State Assembly

This campaign money bill is nasty

0

By Tim Redmond

Update on the :campaign-finance bill I mentioned a few days ago

This thing is pretty bad, and it’s winging its way through Sacramento with very little opposition. The bill number is AB 1430; it’s sponsored by Assemblymember Martin Garrick, a San Diego Republican who is mad that the San Diego Ethics Commission cracked down on unlimited GOP donations to local candidates.

The bill would limit the ability of local governments to control spending by political parties. Here’s an analysis by San Francisco Ethics Commission Director John St. Croix.

But the Democratic Party likes it, too, so the bill sailed through the state Assembly 77-0, and is headed for the floor of the state Senate. California Common Cause is against it, as is the League of Women Voters. The Ethics Commission has asked the San Francisco supervisors to oppose it, but nothing has happened yet.

The only member of the state Senate to come out against the bill is Carole Migden, who opposed it in committe and told us she will vote against it on the floor.

This one needs some attention, fast.

Police-records legislation on its way to state Assembly just as SFPD officer is charged with lewd act

0

By G.W. Schulz

UPDATE! Here’s an SB 1019 alert from the Northern California ACLU.

Have you caught up with this week’s lurid law-enforcement story involving an SFPD officer facing criminal charges in the East Bay for sleeping with a 14-year-old prostitute? Scaaaaaaandalous.

If formal criminal charges had never been brought against the 37-year department veteran and he merely faced internal disciplinary proceedings for having sex with an underage girl in his car, there’s a chance you never would have learned about it. The state Supreme Court in a now-infamous decision handed down last year blocked the public from being able to access police disciplinary records.

If police hadn’t discovered the two in Sgt. Donald Forte’s civilian car at the dead end of an East Oakland street and the lewd act had simply been reported by a colleague internally, how else could the public have ever learned that a police officer had allegedly committed statutory rape?

Outside of a possible leak, the public may never have known a thing.

Two stories we published this week were also affected by that Supreme Court decision. Our story on three sheriff’s deputies in San Francisco accused in federal court by former county-jail inmates of assaulting them was limited in part because some personnel records generated in the case were designated confidential by a judge, so we couldn’t look at them.

woodfox1.jpg
Mack Woodfox alleges he was beat while in custody

Police commission politics

0

theresasparks.jpg

By Tim Redmond

Theresa Sparks, a transgender activist who was honored as Woman of the Year by the state Assembly, called today to tell me she’s going to run for president of the Police Commission, challenging former City Attorney Louise Renne, who currently holds the job and shows no signs of wanting to step down.

I suspect Sparks will get at least a couple of votes from the more progressive side of the panel, including David Campos and maybe Petra DeJesus. That would leave Joe Vernonese, who is about to announce he’s running for state Senate, as the swing vote.

Should be a fascinating meeting May 9th.

IT’S CCA TIME!

0

By Amanda Witherell

Ever since the California State Assembly passed AB 117 in 2002 legalizing “Community Choice Aggregation” (CCA) public power advocates have been eagerly awaiting the day San Francisco would get the legislative ball rolling and start divorce proceedings with it’s current electricity provider, Pacific Gas and Electric.

That ball got a big push from Sups. Tom Ammiano and Ross Mirkarimi on Tuesday April 17, when they introduced a draft implementation plan for CCA to their fellow board members. The plan calls for the city to purchase and provide 51 percent of its energy from renewables by 2017.

“It’s wonderful considering the response to global warming from PG&E has been fossil fuel, ‘clean’ coal, and nuclear power,” Mirkarimi told the Guardian.

Read how CCA will make San Francisco 50 percent greener, after the jump…

Pelosi steps up

0

by Amanda Witherell

The ongoing saga at Alcatraz has finally caught the attention of Rep. Nancy Pelosi. While sewage spills and a fired whistleblower interested legislators in the State Assembly, it’s labor practices and land use planning that have Pelosi concerned — both of which have been issues since Alcatraz Cruises assumed control of the lucrative contract from Blue and Gold back in September.

Pier31halfgate.jpg
photo courtesy of alcatrazunion.com

Leno and Ma Scrutinize Alcatraz

0

by Amanda Witherell

Did poo get washed into the bay or not? Mark Leno and Fiona Ma really want to know. They’ve written another letter to the National Park Service’s Superintendent, Brian O’Neill, calling for an independent investigation, and essentially telling him his excuses and explanations hold no water.

Back in January, the two California State assembly members asked O’Neill to look into allegations that a sewage holding tank on Alcatraz Island overflowed and was hosed into the bay rather than wiped up properly.

O’Neill wrote back that an internal investigation had been done and all claims were false — except according to our elected officials, his evidence doesn’t support his claims. In addition, one of the whistleblowers who saw the spill, a National Parks Conservancy employer named Dan Cooke, has been fired, apparently for speaking up.

Taking on term limits

0

EDITORIAL It’s time to take a look at what legislative term limits are doing to San Francisco. Assemblymember Mark Leno, who is really just hitting his stride as one of the most effective members of the state legislature, is in his last term in office. Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, who are two of the most effective members of the Board of Supervisors, are in their final terms. Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who is the institutional memory of the left in city hall, will be gone in another two years.

In fact, Ammiano is a good case study for what’s wrong with term limits. The supervisor from District 9 has always been strong on the issues, but in his first few years on the board, he had trouble getting his bills through. That was in part due to a hostile board majority, but it was also, frankly, a matter of inexperience: over time Ammiano has convinced even some of his harshest critics that he’s a capable, reasonable lawmaker who can hammer out compromises that make good public policy. The recent universal health care bill is an example, something that might have been very difficult for a newbie supervisor to negotiate.

Ammiano has announced he’s running for State Assembly (when Leno is termed out), which is fine for him, but the board will lose an important presence when he’s gone. And losing Peskin and Daly (along with Sophie Maxwell, Gerardo Sandoval, and Jake McGoldrick) all within the next four years will shake up a board that has become the center of progressive policy development in San Francisco.

Term limits have been, by and large, the creature of conservative activists who want to increase the power of the executive branch and get rid of longtime liberal legislators, who, by virtue of representing safe urban districts, can often accumulate considerable seniority and power. (Witness Ron Dellums, Maxine Waters, and yes, Nancy Pelosi.) On a national level it’s well established that a strong (often too strong) chief executive can only be tempered by allowing members of Congress to serve long enough to develop the skills, contacts, and political bases to keep the presidency in check. On the state level six-year limits in the assembly and eight-year limits in the State Senate have shifted enormous political clout to the governor — and to the lobbyists, who have no term limits and now often know more about issues than newly minted legislators.

