Mirkarimi Archives — Page 8 of 31 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The unlikely sheriff

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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December 20, 2011

Michael Hennessey has served as San Francisco’s sheriff for half of his life, the longest such career in California history — and by all accounts the most progressive. Since taking office in 1980, Hennessey has been an island of liberal enlightenment in a political climate and law enforcement culture where tough-talking conservatism has been ascendant.

Yet in that era, Hennessey pioneered the creation of innovative programs to compassionately deal with drug abuse, violence, recidivism, and lack of education among jail inmates. He proactively brought unprecedented numbers of minorities, women, LGBT employees, and ex-convicts onto his staff. And he sometimes resisted carrying out evictions or honoring federal immigration hold orders, bold and risky social-justice stands.

His stances drew scorn from the local law enforcement community, which never endorsed him in contested elections, and criticism from political moderates and national media outlets. But San Francisco voters reelected him again and again, until he finally decided to retire as his current term ends next month.

He credits his success and longevity to the people of San Francisco, who have also bucked the harsh national attitude toward criminals and the poor. “San Francisco is still largely a liberal voting town,” he told us in his well-worn office at City Hall, “and not many liberals run for sheriff.”

That logic held up in this year’s election when progressive Sup. Ross Mirkarimi — Hennessey’s hand-picked successor — was elected to the post. Mirkarimi, who led a tribute to Hennessey at the Dec. 13 Board of Supervisors meeting, said he’s honored to be able to continue the legacy of someone he called “the most innovative sheriff in the United States.”

LONG RECORD

Hennessey was a 32-year-old Prisoner Legal Services attorney for the Sheriff’s Department in 1979 as he watched then-Sheriff Eugene Brown letting go of reform-minded staffers and ending his predecessor Dick Hongisto’s early experiment with a school in the jail. So Hennessey quit his job and focused on running for the office.

“I said to myself that I’m not sure if I’ll be a good sheriff or not, but I know I’m better than anyone else running,” he told us, later adding, “I certainly never expected to be sheriff for 32 years.”

Rank-and-file deputies — with whom Hennessey has periodically clashed throughout his career — always preferred one of their own in the job. “As seen in this election, they would like to see someone coming from their ranks,” said Hennessey, even though he notes that at this point, he has hired all but three of the department’s nearly 1,000 employees.

But Hennessey’s outsider status allowed him to deal with the inmate population in a way that the average San Franciscan appreciated, even if the average cop didn’t. “When you’re in law enforcement, all you see are criminals, victims, and people in law enforcement. But I would talk to all kinds of people in the community,” Hennessey said, noting that his experience as a jailhouse attorney gave him a holistic view of his job. “I worked in the jail and I got to know prisoners as people.”

They were people who had certain needs and problems, such as substance abuse, a common problem among criminals. And they were people who would be returning to society at some point, as Hennessey constantly reminded those who expected prisoners to be treated harshly or simply warehoused.

So he broke down the wall between the jail and the community, bringing the city’s social service providers and educators to work programs in the jails, and developing anti-recidivism and vocational programs that allowed ex-offenders to re-engage with the local community.

“Take the bold step of inviting the public in, not all the public, but those who can provide services and help address people’s problems,” Hennessey said. “Then we took the same concept and applied it to violent offenders, which is a little riskier.”

But it was a risk that has paid off as recidivism rates among jail inmates has dropped, and it’s been without any serious cases of inmates harming outsiders. Hennessey is particularly proud of the high school he created in the jail, which will graduate its next class on Jan. 3.

He said the school can truly transform those who end up behind bars. “It gives them a leg up and it’s like a booster shot,” Hennessey said. “They’re at the lowest point in their lives when the come to jail, and then they’re given an opportunity to accomplish something they haven’t been able to on the outside.”

One of many controversial moves during Hennessey’s storied career was his decision to allow female inmates to leave the jails and perform in theaters around San Francisco with the Medea Project, which was created by Rhodessa Jones and the Culture Odyssey art collective to turn the stories of female inmates into plays.

“Rhodessa is a very persuasive person who talked me into letting these women out of jail to perform,” Hennessey said, smiling at the memory. “It was very controversial.”

HIRING REFORMERS

Hennessey’s mentor in the Sheriff’s Department — the man who hired him, ran his first campaign, and then became his longtime chief-of-staff — was the late Ray Towbis, a tough activist whose social justice stands on behalf of tenants, prisoners, and other marginalized members of society would sometimes put Hennessey into difficult positions.

“Ray caused me aggravation many times,” said Hennessey, who nonetheless kept a life-sized cutout photo of Towbis in his office long after he was gone, a reminder to fight for the values he believed in.

There was the time when Towbis angrily flipped over a table and cursed at a panel of parole commissioners after failing to win the release of a model inmate, triggering a demand from the presiding judge that Hennessey fire Towbis, which the sheriff ignored.

Later, Towbis adopted a compassionate approach to the evictions that sheriff’s deputies are forced to perform, allowing deputies to spare tenants who were disabled or elderly and personally calling journalists to help publicize cases in which the parties bringing the eviction action might back off. That sensitivity stays with Hennessey today.

“That’s one of the tough spots I’m in is doing these foreclosure evictions,” Hennessey said, clearly troubled by his duty but also aware that it is one that he is required to perform, despite pressure from progressive groups urging him to refuse to carry them out.

As a lawyer, Hennessey said he must respect court orders and avoid being held in contempt of court, as Hongisto was in the mid-1970s for refusing to carry out evictions against tenants in the International Hotel.

Hennessey and his staff have always been willing to help tenants resist eviction. His office has an eviction assistance program, and Towbis would sometimes tip off the media to publicize certain unjust evictions. One time, Hennessey said Towbis even called hotel magnate Leona Helmsley and talked her out of allowing her company to evict an elderly ParkMerced resident. Instead, Helmsley allowed the woman to live rent-free for the rest of her life, an unlikely gesture of kindness from the “queen of mean” that Towbis helped publicize.

Hennessey draws the line at outright refusal to carry out a judge’s eviction order. “The sheriff shouldn’t be a law-breaker,” he says. Yet Hennessey’s lawyerly approach to complex issues also resulted in his recent policy of not honoring federal detention holds on undocumented immigrants in the jail, after discovering that the holds are administrative — different than arrest warrants — so defying them isn’t a crime.

The policy Hennessey created last year was to ignore ICE requests for prisoners who aren’t charged with felonies or domestic violence charges, noting that the latter charges are often brought but eventually dropped against people who are the victims of domestic violence.

Hennessey tapped federal and foundation grant money to fund his new treatment and educational programs, hiring an ex-convict to write his grant proposals, something that particularly irked many of his deputies.

But Hennessey believed that ex-offenders had something to offer the department so he didn’t back down in hiring them, going so far as to elevate Michael Marcum, who had gone to prison for killing his own abusive father, to the top position of undersheriff in 1993.

Police groups were outraged, but Hennessey said he had known Marcum for many years and valued his counsel and perspective on the criminal justice system. “It wasn’t hard because I knew him and I know of his integrity and loyalty,” Hennessey said.

Hennessy also irked conservative cop culture for aggressive efforts to make the department more diverse. “We wanted more minorities, we wanted more women, and we wanted gay people,” said Hennessey, who initiated outreach efforts to each of those communities.

In 1984, when he approved of an outreach event in Chaps, a gay leather bar in the Castro — complete with flyers around the Castro publicizing the event — it generated a furor that made headlines not just locally in the San Francisco Chronicle, but the National Enquirer tabloid as well.

Yet Hennessey was able to ride out each of the controversies, many of which happened to fall years away from his next reelection campaign. “Those are good times to make dramatic changes,” Hennessey said.

And because he also saw to some neglected basics in the Sheriff’s Department — such as improving training and the jails’ physical structures to prevent escapes and instituting policies to reduce violence between inmates and guards — Hennessey endured and became a beloved sheriff.

VICTORY OF PERSISTENCE

“I’ve always felt somewhat isolated in these beliefs,” said Hennessey, who said that the biggest failure of his career was not proselytizing those beliefs to a statewide and national audience more aggressively. Instead, he has focused on San Francisco, quietly turning the city into a national model for a different kind of policing.

Despite his progressive record, Hennessey has won plaudits and respect from across the political spectrum. In the last election, even the cops who sought to replace him and to undermine his endorsement of Mirkarimi — Chris Cunnie, Paul Miyamoto, and David Wong — all praised Hennessey and promised to continue his programs.

During the Dec. 13 board meeting, Sup. Mark Farrell — consistently one of the most conservative votes on the board — said he has known Hennessey almost his entire life (the sheriff and Farrell’s dad were law school classmates). “I cannot think of anyone with more integrity, a more trustworthy and honest person, than I’ve ever know in my life,” Farrell said.

Sup. David Campos said the immigrant community owes Hennessey a tremendous debt of gratitude. “You have been a tremendous champion for civil rights,” Campos said. “For that, history will judge you very kindly.”

It is a history that Mirkarimi pledges to continue. “Who’s going to fill his shoes? It’s impossible,” Mirkarimi said at the board meeting. “But we certainly have an incredible standard to try to live up to.”

As for Hennessey, he has a fairly clear idea of what he plans to do now that his long and unlikely run as one of the city’s top cops is over: “I’m going to goof around.” *

Making CleanPowerSF work

Andrew Lam

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December 20, 2011

4

EDITORIAL The way the San Francisco Chronicle describes it, the city’s new green power program “won’t come cheap.” That’s a line that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will use over and over again in the next few months as the city finally prepares to get into the retail electricity business, 98 years after Congress mandated public power for San Francisco. Clean Power SF will offer 100 percent clean energy — and yes, right now, this spring, it will cost a little bit more than buying nuclear and coal power from PG&E.

But that price differential will change dramatically in the next few years — if the city goes forward not just with buying and aggregating power from the commercial market but developing renewable energy on its own.

