Since judicial candidates can’t take stands on most political issues or indicate how they might rule on cases, it’s hard to get a sense of where the candidates stand. But they can talk about their backgrounds and experience — and about how the local courts are run. For example, the Superior Court is managed on a day-to-day basis by a presiding judge, elected by the sitting judges on the San Francisco bench. But those elections are secret; nobody except the judges know who the candidates were; who voted for which one; or what the final tally was. Court administration is done in closed meetings. Most of what happens in the courts is public — but there’s no presumption of cameras in the courtrooms to give the public access to the justice system.


Our choices for judge reflect our interest in a diverse judiciary, judges who have both professional and personal experience that will shape fair decisions — and jurists who believe in open government, including open courts.


Our choice for Seat 6 is Linda Colfax, a deputy public defender with a background in community service (she’s been an ACLU board member) and progressive politics. Like all four candidates, she has impressive legal credentials and trial experience. She also strongly supports sunshine in the courts and told us she would allow the press and public into judges’ meetings when appropriate, supports cameras in the courtrooms (except for cases where a witness or crime victim has to be protected), and efforts to make the courts work more efficiently.


Robert Retana, who grew up in East Los Angeles, has worked in both civil and criminal law, as a prosecutor and a civil litigator. He also has extensive community service with La Raza Centro Legal and the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights. He was awfully vague on cameras in the courtroom and didn’t seem well-informed on open-government issues, but he’s certainly qualified for the job.


Rod Mcleod, a former San Francisco School Board member, told us he won’t raise any money for this race since he thinks judges shouldn’t be captive to special interests. That’s noble, but it also makes it unlikely he’ll be a factor in the end.


Harry Dorfman, a career prosecutor with the District Attorney’s Office, has extensive trial experience but was the least willing of all the candidates we interviewed to expand public access to the courts.


Colfax has the endorsements of Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, Sen. Mark Leno, and Sups. David Campos, John Avalos, and Eric Mar, among others. She would also diversify the bench in a significant way, not just because she’s a lesbian but because she spent her career in the Public Defender’s Office. And since Democratic and Republican governors alike tend not to appoint public defenders to the bench, that background and perspective is rare. Vote for Colfax.


 


SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE, SEAT 15


MICHAEL NAVA


Another rarity here: a contested race where challengers are taking on a sitting judge. Richard Ulmer, the incumbent, was a Republican living in Hillsborough when Gov. Schwarzenegger appointed him to the bench last year; he quickly changed his registration to independent and took up residence in Park Merced. But two gay men, Michael Nava and Daniel Dean, saw him as potentially vulnerable and, noting the lack of LGBT appointments coming out of the current administration, filed to challenge Ulmer.


Ulmer’s a smart and appealing person with an impressive legal resume, and we see no scandal that would mandate his removal from office. But we also recognize that this is an elected office, and that it’s perfectly acceptable for candidates who think they would better serve the public and the bench to run against an incumbent. In this case, we’re endorsing Michael Nava.


Nava, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, makes the case that judicial appointments can be just as political as elections: out of some 500 judicial appointments, Schwarzenegger has named perhaps five openly LGBT candidates. Nava also would bring a different perspective to the courts. His career has been in the public sector and he currently works as a staff attorney drafting decisions for Superior Court Justice Carlos Moreno. More than anyone else running for judge this year, Nava is an advocate of openness in the judiciary. He told us the courts are the third branch of government and should be held to most of the same sunshine standards at the executive and legislature.


Daniel Dean also makes a compelling case and has extensive courtroom experience as a litigator and judge pro tem. His accessibility and sense of humor would serve him well on the bench, and we hope he continues to seek a judicial slot. But in this race, we’re endorsing Nava.

ENDORSEMENTS: State ballot measures

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
ENDORSEMENTS: State ballot measures

PROPOSITION 13

LIMITS ON PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENT FOR SEISMIC RETROFITS

YES

The primary sponsor of Prop. 13 is Republican Sen. Roy Ashburn, who dominated the news for several days after he was arrested for drunk driving on his way home from a Sacramento gay bar. Needless to say, Ashburn’s dramatic coming out has whipped up far more attention than his noncontroversial ballot initiative.