We’ve always been against term limits. If former assembly speaker Willie Brown hadn’t been so arrogant and corrupt, term limits for the legislature might never have passed in California. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez is working on a proposal to soften the limits slightly (possibly to allow 14 years of service in either house), and that’s a good idea.

Here in San Francisco, the board ought to start work on a charter amendment to modify term limits for supervisors. Ideally, we’d like to see an end to term limits altogether, but at the very least, the two-term limit should be extended to three terms.

The only credible argument for term limits was the threat of unaccountable incumbents running rampant. But with district elections and public financing, that’s not much of a threat in San Francisco. And San Francisco voters seem quite willing these days to vote people out who aren’t doing the job: it didn’t take term limits to get Dan Kelly off the school board.

It’s always tricky for incumbent politicians to do something that smacks of extending their own job security, but the truth is, term limits are bad for the public. The supervisors shouldn’t be afraid to come out and say that. *

Migden and Ammiano

0

By Tim Redmond

Well, within a few minutes after my blog on Mark Leno and Carole Migden was posted, Eric Potashner, Migden’s aide and political advisor, called me to say that Migden has endorsed Tom Ammiano for state Assembly and to poo-poo all the talk of a heated Leno-Migden race, which he says he isn’t worried about.

Okay, I believe him. But he should be worried, because it’s real — and unless the term-limits law is modified, I see Leno wanting to go for it.

Anyway, I just got back from the Haight Asbury Neighborhood Council post-election forum, where another fascinating wild-ass scenario was floated: Suppose Migden does the math and decides that she has a better chance running against Gavin Newsom than she does defending her Senate seat against Mark Leno?

After a member of the audience floated her name in the mayoral sweepstakes, Calvin Welch, who has been watching local politics for a very long time, pointed out that Migden is extremely smart — and not afraid to make a bold political decision.

I don’t exactly see it, but it’s a very strange world out there right now.