That’s the key to the future of CleanPowerSF — and as a proposed contract to get the system up and running comes to the Board of Supervisors, the need for a city build-out of at least 210 megawatts of energy generation capacity is, and must be, an essential part of the plan.

The fact that the city, at long last, is moving toward implementing this program is a testament to the work of Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who pushed it for years, and Sup. David Campos, who more recently took over the lead role. Both deserve immense credit for their work.

As Rebecca Bowe reports in this week’s issue, there’s some disagreement about the contract proposed by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The deal with Shell Energy North America would have the energy giant buy green power wherever it can, deliver it to San Francisco customers along PG&E’s lines — and charge enough to pay for the power and overhead expenses. That, initial reports say, could raise the bill of an average customer somewhere between $7 and $50 a month, depending on use. For most residential customers, the increase is going to be on the low end.

The problem is that the PUC estimates from the start that two-thirds of the potential customers will drop out of the program and stick with PG&E. That’s an abysmal projection, reflecting in part the PUC’s long reluctance to take the program seriously, in part a failure to plan an aggressive marketing campaign — and in part the lack of a long-term vision for the program.

The bottom line is simple: As long as the city is buying energy from somebody else, there are going to be problems. Right now, renewable energy demand exceeds supply, so prices are high. That’s going to fluctuate over the next decade.

But it’s entirely possible for the city to build its own renewable infrastructure and generate power that will beat PG&E’s prices in the short-term future — and will be far, far less expensive a decade down the road. Clean Power SF will never work to its full potential unless the city owns a significant part of the generation system. (Ultimately, the city will never see the full economic benefits of public power until it buys out PG&E or builds its own delivery system.)

The PUC included — at the demand of public-power advocates — a clause in the contract stating that a city build-out was part of the plan. The proposal before the board only includes the contract with Shell — but the final deal should include specific plans for how much local power will be generated, how it will be funded — and how it will ultimately replace the power Shell is providing. The city should start right now looking for sites (there’s lots of surplus city land) and seeking bids for construction, and if the PUC can’t come up with enough revenue-bonding money, the board should put a comprehensive clean energy bond on the November ballot.

The Local Clean Energy Alliance estimates that building 210 megawatts of clean power in San Francisco would generate nearly 1,000 direct jobs and as many as 4,300 indirect jobs. That sort of program would be a boost to the economy and guarantee the city stable energy sources for the future. And it would allow the PUC to market Clean Power SF not as a plan that will cost consumers more today — but as a plan that the city can all-but guarantee will save you money, substantial amounts of money, over the next 10 years.

Lots of buzz and politicking around D5 appointment

Sasha Cuttler

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December 20, 2011

65

Lots of buzz and politicking around D5 appointment

There is eager speculation – and lots of public and private pressure being applied to Mayor Ed Lee – over the question of who he will appoint to fill the District 5 seat on the Board of Supervisors that is being vacated by Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi.

Anti-progressive entities from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to the San Francisco Chronicle are urging Lee to appoint a fellow moderate to the solidly progressive seat, despite the outrage that would trigger on the left and the difficulty that appointee would likely have keeping the seat after the November election.

Chron columnist CW Nevius today published a weird little puff piece plugging London Breed – a moderate who wants the D5 seat, a fact he strangely didn’t mention – and her leadership of the African American Art & Cultural Center. Chron columnist Leah Garchik also pumped up Breed as a D5 appointee last week. Nevius’ column in particular seemed to be a thinly veiled attempt to influence the decision, despite the regular insistence by Nevius and others at the Chron that they never have a political agenda or try to influence City Hall. Yeah, right – at least we at the Guardian are honest about our advocacy for more progressive city leadership.

Breed is being strongly pushed by Willie Brown, the former mayor and current Chron columnist, as well as most of the city’s African American ministers, such as Revs. Amos Brown and Arnold Townsend, who showed up at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting and followed Lee back to his office after his appearance before the board.

Sources connected to the ministers told us that Lee hadn’t returned their phone calls in recent weeks and they were angry about the snub, so they showed up to let him know and mau-mau him into appointing Breed. Indeed, Brown did get a private meeting with Lee after his followers wedged their way into the office.

Reporters had asked Lee about the D5 appointment just moments before and he said that he was in no hurry to make a decision. “I want to pay my respects to many groups in District 5,” Lee said.

While many names have been floated as D5 contenders, there are a few that rise to the top. Malcolm Yeung, public policy director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, is being pushed by Rose Pak, the Chinatown power broker who worked with Brown to get Lee into Room 200.

But given Lee will probably avoid simply choosing between the Brown and Pak choices – unless they can privately coalesce around someone, which is certainly a possibility – most City Hall speculation these days falls on Christina Olague. The Planning Commission president comes from the progressive camp but she also served as a co-chair of Progress for All, creators of the Run, Ed, Run campaign that persuaded Lee to run for a full term.

Speaking to the Guardian in October, Olague denied that her early endorsement of Lee had anything to do with the D5 seat, which she said she wasn’t seeking but would take if offered. “If we get progressives to support him early on, maybe we’ll have a seat at the table,” was how she explained her support for Lee.

On Friday, Olague showed up for Mirkarimi’s art opening and holiday party in his City Hall office, and she chatted with other possible contenders for the D5 seat, including Quintin Mecke, Julian Davis, Gabriel Haaland, Jason Henderson, and Michael O’Connor. Asked by the Guardian if she had any insights into how the appointment was going, she said all she knows is what she’s read online and in the newspapers.

And so we wait.

Mayor Lee, Sharp Park, and Gavin Newsom

Zelda Bronstein

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December 19, 2011

43

So Ed Lee’s going to veto the Board of Supervisors resolution on Sharp Park. Of course he is. And there’s more than snakes and frogs at issue here.

The veto, I think, sets the tone for what we’re going to see over the next four years, which is: Gavin Newsom.

For four years, the progressive bloc on the board — that is, the shaky sometimes-majority that can pull together six votes on an issue — is going to run slam into a mayoral veto a good deal of the time.

In this case, John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Jane Kim, Eric Mar and Ross Mirkarimi — that’s the list of the six — all supported a plan to negotiate with the National Park Service to take over the property, which would probably mean the end of the golf course. It’s an environmental issue, mostly, and also a public-resource issue — but the main thing is that it’s an issue that split the board along the left-center/right lines that we’ll see again and again over Lee’s term. And Lee is siding with the right.

That’s what we came to expect from Newsom — every progressive initiative was a struggle; often, bill sponsors had to line up eight votes, not six, because there was always the threat that Newsom would shoot it down. And I’m getting the feeling that we’ll be facing the same thing with Mayor Lee.

A step forward and step back for SF’s homeless families

Sasha Cuttler

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December 14, 2011

26

A step forward and step back for SF’s homeless families

As San Francisco grapples with a record-high number of homeless families seeking shelter space during the holiday season, a pair of homeless policy discussions at yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting highlighted shortcomings and missed opportunities in the city’s approach to the issue.

Mayor Ed Lee announced that he is opening up more shelter space and public housing units for homeless families, finally relenting to weeks of pressure to address the pressing problem. Yet the board also narrowly approved turning surplus city property over to neighborhood residents rather than using proceeds from selling it to benefit homeless families, as city policies call for.

The property in question, 341 Corbett Avenue, is a vegetated hillside near Upper Market that the city declared a surplus property in 2004, transferring it to the Mayor’s Office of Housing to either develop as housing for poor families or to put the proceeds from its sale toward that purpose. Providing housing for the homeless is what city policy calls for surplus property to be used for, according to 2002’s Surplus City Property Ordinance. The property was assessed at $2.2 million, but it wasn’t developed because of costs associated with the steep hillside, nor was it listed for sale.

Neighbors of the property have sought to use the property for open space and a community garden, so the district’s Sup. Scott Wiener authored legislation to facilitate a community garden by transferring it to the Department of Public Works. The transfer would involve no money, leaving homeless advocates concerned about depriving homeless families of any revenues from the property.

“There are a lot of public assets we could sell if we wanted to fund this need or that,” Wiener told his colleagues, noting that neighbors would rather see a community garden on the site and that Upper Market lacks adequate open space.

But Sups. Jane Kim and Eric Mar led the opposition to the move, saying they didn’t object to that kind of community use of this property, but that city policies need to be followed, particularly considering the dire need for more resources to address the needs of homeless families. “I do have concerns about the precedent we set and also being consistent,” she said, arguing for a delay in the action until city officials find a way to compensate MOH for at least some of the property’s value.

“Overriding the surplus property ordinance is not something I want to do right now,” Sup. John Avalos said.

But the board voted 6-5 to approve the transfer, with progressive Sups. Kim, Avalos, Mar, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi in dissent. Housing advocates upset by the action directly their ire at the swing vote, one-time progressive Sup. David Chiu, with activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca sending out an e-mail blast saying, “david chiu betrayed us again — he wouldn’t support continuing the 341 Corbett item so that affordable housing advocates could try and work out a better deal with the Mayor’s Office on Housing and others.”

Meanwhile, the skyrocketing number of homeless families has become a big issue in town since the Guardian broke the story on Oct. 13, with repeated stories in the Chronicle, Examiner, and other media outlets, and homeless advocates staging rallies outside City Hall and unsuccessfully pushing for a meeting with Mayor Lee on the issue.

During yesterday’s monthly mayoral question time, Kim asked Lee what he was doing to address the “alarming rate” of homeless families in the city – with 267 families now on a wait list for emergency shelter space, a 356 percent increase since 2007 – specifically challenging him to expand the city’s Rental Subsidy Program by 50 families and open new emergency winter shelters. She also noted three recent suicides in the city by individuals facing homelessness.

“I share your concern about family homelessness in San Francisco. My staff has been hard at work for a long time now trying to proactively respond to this very serious challenge and I’m proud to offer some very constructive, tangible solutions,” Lee said. He announced that his administration had just this week starting expediting the placement of homeless families into vacant public housing units, with 18 families now being processed and a goal of placing about 30 of the 79 families now in shelters into public housing units.