We’re generally opposed to anything that gives tax cuts or tax deferrals to property owners; thanks to a 1978 measure also called Prop. 13, much of the commercial and residential property in California is badly under assessed. And Prop. 13, 2010 style, is indeed a tax break. But it’s probably justified.

Buildings in this state are typically reassessed for property taxes after they’ve been modified with new construction, except in cases where the modifications are made to comply with earthquake-safety standards. While most buildings that undergo seismic retrofitting are exempt from reassessment until the property is transferred to a new owner, the exemption for unreinforced masonry buildings is limited to 15 years. Prop 13 would remove that 15-year cap.

The fiscal impact on cities is likely to be pretty minor, and the measure might encourage both commercial and residential landlords to bring their buildings up to standard. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION 14

OPEN PRIMARIES

NO

At the height of a royal mess last year when the state budget was long overdue and the two-thirds majority needed to pass it was still out of reach by one vote, Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado struck a deal with Democrats. He said he’d support the budget — if the majority party would meet a few of his demands. One thing he insisted on was Prop. 14 — a ballot measure that would effectively remove political parties from the primary elections process, allowing all voters to cast ballots for any candidate regardless of party affiliation.

Under Maldonado’s plan, all candidates would run on a single primary ballot, and the top two vote-getters would face off in the general election. Heavily funded by the California Chamber of Commerce and marketed by the same spin doctors and corporate lawyers who are rolling in Yes on 16 campaign money, Prop. 14’s backers say it will result in more centrist elected officials.

There are plenty of pitfalls here, the most worrisome being that it would drive up the cost of elections and give more moneyed (and corporate-allied) candidates a sharper competitive edge while elbowing out progressives. It would allow Republicans to play a role in what would normally be Democratic primaries (and vice versa.) The measure would also make it nearly impossible for smaller parties — the Green Party, for example — to offer candidates in the November elections.

Bad idea, bad process, Vote no.

 

PROPOSITION 15

FAIR ELECTIONS ACT

YES

California desperately needs electoral reform. Corporate campaign spending and lobbyists have poisoned the decision-making process and muzzled the voice of the people. Something radical needs to be done — and while this measure is only a small, measured step in the right direction, it’s an important and promising experiment.

Prop. 15 would create a pilot public financing program for the 2014 and 2018 races for California Secretary of State — and the program would be funded by a tax on lobbyists. Right now lobbyists pay only $12.50 per year to register with the state. This measure would increase that fee to $350 annually and use the money to create a fund of about $6 million that candidates for the crucial office overseeing elections in the state could tap after demonstrating their popular support by gathering a number of small contributions. All candidates who qualify would be given the same amount of money and left to compete on the issues. Ideally this public financing program would prove successful and eventually be expanded to other offices. Public financing of election campaigns, which is currently working well in Arizona and Maine, is certainly worth a try in California. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION 16

MONOPOLY PROTECTION FOR PG&E

NO! NO! NO!

The deceptively titled “Taxpayer’s Right to Vote Act” was dreamed up and funded entirely by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the monopolistic utility that is worried it could face actual competition here in San Francisco (and elsewhere) from municipal electricity programs that would offer customers a greener energy mix and more accountability than PG&E executives will ever demonstrate.

Rather than accept some healthy competition, this sleazy corporation has opted to spend some $35 million to exterminate all possibilities of municipal electricity programs cropping up anywhere in the state in a bid to preserve its octopus-like grip on the energy market in Northern California. Prop. 16 would require a two-thirds majority vote at the ballot before any community choice aggregation (CCA) program — or any attempt at creating or expanding a public-power system — could move forward. That’s an extreme hurdle — -and PG&E knows it.

In effect, PG&E is trying to buy public policy here, trying to pass a law that will protect its own monopoly interests.