Blood in the water

0

Mayor Gavin Newsom has long been considered a lock for reelection next year, a belief driven by his same-sex marriage gesture, hoarding of political capital, personal charm, and high approval ratings. Yet Guardian interviews with more than 20 political experts and insiders from across the ideological spectrum indicate that Newsom may now be more vulnerable than ever.
Just as San Francisco politicians are starting to calculate whether to run, the Newsom administration has suffered a series of political setbacks. In November alone, most of Newsom’s picks got spanked during the election, his veto of popular police foot patrol legislation was overridden by the Board of Supervisors, and he was caught off guard by the San Francisco 49ers’ announcement that they were moving to Santa Clara, taking with them Newsom’s hopes of landing the 2016 Summer Olympics.
“Until recently, I didn’t have a lot of hope,” Sup. Chris Daly, whom Newsom unsuccessfully worked to defeat, told us. “Now the progressives have a glimmer of hope. The mayor seems to be hurting from three or four episodes where he was caught with egg on his face.”
To many political observers — most of whom the Guardian allowed to speak anonymously in order to capture their most candid observations and plans — the defeats were indicative of a mayor who seems increasingly disengaged and out of touch. Even Newsom’s strategy of avoiding fights that might hurt his popularity has rankled many of his allies, who complain that this risk-averse approach has allowed the Board of Supervisors to effectively set the city’s agenda.
“This guy does not use one scintilla of his political capital on anyone or anything,” said former mayor Art Agnos, whose name has been dropped as a possible challenger to Newsom but who told us, “I’m not running.”
There are a number of strong anti-Newsom narratives out there, even on his signature issues, such as crime and homelessness, which persist as visible, visceral problems despite increased city spending on homeless services and controversial tactics like police sweeps and one-way bus tickets out of town for vagrants.
The mayor started his term by announcing during a radio interview that if the murder rate rose, he should be ousted from office. It did — remaining at 10-year highs through the past three years — handing his potential opponents a ready-made sound bite. The crime rate could be a powerful weapon when paired with Newsom’s failure to follow up on promises of police reform.
Newsom is still likely to offer up a long list of accomplishments in his usual statistics-laden style. But much of what he tries to take credit for was actually someone else’s initiative, such as the universal health care measure crafted by Sup. Tom Ammiano (who is running for the State Assembly and not taking a third run at the mayor’s office). Adding to Newsom’s problems in November was the lawsuit the Golden Gate Restaurant Association — a Newsom ally — filed challenging the measure.
Almost everyone we interviewed agreed that if Newsom does have approval ratings of around 80 percent, as has been reported, that support is very soft and may significantly erode during the campaign. “His support is an inch deep and a mile wide” was how one political analyst put it.
“His ‘skyrocketing’ approval rating is irrelevant,” one downtown politico told us. “People approve of the mayor like they approve of the color beige. If you fill an arena with 50,000 people and ask them to decide on what color to paint the walls, that color will always be beige. It’s not that they necessarily like beige; it’s that they will accept it as long as those freaks who want hot pink don’t get their way.”
And then there are his personal foibles. Newsom’s choice of girlfriends — from the Scientologist actress to the 19-year-old hostess — has found its way into print and caused the mayor to lash out in brittle ways that have hurt his relations with once-friendly outlets like the Chronicle, which openly mocked Newsom’s televised comments last month about how hard his job is and how he might not run for reelection.
Finally, there are the new electoral realities: this is the first mayor’s race in which challengers will receive public financing from a $7 million fund (almost all of which, Newsom campaign manager Eric Jaye argues, will be aimed at doing damage to Newsom) and the first with ranked-choice voting, allowing candidates to run as a team and gang up on the mayor.
Add it all up, and Newsom looks vulnerable. But that’s only the first part of a two-part question. The trickier part is who can run against Newsom, and that’s a question to which nobody has any good answer yet.
THE FIELD
Among the names being dropped for a mayoral run are Dennis Herrera, Aaron Peskin, Ross Mirkarimi, Matt Gonzalez, Kamala Harris, Mark Leno, Agnos, Susan Leal, Angela Alioto, Lou Girardo, Warren Hellman, Jeff Adachi, Tony Hall, Leland Yee, Daly, Michael Hennessey, Quentin Kopp, and Carole Migden. That’s quite a list.
Yet most say they are disinclined to run this time around, and none are likely to announce their candidacies in the near future, which is when most observers believe a serious run at Newsom would have to begin. Here’s the catch-22: nobody wants to run against Newsom unless his approval rating sinks below 60 percent, but it’s unlikely to sink that low unless there are rivals out there challenging him every day.
Two candidates who already hold citywide office and could aggressively challenge Newsom on police issues are Sheriff Hennessey and District Attorney Harris, both of whom have mainstream credentials as well as supporters in the progressive community. But both have expressed reluctance to run in the next mayoral election, at least in part because they’re also standing for reelection this fall and would need to leave their jobs to run for mayor.
Public Defender Adachi is a favorite of many progressives and could also run on police reform, but his job of representing sometimes heinous criminals could be easy for the Newsom team to attack Willie Horton–<\d>style.
Many of the strongest potential candidates are thought to be waiting four more years until the seat is open. City Attorney Herrera can take as much credit as Newsom for gay marriage and is a tough campaigner and formidable fundraiser who has clearly been setting himself up for higher office. Assemblymember Leno has won over progressives since his divisive 2002 primary against Harry Britt and could be mayoral material, particularly because he’s termed out in two years. But both are allies of Newsom and reluctant to run against him.
Several supervisors and former supervisors would love to beat Newsom, but the road seems steep for them. Daly just got beat up in his own reelection, so his negatives are too high to run again right now. Supervisor Mirkarimi might run, but some consider him too Green and too green and are urging him to wait four more years. Board President Peskin could also be a contender, but some doubt his citywide appeal and note a few bad votes he’s cast.
Challenges from Newsom’s right could include Kopp, the former legislator and judge; Hall, the former supervisor whom Newsom ousted from his Treasure Island post; businessman and attorney Girardo; financier and philanthropist Hellman; and Alioto, who ran last time. But these would-be challengers are generally less liberal than Newsom, who pundits say is as conservative a mayor as a town with an ascendant progressive movement will tolerate.
Finally, there’s Gonzalez, who four years ago jumped in the mayor’s race at the last minute, was outspent by Newsom six-to-one, and still came within less than five percentage points of winning. Many progressives are urging him to run again, noting that he is still popular and has the political skills to highlight Newsom’s shortcomings. But Gonzalez remains cagey about his intentions.
“I don’t believe I’m running for mayor. The chances are slim,” Gonzalez told us. “But I think he needs to be challenged.”
TEAM NEWSOM
Newsom campaign manager Jaye says he’s definitely expecting a challenge. And unlike most observers whom we spoke with, who are surveying the field and not seeing many people jumping in, Jaye expects a crowded free-for-all and a tough race.
“Is it likely to be a highly contested mayor’s race? Sure. Is that a good thing? Yes, I think it is,” Jaye said. “Every race in San Francisco is tough. The school board races here are fought harder than some Senate races.”
But Jaye thinks the new public financing system — in which mayoral candidates who can raise $135,000 will get $450,000 from the city — will be the biggest factor. “That’s one of the reasons I think everyone’s going to run,” Jaye said. “That guarantees it will be a crowded field.”
One political analyst said that’s the best scenario for defeating Newsom. He said dethroning the mayor will be like a pack of jackals taking down an elephant. No single challenger is likely to beat Newsom, but if he’s being attacked from all sides, he just might fall.
As for Newsom’s weaknesses and missteps, Jaye doesn’t agree the mayor is particularly weak and doesn’t think people will turn away from Newsom because of his candid comments on how the job cuts into his personal life.
“One of the reasons so many people like Gavin Newsom is he’s not afraid to be human in public and to be honest,” Jaye said, adding that his candidate is up for the challenge. “He is running for real and will run a vigorous race.”
Jaye concedes that the 49ers issue is difficult: Newsom will be hurt if they leave, and he’ll be hurt if he appears to give up too much to keep them here. The high murder rate and inaction on police reform are widely considered to be vulnerabilities, but Jaye said, “Gavin Newsom gets up every day and works on that problem, and if voters think another candidate has a better solution, they’ll look at it.”
Everyone agrees that candidates will enter the race late — which is what happened during the last two mayor’s races and is even likelier with public financing. If Newsom takes more hits or can’t get his head into the game, the sharks will start circling. “The next three months with what happens with the mayor will be telling,” another political insider told us.
One test will be with Proposition I, the measure voters approved Nov. 7 asking the mayor to show up for a monthly question time before the Board of Supervisors. Newsom reportedly has said he won’t come, which could look cowardly and out of touch to the voters who approved it and to the supervisors, who might make great political theater of the no-show. And if Newsom does decide to show up, most observers believe he might not fare well in such an unscripted exchange.
If Newsom implodes or appears weak in late spring, suddenly all those political heavy hitters will be forced to think about getting in the fray. After all, as just about everyone told us, nine months is like an eternity in San Francisco politics — and Newsom has the best job in town.