Lee also said that SalesForce.com CEO Marc Benioff is donating $1.5 million to the Home for the Holidays program the city is creating to provide rent subsidies and case management to 160 families, a donation that the city will match. “Their generosity is inspiring,” Lee said.

He also pledged to open up an unspecified number of new family shelter spots and, somewhat bizarrely, tried to wrap this issue into his relentless focus on promoting private sector job creation, mostly through tax breaks that actually cut into the city’s ability to provide direct assistance to homeless families. As Lee said, “The long-term goal is to increase these families’ incomes and to place them into permanent unsubsidized housing.”

SF supervisors urge city to defy federal immigration holds

Sasha Cuttler

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December 14, 2011

57

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors yesterday (Tues/13) approved a resolution calling for the city to adopt stronger policies for resisting federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants who live here. It is the latest move to support the city’s Sanctuary City status and counter the federal Secure Communities (S-Com) program, a new database that allows the feds to circumvent local policies protecting local immigrants who have been arrested but not convicted of any crimes.

The resolution urges the Sheriff’s and Juvenile Probation departments not to honor civil immigration detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement until there is a written agreement to have ICE pay for all local costs associated with the incarcerations. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors adopted a similar policy in October, a move also being pursued in Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, and other jurisdictions.

“It doesn’t make communities safer. In fact, it makes immigrant communities less safe,” Sup. Eric Mar, who authored the resolution, said of S-Com, noting that it makes immigrants less likely to report crimes or cooperate with police. “I urge you to support this message and to follow the lead of jurisdictions like Santa Clara and Chicago, Cook County.”

Sups. David Campos and Jane Kim asked to join Mar and Board President David Chiu as co-sponsors of the measure, which was then approved on an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, and Carmen Chu in dissent. Members of the San Francisco Immigrant Right Defense Committee, who had lobbied hard for the resolution and who packed board chambers, erupted in a sustained standing ovation after the vote.

Angela Chan, an attorney with Asian Law Caucus who helped lead the effort, afterward told supporters, “It’s because of this group’s hard work that we got a lot more votes than we thought we’d get,” noting they only had six solid votes going in. “Thank you, happy holiday, and we have lots more work to do.”

Chan hopes the resolution will give political cover to Ross Mirkarimi – who supported the measure as a supervisor and who takes over as sheriff at the end of the month – to expand policies created this year by Sheriff Michael Hennessey to resist some immigration detainer requests. Mirkarimi hasn’t yet returned calls for comment on the issue.

San Francisco has a fraught recent history on how to handle undocumented immigrants accused of crimes. Two years ago, the board adopted a policy of refusing to report them to the feds until they had been convicted of serious crimes, approving the Campos-authored legislation on a veto-proof 8-3 vote, only to have then-Mayor Gavin Newsom refuse to enforce the policy. After that highly charged fight, the creation of the S-Com program allowed the feds to circumvent those restrictions by directly finding out whether local inmates are undocumented, making moot Mayor Ed Lee’s agreement to partially implement the Campos legislation.

As we report in this week’s paper, this is one of a number of issues related to local control and an overreaching police state where Bay Area communities such as Berkeley, San Francisco, Richmond, and San Jose are trying to push back on the federal government. Sup. Jane Kim is currently working on an ordinance to restrict the participation of San Francisco http://www.sfbg.com/2011/04/26/spies-blue. Advocates say she plans to introduce the measure next month, but Kim told us she’s have some difficulty getting sign-off from the City Attorney’s Office.

Progressives split on bag ban, ex-cons

Zelda Bronstein

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December 8, 2011

12

A couple of interesting votes at the Board of Supes Dec. 6. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi lost two pieces of legislation — a mandate that stores charge for bags at checkout counters and a tax credit for companies that hire ex-offenders.

The bag ban went down 7-4. Well, actually, it was continued to February, by which time Mirkarimi will be gone. Sup. Jane Kim said she wanted to see more outreach to minority businesses, and was quoted in the press saying she would support it at a future date, but I suspect the delay marks the end of the bill. Without Mirkarimi around to push it, the measure will probably just die. It’s odd because San Francisco used to be on the cutting edge of environmental issues; the bag ban is getting picked up by other cities and will probably be law all over the country in a decade.

Voting for the continuation were three supes who said they supported the “concept” — Scott Wiener, David Chiu and Kim.

The ex-offender tax credit went down 6-5 — and on this one, Sup. Malia Cohen, who is not always with the progressives but whose district has the largest number of parolees in the city, supported Mirkarimi. So did Kim, Eric Mar, and David Campos. The swing vote: Sup. John Avalos, the progressive leader in the mayor’s race and one of the most solid left votes on the board.

Avalos told me that he doesn’t support tax breaks; he’s been consistent on that, and I understand. I don’t support tax breaks, either. I don’t think they’re very effective and they cost the city money. But there are two elements that make this unusual — for one, if anyone actually used the tax credit and hired an ex-offender, the money the city would likely save by keeping that person from going back to jail would greatly exceed the amount of the tax reduction.

Besides, I was waiting to see Lee come up with an excuse to veto the bill — particularly at a time when more and more ex-offenders are going to be released in San Francisco. I know this is just petty politics and all that, but this was a tough decision involving a very unpopular group (nobody wants to be nice to former criminals) — and Lee got off easy.

Stop downtown’s attack on RCV

Andrew Lam

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December 6, 2011

52

OPINION The long-time foes of political reform at the Chamber of Commerce and San Francisco Chronicle have launched an effort to repeal ranked choice voting (RCV) and public financing of campaigns. Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell have introduced a June 2012 charter amendment to repeal RCV, with public financing also in their crosshairs.

Many of us fought hard to pass these reforms, and I am reminded of when the downtown corporate interests repealed district elections in 1980. They blamed the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone on district elections and the election of Supervisor Dan White. San Francisco has a history of the anti-reformers waiting for their moment of opportunity. Now these same corporate interests think that moment has arrived again.

The Bay Guardian first reported about an anti-RCV campaign in 2009, when a meeting of downtown business leaders was hosted by Steve Falk, Chamber of Commerce CEO (and past publisher of the Chronicle) to discuss repealing RCV.

As part of that effort, polling also was done to see if they could repeal district elections and public financing. They also filed a bogus anti-RCV lawsuit which was unanimously rejected by two courts. Elsbernd’s repeal legislation is the culmination of their calculated efforts.

It’s clear what these special interests want: a return to the days when local races were decided in low-turnout December elections, and those who had the most money pounded their opponents into submission. An Ethics Commission report in 2003 found that independent expenditures increased by a factor of four during December runoffs, while another study found that voter turnout dropped by more than a third in 10 of the 14 December runoff races held from 2000-2003. Turnout in one city attorney runoff dropped to 16 percent.

Just as importantly, the December electorate did not represent the diversity of San Francisco’s population. Voters in the runoffs were overwhelmingly whiter, older and more conservative than the city as a whole, as voter turnout plummeted in December among racial minorities, the poor and young people. Simply put, a return to December runoffs will allow groups like the Chamber and its allies to dump huge amounts of money into negative campaigns aimed at the more conservative December electorate when most San Franciscans don’t vote.

In the era of unlimited independent expenditures by corporations (thanks the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United), political reforms like RCV are crucial for protecting our democracy. Both RCV and public financing have greatly improved local elections — since their inception San Francisco has doubled the number of racial minorities elected to the Board of Supervisors. Elections are now decided in higher turnout November contests, allowing more people to have a voice in choosing their local representatives. Winning candidates in RCV contests have won with an average of 30 percent more votes than winners in the old December runoffs.

San Francisco has saved $10 million in taxes by not holding second elections, money used for other public needs. Candidates also haven’t needed to raise money for a second election, which helps level the playing field. Progressive candidates have never done well in citywide elections, but this year in RCV contests Ross Mirkarimi was elected sheriff and John Avalos mobilized and finished a strong second. That bodes well for progressives’ future.

It’s no coincidence that Supervisor Elsbernd is trying to get his charter amendment on a low-turnout June ballot, when the electorate is more conservative. The downtown corporate interests are clear on what they must repeal in order to elect the candidates they want — RCV, public financing, and ultimately district elections. Progressives need to be just as clear on what reforms we must defend.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano represents the 13th District.

Tax breaks for Twitter, not for ex-offenders

Zelda Bronstein

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December 2, 2011

12

Tax breaks for Twitter, not for ex-offenders

Mayor Ed Lee, a big promoter of the Twitter tax break, won’t support a tax break aimed at encouraging businesses to hire ex-offenders.

I’m not a big fan of any tax breaks — mostly because I don’t think they work. The typical payroll tax break saves a company a few hundred dollars a year — nowhere near enough to make an actual difference in a hiring decision.

The Mirkarimi tax break for hiring ex-offenders is much richer — up to $10,000 per hire. That’s real money for some companies — although, again, I don’t know how many actual ex-offenders will get jobs because of it.

Still: The city’s facing a serious problem. More than 65 percent of the people now in county jail will eventually be arrested again. The recidivism number goes as high as 75 percent for state prison inmates. And under the governor’s realignment plan, San Francisco will be getting around 650 new state prison shifted into our local jail and probation system every year.

And I don’t hear many people at City Hall talking about it.

Lee told the Examiner that the Mirkarimi tax break is “not comprehensive enough.” Huh? The Twitter tax break was broad, in some cases arbitrary. Now a plan that is aimed not at a high-tech company but at people who have been released from jail and will have serious problems finding employment is “not comprehensive enough.”

Look: San Francisco has an interest — a direct public-safety and economic interest — in finding work for ex-offenders: If they don’t get employed, they’re almost certain to go back to crime. Employment is no guarantee that a former inmate will break out of the criminal cycle — but unemployment is a pretty good guarantee that he or she won’t.