In San Francisco, the CCA being proposed would offer customers 51 percent renewable power by 2017, which means it would blow PG&E out of the water in the green arena and mark S.F. as taking greater strides toward combating climate change than any other major U.S. city. This example could set a precedent for others, which, in turn, could create favorable market conditions for green energy startups that want to harness wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, tidal, and energy efficiency alternatives.

The very existence of Prop. 16 is already threatening the San Francisco CCA; the city’s Public Utilities Commission is trying to delay a final contract until after the June 8 vote on the measure (see editorial, page 5)

Vote no on Prop 16. Not just because it’s an example of a big business single-handedly trying to alter the state constitution for its own economic benefit by pouring millions of dollars into a deceptive advertising campaign. Not just because a two-thirds majority vote requirement is anti-democratic. Not just because there were reports that the signature gatherers who got people to sign on in support of placing Prop. 16 on the ballot were telling people that its purpose was to limit PG&E expansion or encourage solar power. Not just because Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and a half dozen members of the Legislature sent a letter rebuking PG&E CEO Peter Darbee for disrespecting the democratic process by going straight to the ballot to undermine legislation it initially supported that enabled the creation of CCA programs. Not just because PG&E is using $35 million of ratepayer dollars (that’s the check you wrote them for your electricity bill!) to put out slick TV ads for this campaign when it should have been repairing the pipelines under those manholes that keep exploding and messing up your morning commute. Not even just because with CCA, you already have the right to vote whether or not you want to be part of it, a choice PG&E will never give you. And not just because PG&E keeps trying to raise rates, which is much more difficult for municipal energy agencies to do.

If for no other reason, vote no because Prop. 16 flies in the face of everything environmentalists stand for. It’s a measure that will thwart progress on fighting climate change, brought to you by the company that practically invented green-washing. PG&E is a huge nuclear power player; it purchases coal from mountaintop-removal coal mines in West Virginia that are completely devastating biodiverse landscapes in Southern Appalachia and screwing over poor people by tainting their drinking water; and it’s in the process of building fossil fuel-fired power plants in poor communities of color in California. The CCA programs at least represent a glimmer of hope for an alternative model; Prop. 16 kills off that possibility with one fell swoop motivated by pure greed. For the love of justice, democracy, and the planet, vote no on Prop 16.

 

PROPOSITION 17

CAR INSURANCE SCHEME

NO, NO, NO!

Mercury Insurance sponsored this measure and is campaigning for it with tens of millions of dollars, betting it can fool voters and make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits by doing so. And if the company is right, insurance rates will skyrocket for new drivers and those who haven’t had continuous insurance coverage, which experts say will increase the number of uninsured drivers on the roadways and end up increasing insurance rates for everyone.

Mercury and its founder George Joseph have been truly malevolent players in California, exploiting their customers to make billions of dollars in profits, attacking California’s landmark insurance reform measure Prop. 103 with lawsuits and corrupting campaign contributions over more than 20 years, and flouting insurance regulators in such brazen fashion that even Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a conservative Republican, recently chastised the company for its “lengthy history of serious misconduct” (see “Buying power,” March 17).

Now, however, the company is hoping its promise to cut the insurance premiums of drivers who have maintained continuous coverage by “as much as $250 per year” will buy their votes and that they’ll overlook the myriad negative impacts of increasing everyone else’s premiums by $1,000 per year or more, based on Mercury’s own estimates.

Think about that. If you’re a driver who missed an insurance payment by even one day, or a soldier returning from boot camp, or someone with a low-income getting insurance for the first time or after ditching your car for a while, what are you going to do when you discover already-expensive car insurance comes with a $1,000 annual surcharge?

Many Californians, those who share our roads, will choose to drive without insurance. Then they’ll be more likely to leave the scene of accidents or declare bankruptcy rather than paying out-of-pocket for their accidents, both of which increase the cost of insurance for everyone else.

That’s how insurance works. If someone pays less, someone else pays more; and the only entity guaranteed to really make money over the long term is the insurance company. Don’t fall for this scam. Vote no on 17.