Turning point

0

› news@sfbg.com
It’s amazing what the New York Times can find newsworthy. On a night when progressives in San Francisco racked up an impressive list of victories — and the popular mayor, often described as a rising star in state and national politics, got absolutely walloped — the nation’s newspaper of record led an online report on city politics with this gem: “A bike-riding member of the Board of Supervisors apparently won re-election while his wife was reported to have screamed an epithet at opponents.”
The Times story, by Jesse McKinley, called it “just another night in San Francisco’s iconoclastic politics,” meaning, apparently, that only in this city would a politician ride a bicycle and only here would a politician’s wife use foul language in public.
Please.
For the record: Sarah Low Daly — who watched her husband, Chris, get pummeled mercilessly for weeks by brutal attack ads paid for by, among others, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association — did dismiss “those motherfuckers” with a colorful epithet that no less than the vice president has used on the floor of Congress but that can’t ever appear in the New York Times.
But allow us a little context here.
Daly’s wife had every right to celebrate on election night — and every right to slam the forces that were so unwilling to accept a living wage for local workers, sick pay for employees, requirements that developers pay for affordable housing, and the rest of Supervisor Daly’s progressive agenda, which had made him the subject of a Karl Rove–style smear campaign.
And the Times (as well as the embittered blogger at the San Francisco Sentinel who leveled personal insults at the supervisor’s wife) utterly missed the point of what went on in San Francisco last week.
This was a watershed in city politics, an election that may turn out to have been every bit as important as the 2000 ballot that broke the back of the Brown-Burton machine. It was evidence that district elections work, that downtown money doesn’t always hold the day — and that Mayor Gavin Newsom made a very bad political mistake by aligning himself with some of the most intolerant, unpleasant, and ineffective forces in local politics.
NEWSOM THE LOSER
We ran into Newsom’s press secretary, Peter Ragone, the day after the election and asked him the obvious question: “Not a very good night for the mayor, huh?”
It was a hard point to argue: Newsom put immense political capital into two key races and was embarrassed in both of them. He worked hard for Rob Black, the downtown candidate trying to oust Daly in District 6, showing up at Black’s rallies, walking the streets with him, talking about the importance of the race, and helping him raise funds. His handpicked contender in District 4 was Doug Chan, a former police commissioner. Black lost by 10 percentage points; Chan finished fourth.
And a long string of progressive ballot measures that the mayor had opposed was approved by sizable margins.
Ragone began to spin and dissemble like crazy. “We endorsed [Black and Chan] but didn’t put a lot into it,” he said despite the fact that Newsom spent the last two weekends campaigning for his two favorites.
“The real key for us was Hydra Mendoza, who won [a seat on the school board],” Ragone said.
Yes, Mendoza, who works as the mayor’s education adviser, was elected — but she already had a strong base of support as a former leader of Parents for Public Schools and might very well have won without the mayor’s help.
Besides, if Newsom saw her as a top priority, why did she finish second in a race for three positions, behind Green Party candidate Jane Kim? And how significant will it be to have Mendoza on a school board that now has a solid progressive majority, one she’s not a part of?
Ragone shrugged again, sticking to his line.
But the Mayor’s Office can’t spin away the fact that, as pollster David Binder put it at a postelection event, “I don’t think Newsom had a very good night.”
“It showed that we had a progressive turnout and this is a progressive town,” Binder said.
Boris Delepine, a campaign veteran and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s board aide, went even further: “This election ranks up there with the 2000 supervisorial races as far as I’m concerned.”
In other words, progressives battled the downtown interests and won.
The most exciting race was in District 6, where Daly’s expected reelection was thrown into doubt a few weeks ago by some polls and the onslaught of downtown attacks on Daly (which Binder jokingly referred to as “a deforestation project” for all of the negative mailers).
The problem was that most of the material just attempted to savage Daly without really making the case for why Black would be better. That appears to have backfired.
In fact, the assault served to galvanize Daly supporters, who stepped up a vigorous campaign in the final push. “It was very efficient and very effective,” Binder said.
Or as Daly put it to his supporters on election night, “We were under attack…. San Francisco values were under attack, and you responded like nothing before. Five hundred volunteers were in the streets today to say this district is not for sale.”
The message from the Tenderloin, inner Mission, and South of Market was resoundingly clear: with district elections downtown can’t simply buy a seat on the board anymore. Money is powerful — but an organized grassroots campaign can still prevail.
The impact for the mayor is more than just the loss of a potential board ally. Newsom found himself in District 6 working closely with SFSOS — a group that has become so nasty and is so reviled, even two of its key founders, Senator Dianne Feinstein and financier Warren Hellman, have walked away in disgust.
“If all things were equal, I’d just as soon that SFSOS went away,” Hellman told us.
It’s not going to help the mayor’s reputation to be seen in that sort of company.
A HIPPER DUFTY
The District 8 race showed the power of district elections in a different way.
From the start it was going to be tough for Alix Rosenthal, a straight woman, to defeat incumbent supervisor Bevan Dufty, a gay man in what has always been a gay district. But Rosenthal says her candidacy had a clear impact on Dufty — during the late summer and fall, the onetime solid mayoral ally moved a few noticeable steps to the left, supporting Sup. Tom Ammiano’s universal health care bill and voting with the progressives (and against the mayor) for police foot patrols.
“Dufty became a much hipper person after I challenged him,” Rosenthal said.
Dufty told us the challenge made him work harder but had no impact on his votes. “What you saw on foot patrols was an immense amount of frustration with the police chief’s failures to lead the department,” he said. “That had nothing to do with this race.”
Binder pointed out that District 8 has a higher percentage of registered Democrats than any district in the city, and Dufty locked down party support early on. And even though Dufty’s voting record was less progressive than his district, he remains popular. “There are people who think he doesn’t vote the right way on the issues, but nobody thinks he doesn’t try hard,” Binder said.
The District 4 race was not only a test of the power of the mayor’s coattails in a district where Newsom has always been popular. It was also a test of how ranked-choice voting works in complex election demographics.
From early this year, when it became clear that incumbent Fiona Ma was going to the state assembly, Newsom and his allies tapped Chan as the candidate they would promote. That was an odd choice for Newsom, who claims to be a public power supporter: Chan’s law firm has received more than $200,000 in legal fees from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in just the past two years, and like his alliance with Black in District 6, the Chan endorsement put him on the side of one of the least popular actors on the local political stage.
And in the end, the mayoral support meant little: Chan finished fourth, after Ron Dudum, Ed Jew, and Jaynry Mak.
There was a certain amount of nervousness on election night when Dudum emerged atop the candidate list at the prospect that for the first time in a generation, the board would be without Asian representation. Four Asian candidates appeared to have split the vote, allowing Dudum to win.
But when the ranked-choice voting program was run Nov. 10, that concern evaporated: the new system allowed Asian voters to divide their preferences without risking that sort of vote-split result. When it was all over, Ed Jew emerged the winner.
As Jew told us, “I think it showed that having so many Asians benefited the top Asian vote-getter.”
GREEN DAYS
The school board and community college board races get less press than the top of the ticket, but as citywide contests, they can be even tougher for progressives. And this year the Green Party had some surprising victories.
Jane Kim, a Green, finished top in the balloting — remarkable considering that she didn’t have the endorsement of the Democratic Party. Mendoza came in second, followed by Kim-Shree Maufas. That puts three new members, all of them women of color, on the board and shows that activists frustrated by the votes of longtime incumbent Dan Kelly could defeat someone who until recently was considered a shoo-in for reelection.
Peter Lauterborn, a Kim supporter, was ecstatic about the win. “This is a massive triumph,” he said. “We beat the money and we beat the establishment.”
The same goes for the community college board, where John Rizzo, a Green, appears to have edged out Johnnie Carter, bringing new reform blood to an ossified and often corrupt agency.
Binder attributed the strong finishes by Kim and Maufas to their endorsements by the Guardian, the Democratic Party, and other lefty supporters. He was surprised by Rizzo’s apparent victory (absentees could still change the outcome) but most on the left weren’t. Rizzo had a lot of grassroots support and ran a strong campaign.
Similarly, Mirkarimi — who attended the postelection briefing along with fellow supervisor Daly — didn’t agree with Binder’s line on the school board, noting that the defeat of Kelly and the election of Kim and Maufas were strong endorsements for the stand that the current board lefties — Mark Sanchez, Sarah Lipson, and Eric Mar — have taken against positions by autocratic former superintendent Arlene Ackerman and her downtown backers.
“We got four votes on the school board,” was how Delepine put it, adding, “President Sanchez, man.” SFBG
Steven T. Jones and Alix Rosenthal are domestic partners. Tim Redmond wrote the analysis of the results in District 8. Amanda Witherell contributed to this story.