So let’s be consistent here. If tax breaks work to create or preserve employment, it’s cheaper to follow the Mirkarimi plan and give incentives to employers for hiring ex-offenders than it is to re-arrest, re-try and re-incarcerate them. If the Twitter deal made sense, then this one clearly does, too.

Again: I’m not pushing this or any tax break for employers. But what’s Lee’s alternative? I asked his press spokesperson, Christine Falvey, to share with me the mayor’s plan for handing the influx of new inmates (all of whom will be released within a year or two of arrival in the SF county jail), but she hasn’t gotten back to me.

We all know what’s really going on here — nobody wants to do anything that looks like it’s aimed at helping criminals. I get it. But it’s just stupid, since criminals without jobs tend to stay criminals — and that’s not good for anyone in San Francisco.

UPDATE: Falvey emailed me back. She didn’t lay out any plan, but did say this:

“The mayor has not stated the he opposes the legislation but in its current form, it seems too narrow. He would like to see some of the categories broadened to include other populations that need support in job placement and retention. The legislation has not been voted on yet and he looks forward to reviewing the final version.”

About that “acrimonious fall”

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

November 23, 2011

86

Catch this. Mayor Ed Lee’s mayoral victory had nothing to do with millions of dollars in campaign contributions from private interests, a sophisticated get-out-the vote effort targeting Lee supporters, the advantage of incumbency, some funny business, or a calculated campaign strategy concentrating efforts on absentee ballots.

Instead, the fact that Lee triumphed over voters’ second pick, the significantly less well-funded progressive candidate Sup. John Avalos, is proof that the left in San Francisco has plummeted into a dark abyss. In fact, the progressive movement has descended so far into disarray and become so irrelevant that its condition warrants front page news.

That’s essentially the narrative that Benjamin Wachs and Joe Eskenazi of the San Francisco Weekly offer in their cover article, “Progressively Worse: The Tumultuous Rise and Acrimonious Fall of the City’s Left,” in which they refer to the Guardian as “the movement’s cajoling ward boss, kingmaker, and sounding board.” Gosh, I feel so goddamn important right now.

Once the blood pressure returned to normal, my initial reaction to this piece was that Wachs and Eskenazi seem to misunderstand who and what progressives actually are. They portray the city’s left as a caricature, a brash bunch of power mongers now on the losing end that can be easily summed up with pithy video game references, Happy Meal toy bans, and bikes.

Witness the contrast between the Weekly’s portrayal of progressives (helped along by former Newsomite Eric Jaye), and the portrait of the left the Guardian offers this week with an Op-Ed written by NTanya Lee — an actual progressive who volunteered for the Avalos for Mayor campaign.

Here’s the Weekly on the left:

“This is an eclectic group, one often bound not by mutual interests as much as mutual enmity — toward Brown, his successors, and the corporate interests of ‘downtown.’ As a result, progressive principles are often wildly inconsistent. Progressives favor more government control over people’s lives for their own good, as when they effectively banned McDonald’s Happy Meals. But sometimes progressives say the government needs to let people make their own choices … Progressives believe government should subsidize homeless people who choose to drink themselves to death, while forbidding parents from buying McNuggets because fast food is bad for us. … Without consistent principles, it’s easy to associate progressives with the craziest ideas to come out of City Hall, and the movement’s bad ideas are memorable. … Daly’s pledge to say ‘Fuck’ at every public meeting makes a killer Internet meme. Hey, let’s legalize prostitution and outlaw plastic bags!”

Here’s Lee on the left:

“The Avalos coalition was largely community forces: SF Rising’s base in working class Black, Latino, Filipino and Chinese communities; the Bike Coalition’s growing base of mostly white bike riders; affinity groups like Filipinos, Queers, Latinos and Arabs for Avalos; progressive Democrats; social networks of creative, young progressive activists affiliated with the League of Young Voters; and loyal families and neighborhood leaders from John’s own District 11. The campaign prioritized communicating to voters in four languages, and according to the Chinese press, John Avalos was the only non-Chinese candidate with a significant Chinese outreach program. There were stalwarts from progressive labor unions (most notably SEIU 1021 and USWW) who threw down — but overall, labor played it safe and invested resources in other guys. And then, in the great surprise development of the race, supporters of the new national occupy movement came to be a strong part of the Team Avalos base because the campaign was so well positioned to resonate with the call to take on the one percent.”

When it comes to takeaways from the November election, the Weekly’s conclusion is essentially opposite that of progressives. While many on the left see themselves as regaining momentum and building the power to rise even in the face of defeat by the established powers-that-be, the Weekly casts San Francisco’s left as deflated and out-of-touch.

Speaking of out-of-touch, the SF Weekly refers to San Francisco’s “increasingly imaginary working class.” But in reality, 61 percent of students attending public schools in S.F. Unified School District qualify for free or reduced lunch, and a majority of San Franciscans cannot afford market-rate housing.

However, the Weekly is correct in pointing out that shifting demographics have dealt a blow to the progressive base.

“Between 2000 and 2010, the city grew older (every age group over 50 increased), wealthier (there are now 58 percent more households earning $125,000 or more), and more heavily Asian (up from around 30 to nearly 35 percent of the city’s population): exactly the groups progressives don’t win with. These voters don’t respond well to campaigns against developments or for city services, because they’re often living in those developments and don’t need city services.”

I take issue with the Asian part of that statement as a sweeping generalization, however, having witnessed the solid organizing work of the Chinese Progressive Association, for example.

The Weekly also says progressives and the Guardian never called out former Mayor Gavin Newsom for ripping off their best ideas. Oh, they didn’t? That’s news to me.

The Weekly article implies that progressives got trounced by moderates because jobs are priority No. 1 for voters, and the left has no feasible economic plan — but at the same time, the article completely dismisses ideas that the Guardian has put forth, like creating a municipal bank, implementing Avalos’ Local Hire legislation, or taxing the rich.

Taxing the rich is precisely the kind of economic solution the international Occupy movement is clamoring for, and the concept has even attracted a few unlikely supporters, like billionaires Warren Buffet and Sean Parker, who is not some conservative a*hole by the way.

“The Guardian … stays on the progressive agenda because they put it there, along with taxing the rich, tapping downtown to subsidize Muni, and other measures … Proposing the same old solutions to every new problem turns policies into punch lines.”

Speaking of predictable, no profile authored by the Weekly mentioning the Guardian would be complete without some dig about public power. “The Guardian has been flogging public power since Tesla invented the alternating-current generator,” the S.F. Weekly squawks. Those clever reporters, turning policies into punch lines.

But wait, I thought the problem was that progressives couldn’t get it together on the job creation thing. Consider the CleanPower SF program, which has been strongly advocated for by progressive Sup. and Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi (who it turns out is “not toxic,” according to the Weekly, since he was elected citywide and all). According to an analysis by the Local Clean Energy Alliance, CleanPowerSF will create 983 jobs — 4,357 jobs when indirect job creation is factored in — over the course of three years, assuming the 51 percent renewable energy target is met. Presented with this kind of information, the Weekly will only yawn and say, “Are we on that again?”

That being said, our friends’ article might actually have a pearl of wisdom or two buried somewhere in that nauseating sea of sarcasm. Everyone needs to engage in self-reflection. So right after you’re done throwing up, think about how to take advantage of the opportunity this article presents for a citywide dialogue about progressivism in San Francisco.

Ed Lee’s challenges

Andrew Lam

-

November 15, 2011

2

EDITORIAL Mayor Ed Lee has always talked about bringing the city together, about avoiding division and harsh conflict. And how that he’s won a four-year term, he’s going to have to address a wide range of city problems that in the past haven’t responded well to consensus and compromise.

He’s going to have to do it in the wake of an election in which the centrist candidates all finished low in the pack — and the strongest progressive actually won more votes than anyone else on Election Day. And his victory comes at a time when there’s more concern over economic inequality than this country has seen since the 1930s — represented most visibly by the large and growing OccupySF encampment.

The mayor received huge financial support — in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — from some of the same people and businesses that the Occupy movement is targeting. Some of his campaign contributors have an conservative economic agenda that’s way to the right of the center of San Francisco politics. And some of his closest allies (and strongest supporters) are, to put it kindly, ethically challenged.

So it’s not going to be easy for the mild-mannered mayor to lead the city — and if he wants to be successful, he needs to work with and not ignore the left.

There are a few critical steps that would show the people who opposed him that he’s not a captive of big-business interests and that he can be trusted:

1. Appoint a real progressive to Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi’s District Five supervisorial seat. If Lee is really a mayor who’s above petty politics, the chief criterion for the appointment shouldn’t be loyalty to Lee.

District Five supported Avalos over Lee by a solid margin (in the Haight, Avalos got twice as many votes as Lee). The district has been represented by two people, Matt Gonzalez and Mirkarimi, both of whom were elected as Green Party members. It’s almost certainly the most left-leaning district in the city, and deserves a supervisor who represents that political perspective. Most of the qualified people who fit that description supported a candidate other than Ed Lee for mayor.

2. Don’t send the cops to roust OccupySF. The movement has support all over the city and is making an historic statement. It’s probably the most important political demonstration in San Francisco since the 1960s. A mayor who has any shred of a progressive soul should recognize that the most important issue facing this city and this nation is the wealth and income gap and help OccupySF make its voice even louder.

3. Present a plan for more than a “cuts only” budget. Yes, the sales tax measure lost, putting a hole in the city budget, and yes, it will be a year before a credible new revenue measure can go on the ballot. But now is the time to start bringing people together to look at what comprehensive tax reforms might be more appealing than a regressive sales tax.

4. Don’t give away the city to the One Percent. A developer wants to build 160 condos for the very, very rich on the waterfront at 8 Washington. Mayoral ally Rose Pak supports the project. It’s about as blatant an example as possible of something that only benefits multimillionaires, and it will be one of the first major land-use decisions Lee will have to grapple with. Making his opposition clear would demonstrate his independence.