ENDORSEMENTS: National and state races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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15
ENDORSEMENTS: National and state races

Editor’s note: the file below contains a correction, updated May 5 2010. 


National races


U.S. SENATE, DEMOCRAT


BARBARA BOXER


The Republican Party is targeting this race as one of its top national priorities, and if the GOP can dislodge a three-term senator from California, it will be a major blow for the party (and agenda) of President Obama. The pundits are happily talking about how much danger Barbara Boxer faces, how the country’s mood is swinging against big-government liberals.


But it’s always a mistake to count out Boxer. In 1982, as a Marin County supervisor with little name recognition in San Francisco, she trounced then-SF Sup. Louise Renne for an open Congressional seat. Ten years later, she beat the odds and won a hotly contested primary and tough general election to move into the Senate. She’s a fierce campaigner, and with no primary opposition, will have a united party behind her.


Boxer is one of the most progressive members of the not-terribly progressive U.S. Senate. She’s been one of the strongest, most consistent supporters of reproductive rights in Washington and a friend of labor (with 100 percent ratings from the AFL-CIO and National Education Association). We’ve had our disagreements: Boxer supported No Child Left Behind, wrote the law allowing airline pilots to carry guns in the cockpit, and was weak on same-sex marriage when San Francisco sought to legalize it (although she’s come around). But she was an early and stalwart foe of the war in Iraq, split with her own party to oppose a crackdown on illegal immigration, and is leading the way on accountability for Wall Street. She richly deserves reelection, and we’re happy to endorse her.


 


CONGRESS, 6TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


LYNN WOOLSEY


It’s odd that the representative from Marin and Sonoma counties is more progressive by far than her colleague to the south, San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi. But over the years, Lynn Woolsey has been one of the strongest opponents of the war, a voice against bailouts for the big Wall Street banks, and a foe of cuts in the social safety net. We’re proud to endorse her for another term.


 


CONGRESS, 7TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


GEORGE MILLER


George Miller has been representing this East Bay district since 1974, and is now the chair of the Education and Labor Committee and a powerhouse in Congress. He’s too prone to compromise (with George W. Bush on education policy) but is taking the right line on California water (while Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the wrong side). We’ll endorse him for another term.


 


CONGRESS, 8TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


NANCY PELOSI


We’ve never been terribly pleased with San Francisco’s most prominent Congressional representative. Nancy Pelosi was the author of the bill that created the first privatized national park at the Presidio, setting a horrible standard that parks ought to be about making money. She was weak on opposing the war, ducked same-sex marriage, and has used her clout locally for all the wrong candidates and issues. But we have to give her credit for resurrecting and pushing through the health care bill (bad as it was — and it’s pretty bad — it’s better than doing nothing). And, at a time when the Republicans are trying to derail the Obama presidency, she’s become a pretty effective partner for the president.


Her fate as speaker (and her future in this seat) probably depends on how the Democrats fare in the midterm Congressional elections this fall. But if she and the party survive in decent shape, she needs to take the opportunity to undo the damage she did at the Presidio.


 


CONGRESS, 9TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


BARBARA LEE


Barbara Lee, who represents Berkeley and Oakland, is co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in the House, one of the most consistent liberal votes in Congress, and a hero to the antiwar movement. In 2001, she was the only member of either house to oppose the Bush administration’s Use of Force resolution following the 9/11 attacks, and she’s never let up on her opposition to foolish military entanglements. We’re glad she’s doing what Nancy Pelosi won’t — represent the progressive politics of her district in Washington.


 


CONGRESS, 13TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


PETE STARK


Most politicians mellow and get more moderate as they age; Stark is the opposite. He announced a couple of years ago that he’s an atheist (the only one in Congress), opposed the Iraq war early, called one of his colleagues a whore for the insurance industry, and insulted President Bush and refused to apologize, saying: “I may have dishonored the commander-in-chief, but I think he’s done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me.” He served as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee for exactly one day — March 3 — before the Democratic membership overruled Speaker Pelosi and chucked him out on the grounds that he was too inflammatory. The 78-year-old may not be in office much longer, but he’s good on all the major issues. He’s also fearless. If he wants another term, he deserves one.