“NAN-CY! NAN-CY!”

0

No on 85/Yes on F Election Party
by Ailsa Chang

The scene at Medjool Bar tonight is upbeat, confident and loud. This election party hosted by the San Francisco Labor Council and Medjool’s owner, Gus Murad, is the party for everyone who didn’t have a party: No on 85, Yes on F, supporters for Bob Twomey for School Board, State Assembly Candidate Fiona Ma.

Midnight reflections

0

By Tim Redmond

The evening started out as a resounding victory for the national Democrats, a train wreck for California Democrats, and a defining night for San Francisco progressives. But the state results are getting a little tigher, and it now appears that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s huge victory won’t drag down every Democrat running for statewide office. John Garamandi may survive to be lieutenant governor (keeping far-right loon Tom McClintock out of that office). Jerry Brown will be the next attorney general, and Bill Lockyer the next treasurer.

And Prop. 90 seems to be sinking.

So all in all, a good night — except for Mayor Gavin Newsom, who must be sitting around wondering why none of the voters seem to want to do what he tells them to.

The near-certain defeat of Rob Black in District Six is a huge deal: It’s proof that a storng progressive with grassroots support and troops on the ground can beat back even a massive political assault by some of the most sophisticated and well-funded forces in the city. It’s also going to mena a few tough years for Newsom, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, SFSOS, Don Fisher and the rest of the anti-Daly gang: Daly has proven himself an effective politician, and he has never particularly liked it when jerks like these guys try to mess with him.

One of the more interesting aspects of this election was the money that Michela Alioto-Pier spent on ads for a race in which she had no real opposition — big, pricey, video ads on sfgate, for example. What’s that about? Well, part of what it’s about is that Mark Leno is in his last term in the state Assembly, and that seat will open up in two years, which means that in the spring of 2008, a Democratic primary contest will determine the next Assembly member from the east side of San Francisco. Tom Ammiano has already announced his candidacy. Bevan Dufty has loudly proclaimed that he won’t run. Is Alioto-Pier looking at that race?

If so, she’d probably have the support of the mayor — but from the looks of things tonight, that isn’t going to help much.

In fact, from the looks of things, Newsom needs to back away from the SFSOS types and try to make peace with the progressives if he wants to accomplish anything as mayor.

Notes from the underground

0

› kimberly@sfbg.com
Looking for hints of San Francisco’s renowned underground nightlife? It pays to keep your eyes and nose to the ground — and to be textable. That’s one of the few subtle signs that the hottest underground party in town is happening right here on an early Sunday summer morning: reedy, peg-legged hipsters standing out by the curb on this barren, bulldozed Hunters Point artery, busily texting and talking up fidgety, insomniac friends about their next landing strip. Beats bang gently in the background as fashion-damaged kids dangle from the railings along the short flight of steps to the door, smoking and guzzling from sacks like it’s recess at their own semiprivate too-cool school.
Upstairs in a long, tall space lined with huge rectangular windows, the Sixteens are getting ready for a set. And everyone else — and that’s every-fucking-body — is madly dancing on the other side to stabbing electrotech beats that come off so metallic and grimy that you could slice yourself open and get a nasty infection on ’em. Is that arch-retro-candy raver actually swinging a stretchy glow stick with one hand while trying to hold on to a mixed drink in the other? Swirling moiré patterns, projections of flames, and found industrial footage lick the walls of the room and the faces of the dancers. A burnt-orange slice of summer moon is slung low in the sky as if already hungover from the shit-hot party raging below.
Closing time — you may not know whom you want to take home, but do you know where your next party is? Above-grounders might say “you don’t need to go home, but you can’t stay here,” but you needn’t turn into a pumpkin and pass out in your car just yet. Bay Area underground parties like this one — and of every imaginable stripe and musical genre — are where sleepless scenesters flock.
So why is the underground scene continuing to blossom like a hundred Lotus Girls on a dust-caked playa in a city chock-full of wholly legit clubs? This summer, as a series of humongoid dance clubs including Temple Bar SF, prepped to throw open their doors, one had to wonder: why bother going off the grid?
Perhaps that’s where you can find the sounds you crave, a frustrating chore when clubs book conservatively — and an experience that may end all too soon with the city’s 2 a.m. last call. DJs such as Jamin Creed of BIG are seeing their grime and dubstep parties, for instance, starting to blow up now both over- and underground after gestating in after-hours soirees. “It’s a music-orienting thing, to be honest,” says underground breaks party thrower DJ Ripple, né Lorin Stoll. Citing undergrounds in Big Sur as well as the Harmony fest in Santa Rosa, the ex-Deadhead sees continuity between the city’s Left Coast vibe and “the merging of the counterculture of the ’60s with the rave culture of the ’90s, merging with the experience and professionalism of Burning Man culture in the 2000s. It’s created this nice renaissance in underground music.”
Dub it an unintended fringe benefit stemming from the failure to change the city’s last call two years ago, an effort led by Terrance Alan, chairman of the Late Night Coalition and legislative chair of San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission. That move failed — after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution urging the state legislature to make the change — when the proposed legislation got stuck in committee at the State Assembly. Despite the support of the city’s Entertainment Commission, Board of Supervisors, and Mayor Gavin Newsom, the bill was opposed by antialcohol groups and organizations such as the Oakland Police Department, whose officers testified that a later last call in San Francisco would create traffic accidents in Oakland. “Those observations were never supported in the data on changes in last call,” Alan says today.
The reality is that partly as a result of those quashed endeavors, the Bay Area underground party scene continues to flourish, via Tribe.net, lists, and those omnipresent flyers. Tomas Palermo — a DJ, Guardian contributor, and former XLR8R editor — thinks the underground warehouse and techno event circuit has been bubbling along nicely since 1988, with surges in house in the early ’90s and explosions in drum ’n’ bass during the dot-com years. And even a seasoned listener like him isn’t immune to the simple pleasures of an outdoor beatdown: “In the last two weeks I went to a free [breakbeat] sound system gathering in a tiny grassy nook of Golden Gate Park and a Sunset Party in McLaren Park,” he e-mails.
The latter gatherings, put on by Pacific Sound System, just may embody the resilient, oh-naturel vibe of the undergrounds in this area. DJ Galen began the daytime Sunset Parties on summer Sundays about a dozen years ago at Golden Gate Park. Old-school — yep. Family oriented — believe it. Ideal if you’re still tweaked the morning after — maybe. An outdoor dance floor of up to 3,000 — yikes. “I just feel events are very much the reflection of the people who put them on, and you can kind of tell when people are doing it for money or just the pure feeling of bringing people together through music and the outdoors,” says Galen, who co-owns Tweekin Records. When he started the parties, he was a shell of a raver, burned out from lifelong training as a swimmer for the 1996 Olympics. “I hadn’t felt like I lived life and came home and some friends took me to a party and just opened my eyes,” he recalls, citing the Wicked Crew’s Full Moon Raves as inspirational. “Looked at all these people having fun and a sense of community — I just got so excited that this whole other world existed and got immersed in it.”
He maxed out his credit card, bought a sound system, and began playing house music in the park as the audience grew. His three-person collective has since produced successful overground boat parties, but they’ve maintained that earthbound sense of perspective. “I think that’s one major reason why things have gone well — we’re not out of it for ego,” he says. “We are very respectful of everyone, and in turn people are respectful of us. When we leave these parks, they’re spotless, and a lot of people have told us, ‘Wow, that was a really crazy party, but everyone’s so mellow and nice!’ SFBG