5. Run an open administration. Both previous mayors, Gavin Newsom and Willie Brown, were openly hostile to the press, hostile to open government and supremely arrogant. Lee has a different personal style — and he ought to show that he respect the Sunshine Ordinance by directing his departments to abide by the rulings of the Sunshine Task Force.

That’s what good government would look like.

Rank complaints

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

-

November 15, 2011

27

steve@sfbg.com

Even before all the votes had been cast on election day, the two most conservative members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors proposed a ballot measure to repeal the city’s ranked-choice voting (RCV) system, prompting all the usual critics of this voter-approved electoral reform to denounce it as confusing and undemocratic.

Those same two supervisors, Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell, were also the ones who unsuccessfully pushed for a weakening of the public financing system last month, changes that will likely be wrapped into discussions in the coming weeks over how elections are conducted in the city. And progressive supporters of both systems warn that district supervisorial elections will probably be the next target of this concerted push to roll the clock back on electoral reforms in the city.

"The [San Francisco] Chronicle and the [San Francisco] Chamber [of Commerce] have been at it from day one," Steven Hill, who helped crafted both the RCV and public financing systems, told us. "They’re really clear about what they want to eliminate, so we should be clear about what we need to defend and we can’t get confused by this."

Indeed, the Chronicle ran an editorial Nov. 14 advocating the repeal of ranked-choice, calling it "a fundamentally flawed system that is fraught with unintended consequences." The paper, as well as its allies at the Chamber and other downtown institutions, has been equally vociferous in criticizing public financing and district elections.

Hill said that’s because moneyed interests prefer systems that they can manipulate using the millions of dollars in unregulated independent expenditures they can summon — an ability they demonstrated again in his election on behalf of Mayor Ed Lee — such as low-turnout runoff elections, citywide supervisorial races, and elections without the countervailing force of public financing. "They’ve been doing this steadily and looking for ways to chip away at it," Hill said.

But conservatives aren’t the only ones raising questions about RCV; some progressives say the system needs adjustment, too.

Although Farrell opposes all three of those electoral reforms, he insists that his concerns about RCV are about voter confusion and the perception that winners don’t have majority support and could be viewed as illegitimate. "There is just so much voter confusion out there," Farrell said, citing comments from voters who don’t understand how their votes are tabulated to produce a winner.

Hill counters that voters do have a clear understanding of how to rank their choices, downplaying the importance of whether they understand all the details of what happens next. But Farrell said that and the majority rule issue have undermined people’s faith in the elections.

"People get very upset when they realize someone didn’t get a majority of the vote," he told us, referring to how the majority threshold drops as voters’ top three candidates are eliminated. "To me, it’s just simpler to go back to the runoff system."

Many moderate politicians agree. "I don’t like ranked choice voting and I never have," City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who finished third in the mayor’s race, told us on election night. "I defended it all the way to the 9th Circuit [Court of Appeals in his role at City Attorney], but I think it’s bad policy."

Sup. Scott Wiener, a Herrera supporter we spoke to at the same election night party, also wants to see a change. "I supported ranked-choice voting and until recently I continued to support it, but this race changed by mind," Wiener said, attributing the large mayoral candidate field and free-for-all debates to RCV. "There is no way most voters will be able to distinguish among the candidates."

But Hill says it’s a mistake to attribute the large field to RCV, or even to the public financing system that some are also trying to blame, a problem he said can be addressed in other ways, such as changing when and how candidates qualify for public matching funds.

Wiener said he hasn’t made up his mind about repealing RCV, and he said that he absolutely opposes a return to the December runoff election. One alternative he suggested was a system like that in place in New York City, with the initial election in September and the runoff during the general election in November. But he does think some change is needed, and he’s glad Elsbernd and Farrell proposed an RCV repeal.

"They’re starting a conversation with the repeal, but that’s not where it’s going to end," Wiener said.

Indeed, the system still has the support of most progressives, even Sup. John Avalos, who finished second in the mayor’s race and would now be headed into a runoff election against Ed Lee under the old system. "I continue to support ranked choice voting," Avalos told us. It takes six supervisors to play the charter amendment repealing RCV on the ballot.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who was narrowly elected sheriff in the ranked-choice runoff despite a 10-point lead in first place votes, said of the Farrell and Elsbernd proposal, "I do want to hear their criticisms."

"I understand the larger discussion, which was a bit of a misguided approach that some of our colleagues used to go after ranked choice voting on election day," Mirkarimi said. "But they are good politicians and they seized an opportunity."

Mirkarimi did say he was open to "maybe some tweaks. I do think ranked choice works better when you have many choices." Others, such as former Sup. Matt Gonzalez, have also recently advocated a ranked-choice system that allows more choices, which would address the majority-vote criticism because fewer ballots would be exhausted.

Hill said the legislation that voters approved back in 2002 already calls for more choices, but the technology used in the city’s current system only allows three choices. Yet he said the city’s vendor, Dominion Voting Systems, has developed a system allowing up to 11 choices, for which it is currently seeking federal certification.

Although he said various tweaks are possible, "I think the system worked well in this election," Hill said, noting that few San Franciscans would have wanted to drag this long campaign out by another month or to pay for another election.

Guardian editorial: Mayor Ed Lee’s challenges

-

November 15, 2011

21

Mayor Ed Lee has always talked about bringing the city together, about avoiding division and harsh conflict. And now that he’s won a four-year term, he’s must address a wide range of city problems that in the past haven’t responded well to consensus and compromise.
He’s going to have to do it in the wake of an election in which the centrist candidates all finished low in the pack — and the strongest progressive actually won more votes than anyone else on Election Day. And his victory comes at a time when there’s more concern over economic inequality than this country has seen since the 1930s — represented most visibly by the large and growing OccupySF encampment.
The mayor received huge financial support — in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — from some of the same people and businesses that the Occupy movement is targeting. Some of his campaign contributors have an conservative economic agenda that’s way to the right of the center of San Francisco politics. And some of his closest allies (and strongest supporters) are, to put it kindly, ethically challenged. So it’s not going to be easy for the mild-mannered mayor to lead the city — and if he wants to be successful, he needs to work with and not ignore the left.
There are a few critical steps that would show the people who opposed him that he’s not a captive of big-business interests and that he can be trusted:

1. Appoint a real progressive to Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi’s District Five supervisorial seat. If Lee is really mayor who’s above petty politics, the chief criterion for the appointment shouldn’t be loyalty to Lee or Willie Brown or Rose Pak et al. District Five supported Avalos over Lee by a solid margin (in the Haight, Avalos got twice as many votes as Lee). The district has been represented by two people, Matt Gonzalez and Mirkarimi, both of whom were elected as Green Party members. It’s almost certainly the most left-leaning district in the city, and deserves a supervisor who represents that political perspective. Most of the qualified people who fit that description supported a candidate other than Ed Lee for mayor.

2. Don’t send the cops to roust OccupySF. The movement has support all over the city and is making an historic statement. It’s probably the most important political demonstration in San Francisco since the 1960s. A mayor who has any shred of a progressive soul should recognize that the most important issue facing this city and this nation is the wealth and income gap and help OccupySF make its voice even louder.

3. Present a plan for more than a “cuts only” budget. Yes, the sales tax measure lost, putting a hole in the city budget, and yes, it will be a year before a credible new revenue measure can go on the ballot. But now is the time to start bringing people together to look at what comprehensive tax reforms might be more appealing than a regressive sales tax.4. Don’t give away the city to the One Percent. A developer wants to build 160 condos for the very, very rich on the waterfront at 8 Washington. Mayoral ally Rose Pak supports the project. It’s about as blatant an example as possible of something that only benefits multimillionaires, and it will be one of the first major land-use decisions Lee will have to grapple with. Making his opposition clear would demonstrate his independence.

5. Support public power and community chocie aggregation. And appoint SPUC commissioners with visible, credible public power credentials. PG&E has maintained its illegal private power monopoly in San Francisco for decades by muscling mayors to appoint only PG&E-friendly commissioners who keep City Hall safe for PG&E.

6. Run an open administration. Both previous mayors, Gavin Newsom and Willie Brown, were openly hostile to the press, hostile to open government and and supremely arrogant. Lee has a different personal style and he ought to show that he respects the Sunshine Ordinance by directing his departments to abide by the rulings of the Sunshine Task Force. That’s what good government would look like.

The great divide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

-

November 15, 2011

0

steve@sfbg.com, rebeccab@sfbg.com, tredmond@sfbg.com

Of all the election night parties held in San Francisco Nov. 8, the two that most closely illustrated the city’s political divide were the ones hosted for the winner of the mayoral contest, Mayor Ed Lee, and for the progressive candidate who came in second, Sup. John Avalos.

Lee’s campaign held its own event at Tres, but the really eye-catching bash was thrown in his honor by former Mayor Willie Brown and billionaire tech investor Ron Conway in the decadent, high-ceilinged Garden Court of the prestigious Sheraton Palace Hotel. It attracted high-profile businesspeople, political operatives, tech executives, and celebrities.

Brown and influential Chinatown business consultant Rose Pak — both of whom played key roles in Lee’s appointment as interim mayor and his decision to run for office — attended the Palace event. Real-estate developers, public relations representatives, and others circulated around the room, sipping $17 martinis. MC Hammer, a legend of the 1990s who recently started his own search engine, hovered over his laptop onstage while a cluster of his fans tore up the dance floor.

When Lee arrived, he appeared with Brown, Hammer, and Conway, a Republican who spearheaded an independent expenditure committee (IE) to bolster Lee’s campaign. “He said San Franciscans have spoken,” Lee spokesperson Christine Falvey explained, summarizing the mayor’s comments, which were delivered before the Guardian arrived. “They like what they’ve seen in the last 10 months.”

When we approached Conway, he said he supported the mayor because “Ed Lee’s going to bring jobs to San Francisco.” Asked to comment on the influence of the independent expenditure committee he funded to alter the outcome of the race, Conway dismissed the question and repeated, “Ed Lee’s going to bring jobs to San Francisco.”