 


State races


GOVERNOR, DEMOCRAT


EDMUND G. BROWN


Jerry Brown? Which Jerry Brown? The small-is-beautiful environmentalist from the 1970s who opposed Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Diablo Canyon nuke and created the California Conservation Corps, the Office of Appropriate Technology, and the Farm Labor Relations Board (all while running a huge budget surplus in Sacramento)? The angry populist who lashed out at corporate power on a KPFA radio talk show and ran against Bill Clinton for president? The pro-development mayor of Oakland who sided with the cops on crime issues and opened a military academy? Or the tough-on-crime attorney general who refuses to even talk about tax increases to solve the state’s gargantuan budget problems?


We don’t know. That’s the problem with Brown — you never know what he’ll do or say next. For now, he’s been a terribly disappointing candidate, running to the right, rambling on about preserving Proposition 13, making awful statements about immigration and sanctuary laws, and even sounding soft on environmental issues. He’s started to hit his stride lately, though, attacking likely GOP contender Meg Whitman over her ties to Wall Street and we’re seeing a few flashes of the populist Brown. But he’s got to step it up if he wants to win — and he’s got to get serious about taxes and show some budget leadership, if he wants to make a difference as governor.


 


LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, DEMOCRAT


JANICE HAHN


Not an easy choice, by any means.


Mayor Gavin Newsom jumped into this race only after it became clear that he wouldn’t get elected governor. He sees it as a temporary perch, someplace to park his political ambitions until a better office opens up. He’s got the money, the statewide name recognition, and the endorsement of some of the state’s major power players, including both U.S. Senators and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He’s also been a terrible mayor of San Francisco — and some progressives (like Sup. Chris Daly) argue, persuasively, that the best way to get a better person in Room 200 is to ship Newsom off to an office in Sacramento where he can’t do much harm and let the supervisors pick the next mayor.


But it’s hard to endorse Newsom for any higher office. He’s ducked on public power, allowing PG&E to come very close to blocking the city’s community choice aggregation program (See editorial, page 5). His policies have promoted deporting kids and breaking up families. He’s taken an approach to the city budget — no new revenue, just cuts — that’s similar to what the Republican governor has done. He didn’t even bother to come down and talk to us about this race. There’s really no good argument for supporting the advancement of his political career.


Then there’s Janice Hahn. She’s a Los Angeles City Council member, the daughter of a former county supervisor, and the sister of a former mayor. She got in this race way before Newsom, and her nightmare campaign consultant, Garry South, acts as if she has some divine right to be the only Democrat running.


Hahn in not overly impressive as a candidate. When we met her, she seemed confused about some issues and scrambled to duck others. She told us she’s not sure she’s in favor of legalizing pot, but she isn’t sure why she’s not sure since she has no arguments against it. She won’t take a position on a new peripheral canal, although she can’t defend building one and says that protecting San Francisco Bay has to be a priority. She won’t rule out offshore oil drilling, although she said she has yet to see a proposal she can support. Her main economic development proposal was to bring more film industry work to California, even if that means cutting taxes for the studios or locating the shoots on Indian land where there are fewer regulations.


On the other hand, she told us she wants to get rid of the two-thirds threshold in the state Legislature for passing a budget or raising taxes. She supports reinstating the car tax at pre-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger levels. She supports a split-roll measure to reform Prop. 13. She wants to see an oil-severance tax to fund education. She’s one of the few statewide candidates who openly advocates higher taxes on the wealthy as part of the solution to the budget crisis.


We are under no illusions that Hahn will be able to use the weak office of lieutenant governor to move on any of these issues, and we’re not at all sure she’s ready to take over the top spot. But on the issues, she’s clearly better than Newsom, so she gets our endorsements.


 


SECRETARY OF STATE, DEMOCRAT


DEBRA BOWEN


Debra Bowen is the only Democrat running, a sign that pretty much everyone in the party thinks she’s doing a fine job as Secretary of State. She’s run a clean office and we see no reason to replace her.