More underground:


Live bait: the secret life of warehouse shows


Oral Histories: underground gay sex clubs of the early ’90s

Party primer: underground party web sites

Ammiano’s coup

0

By Tim Redmond

Matier and Ross reported Sunday what everyone on the San Francisco left knew was coming: Sup. Tom Ammiano is formally announcing his run for State Assembly in 2008. Aside from the fact that Ammiano would make an excellent state Assembly member, here’s the political brilliance of the move: The only other person remotely rumored to be considering running for that seat is Sup. Chris Daly. In fact, behind the scenes, a lot of local players have been saying that state Sen. Carole Migden would suport Daly, even in a run against Ammiano.

But Daly is up for re-election this fall, and obviously can’t announce a run for Assembly (if he’s even interested) until well after November. That means for months to come, Ammiano will be the only game in town — and he can start lining up endorsements. According to M&R, Migden has formally endorsed Ammiano, as has the incumbent in that seat, Mark Leno.

Daly would also be an excellent member of the state Assembly — but if he wants to run, he’s already way behind and will have the challenging task of explaining why he’s better than Ammiano, particularly when they generally agree on all the issues.

The flaws in the Josh Wolf case

0

› sarah@sfbg.com
Last week the California State Assembly and Senate unanimously asked Congress to pass a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to disclose unpublished material and the identity of a source.
Part of the motivation for the new push for federal legislation is the recent spate of federal attempts to imprison journalists who won’t give up their confidential sources. The latest victim of that crackdown, Josh Wolf, is in federal confinement after refusing to give prosecutors outtakes from a video he shot of a demonstration at which a San Francisco police officer was injured and a taillight was broken on a cop car (see “The SFPD’s Punt,” 8/23/06).
And while Congress is reviewing the case for protecting journalists, the Guardian has taken a hard look at the case against Josh Wolf — and it’s looking more dubious every day.
For starters, the local cops and the federal prosecutors are trying to claim that Wolf isn’t really a reporter.
That’s what sources in the San Francisco Police Department and the US Attorney’s Office tell us, and it’s borne out by the way the feds are pressing their case in court. In legal briefs, the government never refers to Wolf as a journalist, only as a witness. One federal official, who spoke on the condition he not be identified, likened Wolf to a convenience store owner who has a security camera that catches criminal activity on tape.
There are all sorts of problems with this argument — the first being that the courts have never formally contested Wolf’s journalistic credentials. In fact, the local prosecutors admit in legal briefs that they contacted Washington to seek permission to subpoena Wolf — a process that’s required whenever journalists face this sort of legal action.
As Peter Scheer of the California First Amendment Coalition points out, “The Justice Department claims it complied with regulations that say you can’t subpoena a journalist for outtakes without getting a special order from the attorney general.”
Scheer also notes that under California law, even bloggers enjoy the reporter’s privilege, as recently established when Apple Computer unsuccessfully tried to obtain the identities of sources who allegedly leaked business secrets to bloggers.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, says that a case for Wolf qualifying as a journalist could be made under both the House and Senate versions of the Free Flow of Information Act, simply because Wolf was paid for broadcasting his video of the protest.
“In the Senate version, you have to be involved in journalism for money, make some part of your livelihood from it, while the House version is even broader,” said Dalglish.
Watching the part of Wolf’s video that he’s made public, which is posted online at www.joshwolf.net and was aired without his consent by at least three major TV networks before he was eventually compensated, it’s easy to speculate that the SFPD would not have delighted in the picture it paints of local law enforcement.
The footage of the July 8, 2005, protest begins peacefully with protesters, many of them wearing black ski masks, carrying banners saying “Anarchist Action,” “War is the Symptom, Capitalism is the Disease,” and “Destroy the War Machine.” As night comes on, the mood sparkles, then darkens. Someone lights a firecracker, smoke rises, helmeted police arrive, newspaper boxes are turned over, a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. office is sprayed with paint, and suddenly a police officer is captured holding a protester in what appears to be a choking position, while someone shouts, “Police brutality! Your career is over, fajita boy!” and an officer warns, “Leave or you’re going to get blasted. I’m a fed, motherfucker.”
At the same demonstration, Officer Peter Shields was hit in the head while charging into a crowd of protesters — and nobody knows exactly who hit him. That’s not on the public part of Wolf’s video, and Wolf and his lawyers insist there is no footage of the attack. Wolf fears that the government may be looking for something else — perhaps some video of other protesters — and will ask him to identify them. He refused to turn over the outtakes.
Carlos Villarreal, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, says District Court Judge William Alsup, who ordered Wolf to jail, “made a big deal that Josh did not have agreement with a confidential source, but his argument turns Josh’s video equipment into a de facto government surveillance camera.”
Noting that there is a lot of trust between Wolf and protesters at demonstrations — “People aren’t afraid to go up to the camera and say, ‘Did you check out the pig that’s kicking a guy down the street?’” — Villarreal claims that “independent journalists are harder to see and spot than their corporate counterparts.”
The second, perhaps equally troubling problem is that the Wolf case should never have gone to the federal level in the first place.
Alan Schlosser, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, told us there are a lot of red flags in the Wolf case, “beginning with the question, ‘Is there a legitimate federal law enforcement issue here?’”
The federal agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and the FBI didn’t choose to investigate the case — the San Francisco cops requested assistance. That in itself was odd: why is an assault on an officer a federal affair?
Schlosser asks, “Were the feds called in because they aren’t bound by the state’s reporter’s shield law?”