The Avalos event was at the jam-packed Roccapulco Supper Club in the Mission. The party drew a host of young, progressive supporters, many of whom are deeply engaged in social justice organizing, promoting workers’ rights, and protecting affordable housing. At least two bicycles were locked to every parking meter and street sign for more than a block in each direction, many sporting Avalos signs in the rims or attached to their frames.

There were live musical performances by The Bayonics and a mariachi band, plus rousing speeches cheering Avalos on as the peoples’ choice for mayor. Former Sup. Chris Daly was there, as was Sup. David Campos and a host of progressive movers and shakers.

Twitter updates offered snapshots of what was happening in the different venues. “This is how I’m doing it tonight! The ‘Too Legit To Quit’ Party! Ed Lee, Willie Brown & MC Hammer,” tweeted DJ MindMotion, who performed at Lee’s event. Later, he offered a few more updates. “Rocking with SF politicians! Getting my parking tickets cleared!” And a few minutes later, “I have a lot of parking tickets.”

At Roccapulco, Avalos’ wife Karen Zapata introduced her husband with a rallying cry for progressives to keep up the fight. She offered a long view of this struggle, a people’s movement battling for the city’s soul and future. If Ed Lee hangs on to win, she said, “We could be screwed unless we work together and organize…We have to stick together and we have to push from outside the system.”

It was a theme and a feeling that would permeate the event, this sense that Avalos and the progressives enjoyed a resurgence in the last month thanks to what’s happening in the streets, both with this campaign and the OccupySF movement that Avalos has taken a lead role at City Hall in supporting. “We’ve got everyone here,” Avalos said when he took the mic. “Except for the 1 percent!”

They were at the Palace, celebrating with Ed Lee.

HOW LEE WON

Lee had the support of establishment politicians at every level. “He is my man. He’s genuine, he’s competent, he’s no flash in the pan,” Rep. Jackie Speier told us at district attorney candidate Sharmin Bock’s campaign party at Yoshi’s. “He’s going to put San Francisco first and check his ego at the door.”

Yet other politicians — even moderates like Sup. Scott Wiener, who supported Dennis Herrera — felt the outcome of the election was skewed by the advantage Lee enjoyed from incumbency that he attained under false pretenses and the huge spending on his behalf by outside groups.

“When you have that big a curve ball thrown three months before the elections, those are the dynamics,” Wiener said.

Part of Lee’s victory was due to turnout — heavy turnout in areas where he won, and low turnout in areas where he didn’t. There’s an important lesson for progressives here — Lee’s campaign (and the independent expenditure groups that supported him) spent considerable money and time on an absentee voter program and on GOTV.

The result: Avalos actually got more votes than Lee on election day — but Lee still came in far ahead, thanks to absentees.

Some of the absentee efforts created controversy and may have been illegal — videos taken by workers with Leland Yee’s campaign showed Lee backers helping voters in Chinatown fill out their ballots (using a stencil to make sure Lee’s name was properly marked) and collecting those ballots in a bag. And while District Attorney George Gascon has announced an investigation, it’s not likely much will come of it: The people caught on film were not senior campaign aides, and the effort was run by one of the Lee IEs.

At any rate, whatever the Lee supporters were doing, legal or not, it worked. An analysis of voting results shows that in Lee strongholds, far more than half the ballots cast were absentees. For example, in Chinatown, where Lee beat Avalos by a margin of more than 4-1, 4,200 of the 7,161 ballots cast — that’s 60 percent of the total — were vote by mail (VBM). In Bayview/Hunters Point, where Lee (with the strong backing of former Mayor Willie Brown) topped Avalos by a 3-1 margin, 64 percent of the turnout was VBM.

Avalos had almost twice as many votes as Lee in the Haight Ashbury, but turnout there was lower than usual — and only 34 percent was VBM. The same pattern appeared in the Mission and Bernal Heights.

Overall, Lee’s support was strong in most parts of the city — of the 26 neighborhoods identified by the Department of Elections, Lee beat Avalos in 18.

Leland Yee, who came in surprisingly low for an elected official who has held public office for more than 20 years and has been elected citywide several times, ran strongly only in the Sunset, the Richmond and the Excelsior. City Attorney Dennis Herrera demonstrated fairly broad-based (but more limited) support, running consistently in second or third place around the city and doing particularly well in the Marina and Upper Market/Castro. Board President David Chiu ran strongest in his district (Chinatown/North Beach), the Marina and the Sunset and Richmond.

And there’s no question that the Asian vote was critical to this race. For perhaps the first time in history, Asian voters turned out in heavy numbers and demonstrated that they are a major factor in San Francisco politics. Some of that was the presence of four major Asian candidates on the ballot, but a lot was due to the excitement of supporting the city’s first Chinese mayor.

“There are really two elections going on in San Francisco,” one longtime activist told us. “There’s the election in the Chinese community, and then there’s everywhere else.”

But Lee also won in the traditionally more conservative parts of town, beating out the other centrist candidates and even former Sup. (and conservative darling) Michela Alioto-Pier.

THE AVALOS FACTOR

Six months ago, when John Avalos first decided to get in the race, a lot of people (including some of his supporters) figured he was running primarily to get his issues out and make sure the progressive perspective was represented. He was up against three people who had won citywide races (Herrera, Yee, and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting) as well as the president of the Board of Supervisors. Later, of course, the incumbent entered the contest. A first-term district supervisor didn’t seem that formidable.

But the Avalos campaign worked wonders, pulling together hundreds of volunteers, working precincts, getting out the progressive vote and giving tens of thousands of people a candidate to believe in. His strong second-place showing did two things: It demonstrated that the left vote in the city is still strong, and it established Avalos as a credible new leader of the progressive coalition, someone who was able to attract votes across the city and position himself for future runs for higher office.

While Avalos didn’t win any districts outside of the traditional progressive strongholds on the east side of town, he did surprisingly well citywide.

Even moderates like political consultant David Latterman praised the race Avalos ran. “Next to Ed Lee, Avalos had the most solid base in the city,” Latterman said at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s regular post-election wrap-up. “With John Avalos, it’s fair to say he maxed out his base. He ran a positive campaign.”

Alex Clemens, the other political analyst at the SPUR event, agreed: “John Avalos cemented his base and they turned out.”

Election reform activist Steven Hill went even further, noting that Avalos picked up a significant number of second- and third-place votes to hang onto his solid second place standing throughout the ranked choice voting tabulations to finish with about 40 percent of the vote.

“What this election showed is John Avalos had a strong core, and then he broadened his appeal,” Hill said.

Contrary to characterizations that the outcome of this election represented a shift to the right, Latterman noted that voters sided with the endorsements of the Bay Guardian and other progressive entities on more of the ballot measures than they did with the San Francisco Chronicle and others entities to the right of the progressives. Voters aligned with Guardian endorsements on six of the eight measures (almost seven, given that Prop. H, the neighborhood schools measure, won by a fraction of a percentage point).

WHAT’S NEXT?

After Avalos spoke, Daly offered us some insights into a race whose outcome he predicted months ago, consistently telling skeptics that even though the power play that put Lee into office was all but assured of victory, he believed the progressive movement was still strong and that Avalos would place second, ahead of a large field of well-qualified candidates with high name recognition.

“We did as well as we could have,” Daly said, “because the whole thing was juiced from a year ago, with their dirty backroom deal at City Hall and all their dirty money.”

Daly said he saw a new political narrative beginning to take shape, one with the potential to revive the progressive movement in San Francisco. Infused with energy from the campaign volunteers and the rise of the Occupy movement, Daly said it was notable that Avalos got more election day votes than Lee.

“That momentum, we didn’t have it a month ago when the absentee ballots went out,” he said. So now what? “We just keep going. We now have a leader of the progressives in San Francisco and his name in John Avalos,” Daly said. “John has a broad, active base of appeal.”

Avalos echoed similar themes when we spoke on election night, emphasizing the importance of the long struggle of the progressive movement over whether he won the mayor’s race. When we asked him whether election night felt like a victory for him, Avalos replied, “I felt like it was a victory yesterday.”

“All I wanted is for people to be turned out big time for this campaign, and they did that,” Avalos said. “So now, we’ll see what’s next.”

Here’s what’s happening now: The Avalos campaign did, to a significant extent, what the mayoral campaigns for Tom Ammiano in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez in 2003 did — it got the progressives excited and brought a new generation of activists into the world of local electoral politics. As Avalos called up his key supporters to the stage at Roccapulco on election night, it was clear that a broader progressive coalition was forming, with new faces, young organizers, and people of color.

The left in this town has a long history of winning by losing: The Ammiano campaign created the movement that took back the Board of Supervisors a year later, and the Gonzalez campaign drew more activists into the movement. Gonzalez, of course, left office a year later — but Avalos shows no signs whatsoever of backing down from the leadership role he has created.

The other very good news for progressives is the victory of Ross Mirkarimi, who won the race for sheriff and became the first staunch progressive to win a citywide race in more than two decades. He is also positioned to take more of a leadership role, and possibly to run for the mayor’s office at some point down the road. Since there are no term limits for the sheriff, he doesn’t have to rush.

A DIVIDED CITY

One of the key decisions Lee now faces — and one that will define his administration — is choosing a replacement for Mirkarimi. District Five is probably the most progressive district in the city, one that voted overwhelmingly for Avalos. And while Lee will want a loyalist in that job, most of the people who are likely to be able to win an election in 2012 supported another candidate. If Lee puts someone who will vote with the centrists on the board in that seat, he — and his anointed supervisor — will take a big loss in the fall.

He will also have to deal with the city budget — and it won’t be easy. Nonprofits like the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, where he had strong support, are already clamoring for more money for raises for their underpaid staff who have effectively had pay freezes for the past four years. Prop. G, the sales tax measure that Lee was hoping would fill part of the revenue gap, went down in flames. And the big-money people who spent so much getting him elected are supporters of tax breaks for business, not tax increases on the wealthy.