 


CONTROLLER, DEMOCRAT


JOHN CHIANG


Like Bowen, John Chiang has no opposition in the primary, and he’s been a perfectly adequate controller. In fact, when Gov. Schwarzenegger tried two years ago to cut the pay of thousands of state employees to the minimum wage level, Chiang defied him and refused to change the paychecks — a move that forced the governor to back down. We just wish he’d play a more visible role in talking about the need for more tax revenue to balance the state’s books.


 


TREASURER, DEMOCRAT


BILL LOCKYER


Bill Lockyer keeps bouncing around Sacramento, waiting, perhaps, for his chance to be governor. He was attorney general. Now he’s treasurer seeking a second term, which he will almost certainly win. He’s done some good things, including trying to use state bonds to promote alternative energy, and has spoken out forcefully about the governor’s efforts to defer deficit problems through dubious borrowing. He hasn’t, however, come out in favor of higher taxes for the rich or a change in Prop. 13.


 


ATTORNEY GENERAL, DEMOCRAT


KAMALA HARRIS


There are really only two serious candidates in this race, Kamala Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, and Rocky Delgadillo, the former Los Angeles city attorney. Harris has a comfortable lead, with Delgadillo in second and the others far behind.


Delgadillo is on his second try for this office. He ran against Jerry Brown four years ago and got nowhere. And in the meantime, he’s come under fire for, among other things, using city employees to run personal errands for him (picking up his dry-cleaning, babysitting his kids) and driving his car without insurance. On a more significant level, he made his reputation with gang injunctions that smacked of ethnic profiling and infuriated Latino and civil liberties groups. It’s amazing he’s still a factor in this race; he can’t possibly win the general election with all his baggage.


Harris has a lot going for her. She was among the first California elected officials to endorse Barack Obama for president, and remains close to the administration. She’s a smart, articulate prosecutor and could be one of the few women atop the Democratic ticket this year. We were never comfortable with her ties to Willie Brown, but he’s no longer a factor in state or local politics. These days, she’s more closely allied with the likes of State Sen. Mark Leno.


That said, we have some serious problems with Harris. She’s been up in Sacramento pushing Republican-style tough-on-crime bills (like a measure that would bar registered sex offenders from ever using social networking sites on the Internet) and forcing sane Democrats like Assembly Member and Public Safety Committee Chair Tom Ammiano to try to tone down or kill them (and then take the political heat). If she didn’t know about the problems in the SFPD crime lab, she should have, and should have made a bigger fuss, earlier.


But Harris has kept her principled position against the death penalty, even when it meant taking immense flak from the cops for refusing to seek capital punishment for the killer of a San Francisco police officer. She’s clearly the best choice for the Democrats.


 


INSURANCE COMMISSIONER, DEMOCRAT


DAVE JONES


Two credible progressives are vying to run for this powerful and important position regulating the massive — and massively corrupt — California insurance industry. Dave Jones and Hector De La Torre are both in the state Assembly, with Jones representing Sacramento and De La Torre hailing from Los Angeles. Both have a record opposing insurance industry initiatives; both are outspoken foes of Prop. 17; and either would do a fine job as insurance commissioner. But Jones has more experience on consumer issues and health care reform, and we prefer his background as a Legal Aid lawyer to De La Torre’s history as a Southern California Edison executive. So we’ll give Jones the nod.


 


BOARD OF EQUALIZATION, DISTRICT 1, DEMOCRAT


BETTY T. YEE


Betty Yee has taken over a job that’s been a stronghold of progressive tax policy since the days of the late Bill Bennett. She’s done well in the position, supporting progressive financial measures and even coming down, as a top tax official, in favor of legalizing (and taxing) marijuana. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.