In theory, the local cops say it’s a federal issue because a cop car was damaged — and the city gets money from the federal government for law enforcement. Schlosser said it’s disturbing that “the SFPD doesn’t have to show the federal funds went towards paying for the allegedly damaged car…. So that statute could be applied to any number of situations. It’s very troubling. It federalizes law enforcement around demonstrations.”
A highly placed source in the SFPD offered a somewhat alarming explanation: the feds were brought in, the source said, not because of shield law issues but because the cops figured the JTTF and the US Attorney’s Office would move faster and more aggressively than San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris, who has not been on the best terms with the local police.
In other words, if this source is correct, the SFPD is choosing who will prosecute crimes — based on politics, not the law.
As of press time, all Harris’s office was saying was that “the DA strongly believes in the First Amendment and the rights of the press. She also believes in justice for members of the SFPD. An officer was gravely injured that evening, and those responsible need to be held accountable.”
Asked why the federal government was involved in the investigation, Luke Macaulay, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office, said, “This is not an attempt to profile anarchists and dissidents. It’s an attempt to get to the bottom of a crime.”
Macaulay also referred us to federal filings with the US District Court, which conclude that “the issue could not be more straightforward…. The incident is under investigation so that the grand jury can determine what, if any, crimes were committed.”
As far as we can tell, there’s nothing in writing that lays out when a San Francisco cop is allowed to ask for federal intervention in a case. All the SFPD General Orders say is that department members requesting assistance from an outside agency have to obtain the permission of a deputy chief.
According to records from the Investigations Bureau General Work Detail, Inspector Lea Militello filed a request for assistance from the FBI and JTTF to investigate a “serious assault against an SF police officer.” It was approved by Captain Kevin Cashman and Timothy Hettrich, deputy chief of investigations.
As of press time, the SFPD had not returned our calls inquiring why the FBI and JTTF were involved in an assault case, which is usually the domain of the DA’s Office.
David Campos, a member of the San Francisco Police Commission, said he thinks the commission needs to look at the issue “to make sure investigations are federalized when it’s appropriate and not as a way of getting around California’s shield laws.”
Reached Aug. 23 by phone in the Dublin Federal Correctional Institute, where he’s been held since Aug. 1, Wolf suggested that the feds are after more than pictures. “The Un-American Affairs Committee [in the 1950s] called in one person and forced them to make a list of all the people they knew. It was like Communist MySpace. So, I anticipate that they want all my contacts within the civil dissent movement.”
Wolf said he offered to let the judge view his video, which he insists does not capture the arson or assault. “There should not be a federal investigation. I published my video. They can use that to do their investigation.” SFBG
With all briefs filed, a decision on the Josh Wolf case is expected by Sept. 4.

Ammiano’s health care plan is fair

0

OPINION Universal health care. These days, most people want it, but no one wants to pay for it.
But like it or not, we all share in the expense of providing health care. We pay for it directly in our health care premiums or indirectly from higher costs for goods, services, and taxes. According to the activist group Health Care for All, “We spend over $6,000 per person in the US — two to three times the amount spent in other countries that insure everyone and have better health outcomes.” Our health care system, if you can call it that, is currently based on a corporate, for-profit model that increasingly leaves large numbers of people uninsured — and they must rely on taxpayer-subsidized public health programs.
Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing for universal health care in San Francisco, and there are three ways on the table to fund it.
The Committee on Jobs, Chamber of Commerce, and Golden Gate Restaurant Association champion a plan in which all businesses pay a set fee, whether or not they are providing health care for their employees. Under this plan, large businesses that are not providing health care for their employees will save big money. Small businesses — and every business already doing the right thing — would subsidize the minority of large businesses that don’t provide health care.
In fact, 63 percent of the projected $50 million in revenue raised by this plan would come from businesses with fewer than 20 employees. A full 80 percent would be paid by employers with fewer than 50 employees.
The local papers say Newsom supports a voluntary plan. I assume that means employers can choose whether to pay. I’m surprised anyone would propose this with a straight face. Most employers do provide health care. This legislation is about those that don’t. They haven’t volunteered to pay for their own employees’ health care; why would they pay for a city plan?
Then there’s Sup. Tom Ammiano’s proposal.
Ammiano’s plan includes a minimum spending requirement for health care services for all employers with 20 or more employees. Small businesses with less than 20 employees (the vast majority of registered businesses in San Francisco) don’t have to pay anything. Of the three proposals, Ammiano’s seems the fairest to the majority of employers that already provide health care.
The Committee on Jobs tells us that small businesses will be hurt by this plan. I’m always suspicious when a well-funded organization that exists to lobby for the interests of the largest corporations in San Francisco leads with an argument related to the impact to the small business community.
The SFSOS thinks that any decision on Ammiano’s health care plan will be made “predominantly by people who have never worked in retail business, never managed a staff, nor ever had to make a payroll.”
I operated a temporary employment business in San Francisco for 25 years. Ammiano’s plan levels the playing field for all businesses.
For the record, many of my former colleagues within the small business community provide very generous health care benefits. Employees in small businesses, after all, are like family. Many small business owners think that those who do not provide health care have an unfair competitive advantage.
If we’re going to have universal health care, everyone should pay. SFBG
Barry Hermanson
Barry Hermanson is running for state assembly in District 12 on the Green Party ticket.