He’ll have to figure out whether to join Avalos and support OccupySF — or join with the more conservative law-and-order types who want the encampment evicted. At press time, as police erected barricades around the encampment, it seemed like that decision was imminent.

And Lee will have to face the fact that, for all his talk about unity and consensus, this is a city deeply divided. There is a huge political and economic gap between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, the 99 percent and the 1 percent, the folks at the Palace Hotel with their limousines and $17 cocktails and the folks in the Mission with their bicycles and beer. Their interests are often directly and unalterably opposed — and on Nov. 8, the powers-that-be made it very clear whose side they think Mayor Ed Lee is on. Additional research by Nena Farrell

Lessons from 2011 for 2012

Zelda Bronstein

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November 14, 2011

4

With the release of precinct results for the 2011 election, we are able to actually see, for the first time, what San Francisco voters did, as opposed to hearing what various nabobs said they did. There are a couple of key conclusions about the vote that should guide any left-liberal thinking of the key 2012 Supervisor races.

The first thing San Francisco voters did- about 40,000 of them- was stay home. Turnout – about 40% – was the lowest for a mayor’s race in 40 years. Moreover, counter to several “expert” narratives, turnout in neighborhoods with large numbers of Chinese voters — Chinatown, the Richmond, the Sunset, and Vis Valley — was lower (average 33%) than in neighborhoods with few Chinese voters — Diamond Heights, Noe Valley, the Castro and West of Twin Peaks — where turnout averaged 40%.

There seems to be four reasons for this curious outcome. A couple of them have lessons for us for the 2012 election that we ignore at our peril.
First, in a City that is clearly center-left, voters were presented with nine center-right candidates, seven of whom were declared by the Chronicle at one time or another to be “serious.” Only John Avalos was a clear center-left choice. This was shown in the huge number undecideds that appeared in poll after poll. Undecided voters are often unhappy at the lack of choice being offered by the field and simply don’t vote.

Second, professional campaign management of the supposedly serious candidates was terrible and actually counter-productive to their candidates’ best interests. The pros actually seemed to have suppressed turnout in key neighborhoods. Ace Smith and Bill Barnes, working for for Ed Lee, spent most of their time trying to distance their candidate from his base and key supporters, made rookie fund-raising mistakes time and again and gave their counterparts in the Yee and Herrera campaigns ample ammunition for a series of negative ads and mailers. John Whitehurst and Mark Mosher, working for Herrera, and Jim Sterns, working for Yee, took the opportunity and went negative on the least threatening figure in San Francisco politics in recent memory.

As we all know negative campaigns generally suppress turnout — and that seems to be the case in this election. Avalos, who after September had no professional management, stayed positive and gained votes by doing so.

Third, organized labor, for the first time in living memory, did not endorse the winning candidate for mayor. Indeed, its official candidate, Yee, came in FIFTH. It’s as if labor decided to concentrate only on its issue — pension reform — and devote no energy, people or money to the myors race. Without labor’ support,effective GOTV in left-liberal neighborhoods is all the more difficult and was clearly beyond the ability of the Avalos campaign to carry by itself.

Labor knew who it wanted to vote on pension reform and narrowly focused only on those voters. That it still has the ability to do electoral politics can be seen in the fact that more total votes were cast on Proposition C (186,336) — labor’s pension- reform measure –than were cast for all candidates in the mayors race (179,888).

Finally, there were 160 fewer polling places this election than last year, and to make matters worse the Department of Elections mailed 115,000 voter handbooks with the wrong polling place address causing them to send postcards with the corrections. While this in no way was responsible for the 40,000 fewer votes cast, it was probably worth several hundreds of missed votes.

The lessons for next year? We need good candidates who actually align with political sensibility of the voters. This will be especially true in District Five after Mayor Lee appoints some center-right clone in the most left-liberal district in the city, and equally true in District Three with David Chiu, who has certainly turned to the right since his election.

Supervisor David Campos in District 9 will be fine in this regard as will Supervisor Eric Mar in District 1 — where he will face a real fight.
Avalos’ showing in the mayors race should do him well in District 11 and offers a real chance for him to be board president in 2013.
Community-based left-liberals and labor must come together closer than in this election and perhaps closer than at any time since the Great depression. Labor’s support for the Occupy movement is a good indication that fruitful common ground can be found. We need each other more than ever in 2012.

We need to work to get good lines for the new districts and have a grand meeting of the minds on how we address the absentee voter issue. Both labor and the Mirkarimi campaign did absentees well enough to win. We need to apply their lessons to the Supervisors races.

Dare to struggle, dare to win.

Calvin Welch is a housing activist who has been watching San Francisco elections for more than 40 years.

Is SF moving to the right?

Zelda Bronstein

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November 11, 2011

92

The Bay Citizen/New York Times thinks so. The headline on the story — “more conservative is the new normal” — says it all. Matt Smith (formerly of our price-fizing rival SF Weekly) and Gerry Shih say the Nov. 8 election signals a turn to the right for this famously liberal city:

But Tuesday’s election signaled a palpable shift: In addition to Lee, a pro-business moderate, voters overwhelmingly picked George Gascón, the law-and-order former police chief — and former Republican — as district attorney.

“To whoever thinks San Francisco is loopy and left-wing, this election basically said, ‘No, it’s really not,’” said David Latterman, associate director of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at the University of San Francisco. “We just elected an ex-Republican, pro-death penalty district attorney by a landslide. Just ponder that.”

Well: It’s interesting that they call Lee a “pro-business moderate,” which is probably accurate but differs from how Lee’s more progressive supporters see the new mayor. But while they talk about Gascon, they conveniently leave out the fact that San Francisco has elected the first solid progressive to a citywide office in a long, long time. Ross Mirkarimi — a former Green Party member and without a doubt one of the most left-leaning supervisors — won a tight, contested race for sheriff running honestly as a progressive. I think you have to go back to 1987, when Art Agnos ran for mayor as the candidate of the left, to find another example of a progressive champion winning all across town.

The interesting element of all of this — and something I think Smith and Shih got absolutely right — is that the demographic makeup of the city is changing, and has been for a while:

“From a political perspective, the tech companies are employing young workers who often prefer to live in San Francisco, even if they commute to Silicon Valley, said Wade Randlett, a Bay Area technology executive and top fund-raiser for President Obama.”

Wade Randlett is not my favorite person in local politics, but the point he makes is valid — and it’s not happening by accident. Virtually all of the new housing that’s been built in San Francisco in the past decade has been aimed at wealthy people, a lot of them young tech types who commute from the city to Silicon Valley. The other people moving into new housing are empty-nest retirees from places like Marin County. If you walk through the new condo buildings in Soma, the residents are mostly white, with a few Asians; there are almost no African Americans, very few families and essentially zero working-class people.

For years, downtown groups (including Randlett’s former employer, SFSOS) have pushed for this kind of housing, and some of them have been very open about their goal: By bringing in more rich people and tech workers, you can change the politics of the city. Housing activist Calvin Welch puts it succinctly: Who lives here, votes here.

That’s the reason why land use and housing are so critically important in this town. If poor and working-class people are pushed out to make way for a more upscale set of residents, then progressives who talk about taxing the wealthy to provide services for the poor will have a harder time getting elected.

It’s not a conspiracy; it’s an open, stated policy goal of the people who spent vast sums of money electing Ed Lee.

Mirkarimi victory seems assured

Sasha Cuttler

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November 10, 2011

49

The San Francisco Elections Department counted more than 25,000 ballots today and just posted new ranked choice voting tallies that continue to indicate Ross Mirkarimi has been elected sheriff, widening his margin of victory from yesterday’s count. Mayor Ed Lee and District Attorney George Gascon saw their margins shrink slightly, but they are also the clear winners.

With only about 7,000 provisional ballots still be counted, it’s unlikely that these results will change. Lee’s share of first place votes dipped by about a half percentage point to 31 percent, while second place John Avalos, third Dennis Herrera, fourth David Chiu, and fifth place Leland Yee each gained a bit of ground.

It took 12 rounds of reallocating votes, one more than yesterday’s tally, but the latest count shows Lee winning with 60 percent of the vote to Avalos’s 40 percent.

In the sheriff’s race, the only variable after yesterday’s count was whether Paul Miyamota might be eliminated before Chris Cunnie – raising the question of whether Mirkarimi would get a big enough chunk of Miyamoto’s votes to put him over to top. But with Mirkarimi gaining ground in first place votes to 38 percent, and with 1,117 votes separating Cunnie and Miyamoto in the second round, it would be almost impossible for the winner to change.

In the DA’s race, Gascon dropped and David Onek rose by about a half percentage point, but with more of Sharmin Bock’s votes going to Gascon, he wins in the third round with 63 percent of the vote.

The next D5 supervisor

Zelda Bronstein

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November 10, 2011

21

Now that it appears Sup. Ross Mirkarimi will be the next sheriff — and Ed Lee will be mayor for the next four years — the speculation is starting over who Lee will name to replace Mirkarimi as District Five supervisor. There are an abundance of qualified candidates, but my sources tell me the Mayor’s Office is looking right now primarily at two people — London Breed, director of the African American Art and Culture Complex and a former redevelopment commissioner, and Malcolm Yeung, an attorney who is president of the Asian American Bar Association and longtime policy person at the Chinatown Comminity Development Center.

Both, of course, were Lee supporters.They have a history of working on progressive causes (Yeung, at CCDC) and strong ties to the community (Breed at AAACC). Breed has spent more time as an activist in D5 (and was appointed to her job by former mayor Willie Brown), but Yeung is reportedly popular with Rose Pak, who clearly has the mayor’s ear.

I don’t know who Lee will be taking to about the appointment, but you can be sure both Brown and Pak will be giving their advice. And so far — although it’s still early — nobody has been talking to the current supervisor.