 


SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION


TOM TORLAKSON


Two prominent Democratic legislators are running for this nonpartisan post, state Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles and Assembly Member Tom Torlakson of Martinez. It’s a pretty clear choice: Romero is a big supporter of charter schools who thinks parents should be able to move their kids out of one school district and into another (allowing wealthier white parents, for example, to abandon Los Angeles or San Francisco for the suburban districts). She’s been supported in the past by Don and Doris Fisher, who put a chunk of their GAP Inc. fortune into school privatization efforts. Torlakson wants more accountability for charters, opposes the Romero district-option bill, and has the support of every major teachers union in the state. Vote for Torlakson.


 


STATE SENATE, DISTRICT 8, DEMOCRAT


LELAND YEE


Sen. Leland Yee can be infuriating. Two years ago, he was hell-bent on selling the Cow Palace as surplus state property and allowing private developers to take it over. In the recent budget crisis, he pissed off his Democratic colleagues by refusing to vote for cuts that everyone else knew were inevitable (while never making a strong stand in favor of, say, repealing Prop. 13 or raising other taxes). But he’s always been good on open-government issues and has made headlines lately for busting California State University, Stanislaus over a secret contract to bring Sarah Palin in for a fundraiser — and has raised the larger point that public universities shouldn’t hide their finances behind private foundations.


Yee will have no serious opposition for reelection, and his campaign for a second term in Sacramento is really the start of the Leland Yee for Mayor effort. With reservations over the Cow Palace deal and a few other issues, we’ll endorse him for reelection.


 Correction update: Yee’s office informs us that the senator suports an oil-severance tax and a tax on high-income earners and “believes that Prop. 13 should be reformed,” although he hasn’t taken a position on Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s reform bill. 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 12, DEMOCRAT


FIONA MA


Fiona Ma’s a mixed bag (at best). She doesn’t like Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and supports public power, but comes up with strange bills that make no sense, like a 2009 measure to limit rent control in trailer parks. Why does Ma, who has no trailer parks in her district, care? Maybe because the landlords who control the mobile home facilities gave her some campaign cash. She faces no opposition, and we’re not thrilled with her record, but we’ll reluctantly back her for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 13, DEMOCRAT


TOM AMMIANO


When the history of progressive politics in modern San Francisco is written, Tom Ammiano will be a central figure. His long-shot 1999 mayoral campaign against Willie Brown brought the left to life in town, and his leadership helped bring back district elections and put a progressive Board of Supervisors in place in 2000. As a supervisor, he authored the city’s landmark health care bill (which Newsom constantly tries to take credit for) and the rainy day fund (which saved the public schools from debilitating cuts). He uses his local influence to promote the right causes, issues, and candidates.


And he’s turned out to be an excellent member of the state Assembly. He forced BART to take seriously civilian oversight of the transit police force. He put the battle to reform Prop. 13 with a split-role measure back on the state agenda. And his efforts to legalize and tax marijuana are close to making California the first state to toss the insane pot laws. As chair of the Public Safety Committee, he routinely defies the police lobbies and the right-wing Republicans and defuses truly awful legislation. We’re glad Ammiano’s still fighting in the good fight, and we’re pleased to endorse him for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 14, DEMOCRAT


NANCY SKINNER


Nancy Skinner has taken on one of the toughest, and for small businesses, most important, battles in Sacramento. She wants to make out-of-state companies that sell products to Californians collect and remit sales tax. If you buy a book at your local bookstore, you have to pay sales tax; if you buy it from Amazon, it’s tax-free. That not only hurts the state, which loses hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, it’s a competitive disadvantage to local shops. Skinner’s a good progressive vote and an ally for Ammiano on the Public Safety Committee. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 16, DEMOCRAT


SANDRE SWANSON


Sandre Swanson represents the district where BART police killed Oscar Grant, but he wasn’t the one out front pushing for more civilian accountability; that was left to SF’s Ammiano. And while Swanson was generally supportive of Ammiano’s bill, he was hardly a leader in the campaign to pass it. This is too bad, because Swanson’s almost always a progressive vote and has been good on issues like whistleblower protection (a Swanson bill that passed this year protects local government workers who want to report problems confidentially). We’ll endorse him for another term, but he needs to get tougher on the BART police.

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