I called Mirkarimi and asked him who he would suggest, and he told me there were plenty of people — although neither Breed nor Yeung would be on his short list. He didn’t want to name names, but I can: queer/labor activist Gabriel Halland and Community College Board Member John Rizzo are both eminently qualified for the job, and Julian Davis would also be on a lot of short lists. So would Christina Olague, a planning commissioner (and Lee supporter) — but one City Hall insider told me that “Willie would never let that happen.”

Mirkarimi did suggest that he ought to be consulted. “I would think after all the work I’ve done in the district over seven years and two administration that Mayor Lee would at least want my input,” he said. We’ll see.

The low-turnout election

Zelda Bronstein

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November 10, 2011

25

A factor that hasn’t been discussed much in the analysis of the election results is the very low turnout for a contested mayor’s race. The turnout without the provisionals and final absentees was about 30 percent; by my figures, when the 35,000 remaining ballots are counted, it will total about 37 percent.

That’s about the same level as the 2007 race, when Gavin Newsom had no serious opposition and the races for sheriff and district attorney were essentially uncontested.

The past two contested mayoral races had much higher turnout. In 1999, when Tom Ammiano ran against Willie Brown, 45 percent of the voters turned out; same for the 2003 race pitting Matt Gonzalez against Gavin Newsom.

It’s odd — the weather was good, there were three contested races, all of the candidates had and spent money … and even in traditionally high-turnout areas, not that many voters went to the polls.

In the Mission, where John Avalos won overwhelmingly, turnout was only 30 percent.

Clearly, one of the reasons that Ed Lee won is that he got his voters to the polls. Would higher turnout on election day have made a difference? Maybe. Lee had support all over the city, and he was going to be tough to beat. He also got most of the second-place votes from candidates like David Chiu and even Leland Yee, who had spent much of the fall attacking him. And although Avalos won on election day, Lee was so far ahead from the absentees that catching him would have been difficult.

Still: The race certainly would have been closer. And the low turnout is curious. Did people just assume Lee was going to win? It’s hard to imagine that voters had no appealing candidates — there were so many choices. And there was so much election hype — I got about 30 mail pieces in the last week.

By the way: Randy Shaw did his list of winner and losers, and he left out Avalos entirely. Avalos didn’t win the election, but his suprisingly strong finish established him as a progressive leader for the future and helped keep the left organized and in the game. He also left out Ross Mirkarimi, who is the first solid progressive to win a citywide office in quite a while — and he did it running for sheriff against two law-enforcement types. Mirkarimi has now established himself as someone who can win in all parts of town and has made crime and law-enforcement a progressive issue.

Then there’s OccupySF — and while a lot of the people there probably didn’t vote, the fact that that Avalos stood with the occupiers and contrasted himself to Ed Lee (who came very close to using the cops to evict the protesters) helped his campaign immensely.

Lee, Mirkarimi, and Gascon win first ranked choice tally

Sasha Cuttler

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November 9, 2011

67

San Francisco’s first run of ranked choice voting tallies for yesterday’s election shows Ed Lee winning the mayor’s race (with progressive favorite John Avalos in second), George Gascon remaining district attorney, and Ross Mirkarimi becoming the new sheriff in town.
“Progressive victory, citywide, that’s huge,” Sup. David Campos told Mirkarimi this afternoon outside the Elections Department, where a scrum of journalists and politicos gathered to get the results. It would indeed be a rare citywide victory for progressives, which analyst David Latterman says constitute about 19 percent of the electorate, compared to 39 percent who identify as moderate and 36 percent who call themselves liberals.
About 7,500 provisional and 24,000-25,000 absentee ballots remain to be counted over the next few days, said Elections Chief John Arntz, telling reporters, “I’m not saying these are the final results by any stretch.” But there is good reason to believe these winners will stick.
In the sheriff’s race, where Mirkarimi faced off against three candidates with long law enforcement backgrounds, David Wong was the first to be eliminated, and the lion’s share of his 9,487 votes went to fellow Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Miyamoto rather than Chris Cunnie, the former head of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, knocking Cunnie out of the race.
Of Wong’ votes, 3,828 went to Miyamoto, 2,637 were exhausted (meaning Wong voters had no second choice), 1,682 went to Mirkarimi, and just 1,325 went to Cunnie, who had been in second place. That gave Mirkarimi almost 40 percent of the vote, compared with 30.7 percent for Miyamoto and 29.8 percent for Cunnie.
On the next round, Cunnie’s 42,877 votes were redistributed as follows: 16,820 to Miyamoto, 14,675 exhausted, and 11,322 to Mirkarimi, giving him 53 percent of the vote. “I’m optimistic, but I’m not declaring victory,” Mirkarimi told reporters. He said that he hopeful that he’ll get the chance to continue the 30-year progressive legacy of retiring Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who endorsed Mirkarimi.
The only real variable in the sheriff’s race is how Cunnie’s second place votes break in the event that incoming ballots change who gets eliminated after Wong, but Mirkarimi said he was happy with how well progressive campaigns did in this election.
“I want to say how proud I am of the Avalos campaign. It did a good job at getting people out who have felt disenfranchised,” Mirkarimi added.
Indeed, Avalos surprised much of the political establishment by finishing strongly in second place with 18.3 percent of the vote compared to Lee’s 31.5 percent and Dennis Herrera’s 11.3 percent. In the first ranked choice run, it took 11 rounds of eliminations for Lee to break the 50 percent threshold of victory. And when he did, he jumped all the way to 61 percent, mostly because voters who chose Herrera as their third choice exhausted their ballots.
When Herrera was eliminated in Round 10, 18,276 of his 29,717 votes were exhausted, and of the balance, 6,683 went to Avalos and 4,705 went to Lee, where they had been at 28 percent and 49 percent respectively. Avalos then finished second with 39 percent of the vote.
Other notable rounds in the mayoral runoff were when fourth place finisher David Chiu was eliminated and his nearly 20,000 votes broke most heavily in favor of Ed Lee and being exhausted, reinforcing the idea that he draws his support mostly from moderates and is no longer part of the progressive movement that helped elect him to the Board of Supervisors.
Avalos got just 2,376 of Chiu’s second place votes, compared to 5,894 for Lee and 3,832 for Herrera. By contrast, when Leland Yee was eliminated a round earlier, his votes were redistributed fairly evenly among Lee, Chiu, Herrera, and Avalos. Part of the reason that Avalos never gained ground on Lee was that the mayor got more second place votes than his progressive challenger on every elimination between Round 3 and the final round.
In the DA’s race, Gascon’s 42 percent total of first place votes is an insurmountable lead, particularly given that he also did well on the second place votes, showing that attacks on his secrecy and police connections didn’t do much to hurt him. When third place finisher Sharmin Bock was eliminated in the third round, Gascon got 13,301 of her votes, compared with 10,430 for David Onek, and 11,840 exhausted.
The Elections Department will run new totals every day at 4 pm

35,000 votes still out

Zelda Bronstein

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November 9, 2011

33

The Department of Elections says there are about 34,500 ballots still to be counted — 27,000 election-day absentees and 7,500 provisionals. That would be about one sixth of the total votes. Not enough to make a huge difference, but if they break the way the election-day votes did, the mayor’s race will get tighter (although probably not enough to make a difference) and Ross Mirkarimi will pull further away in the sheriff’s race. The only other difference: Prop. H may wind up losing — not that it matters, since it’s only a policy statement anyway and the school board is not about to change a system it developed over two years of public hearings.

Ross Mirkarimi is (cautiously) optimistic (VIDEO)

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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November 9, 2011

1

Spirits were high at Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s election night party at Carnelian by the Bay Nov. 8, as polling numbers seemed to be trending in his favor in the race for San Francisco sheriff. Around 10:30 p.m., supporters were flooding into the main lounge, a spacious venue with low lighting and huge windows overlooking the Bay Bridge. Plastic deputy sheriff stars were being passed around as party favors.

“We’re winning,” Mirkarimi said as he greeted a supporter who had just walked through the door.

Cheers arose when a television news broadcast projected onto a big screen displayed Mirkarimi’s 10-point lead, and the candidate decided it was time to make an announcement. He thanked the people who worked on his campaign, but stressed that it wasn’t over yet. We captured the moment on film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZP1MAjRRpA
Video by Rebecca Bowe

Mirkarimi likes where it’s going

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 8, 2011

1

At the Carnelian by the Bay behind the Ferry Building, District 5 supervisor Ross Mirkarimi seemed like a guy who didn’t want to speak too soon.

But the cheers and hugs from supporters — and the smile spreading across his face — reflected polling results so far.Mirkarimi was ahead by 10 points.

“This isn’t over yet,” he said. “But I like where it’s going.”

Sen. Mark leno was more direct, saying, “I think you are the next sheriff of San Francisco.”

With 100 percent (sort of) counted …

Zelda Bronstein

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November 8, 2011

2

With 100 percent of the vote in — sort of — the election is shaping up this way:

Barring a real surprise, Ed Lee will win a four-year term.

Ross Mirkarimi is positioned 10 points ahead of Chris Cunnie, and ought to survive the RCV count to win the sheriff’s race.

George Gascon is too far ahead to catch.

The turnout was a miserable 31 percent.

That’s tonight, though — I’m getting reports that a lot of precincts had a lot of election-day absentees turned in. That could bump the turnout a few points — and since election-day absentees tend to break roughly the same as election-day votes, it will help Mirkarimi.

John Avalos really showed the strength of the progressive vote tonight and established himself as a leader in the movement. He and his campaign have a lot to be proud of; he lacked the big money and IE efforts that the other candidates had and he ran an impressive campaign. But without the type of early-voting effort that the Lee campaign had, it appears there was no way anyone could win this race.

That’s part of the lesson for progressives — the Avalos campaign surged in the last two weeks, but it was already too late. Those early votes can be decisive, and tonight, it appears they were.