Dist. 8 heats up

0

By Tim Redmond

Alix Rosenthal, who is challenging Bevan Dufty in District eight, has been getting some (electronic) press; BeyondChron has interview in which, among other things, she talks about keeping San Francisco weird. A sample quote: “I love how freaky it is. I love the freaks, and I include myself in the freaks.”

She also talks about real issues, about affordable housing, condo conversions, the loss of the city’s middle class. And she clearly has Dufty at least a little freaked; Pat Murphy over at the San Francisco Sentinel claims that he’s heard that “progressive big footers” leaned on Dufty to support Ammiano’s health-care legislation, threatening to pour money in to Rosenthal’s campaign if he didn’t.

I’m not sure the “big footers,” whoever they are, had to push much; I think Dufty sees that this won’t be a cakewalk of a re-election, and I think he also wants to run for state Assembly when Mark Leno is termed out, and he can’t really do it without some left credibility. On economic issues, particularly tenant issues, he’s out of touch with his district, and I think we’ll see him move to the left on a few select issues over the next few months to try to present some kind of case to win progressive support.

The “freaky” quote will no doubt get used to make Rosenthal sound flaky, but the truth is, she’s got a good point: When San Francisco gets too expensive, all the people who make it so special have to leave.

“Fabulous Fiona”

0

By Tina Rodia
At Fiona Ma party, Irish Cultural Center

At 9:09 p.m., with 17 percent of the precincts reporting, Fiona Ma already had 59 percent of the votes. Supporters at the party, which is about 300 people large, include the Arab Antidiscrimination Association, the organizers for the North Beach Festival, and members of the Outer Sunset community, where Ma is the district supervisor.

The organizers of the North Beach Festival refer to the State Assembly District 12 candidate as “Fabulous Fiona.” With drinks in hand, they are celebrating an early victory.

Approached by members of the media as she entered the room, Ma made statements regurgitating the standard “home ownership and business revenue are what’s good for San Francisco” talking points from her campaign Web site, her political mentor, former state senator John Burton, at her side.

Endorsements: The Greens

0

EDITORIAL We’ve long encouraged the California Green Party to focus its energy on local races, and in San Francisco, the Greens have had considerable success: Matt Gonzalez and then Ross Mirkarimi were elected supervisor as Greens (and Gonzalez made a hell of a run for mayor). Sarah Lipson and Mark Sanchez won school board seats. The idea of someone from the Green Party running citywide is no longer all that unusual, and if the party can continue to generate energy and enthusiasm over the next few years, it will become even more of a source of progressive leaders and provide competition to the Democrats who have controlled city politics for decades.

We focused in last week’s endorsements issue on a few contested Democratic primaries for state assembly and senate, but there are several Greens worthy of note who are challenging entrenched incumbents. Our Green primary endorsements:

For US Senate: Todd Chretien

Chretien is one of the most exciting Green Party candidates in the country. He’s trying to turn a nonrace into a referendum on war and abuse of power. This East Bay resident has spent years fighting for social justice, first as a socialist and then as a Green. He’s smart, passionate, eloquent, and right on the issues. He’s clearly not going to beat Dianne Feinstein, but if he gets any media attention, he’ll be able to raise some important issues.

For US Congress, District 8: Krissy Keefer

Keefer, a dancer and Guardian Goldie winner, has long been an active part of the city’s arts community. She’s always been political, and became an antigentrification activist during the dot-com boom. She has virtually no hope of beating incumbent Nancy Pelosi, and her platform is a little, well, abstract. But we’ve always liked Keefer and we appreciate her spirit in trying to hold Pelosi accountable.

For State Assembly, District 12: Barry Hermanson

Hermanson spent 25 years putting his ideals into action as the owner of a small employment agency, where he sought to raise pay rates for temporary workers. His strategy: reduce his own commission, and pay the temps more. He put a bunch of his own money into a successful citywide campaign to raise the minimum wage. If Janet Reilly wins the Democratic primary for this seat, most progressives in town will probably stick with her but if Sup. Fiona Ma comes out on top June 6, Hermanson could emerge as the only alternative. SFBG

Whole paycheck

0

› amanda@sfbg.com

On a Sunday afternoon, the Cala Foods at Stanyan and Haight is a dismal sight. Thrifty shoppers, beckoned by the 6070 percent off price tags walk out into the drizzle, empty-handed. The doors close permanently May 24, and there isn’t much left.

The owner of the building, Mark Brennan, plans to demolish the place, and is negotiating with Whole Foods the fast-growing organic food chain to build a new store on the site. Some Haight neighbors are looking forward to the organic option, but many are scowling about the potential for increased traffic in the foot-friendly hood and the fact that Whole Foods is known for high-end products with high-end prices. They refer to the store as "Whole Paycheck."

According to plans, the 28,000-square-foot store will be capped with 62 residential units, seven below market rate, and will sit on three levels of underground parking, tripling the current number of spaces. It will also be the westernmost Whole Foods location in the city, potentially drawing traffic eastward through the park.

"We talked briefly with Trader Joe’s and Rainbow Grocery, and sent a letter to Berkeley Bowl," Brennan told the Guardian. "Whole Foods is the only one willing to wait for development."

The construction is expected to take up to five years, so those in need of a local supermarket will be hard up for a while. "I’m very worried about the old ladies," said Spencer Cumbs, who’s worked at the Cala location for 11 years and often delivers groceries for the more infirm. "Where are they going to shop?" He tells them to visit him at the Cala on California and Hyde, where he’s been transferred, but that’s a long bus ride. There’s no other full-service supermarket in the area.

Like any chain store moving into a neighborhood, Whole Foods could hurt small local businesses, like Haight Street Market, an organic grocery started 25 years ago by Gus and Dmitri Vardakastanis and currently managed by the third generation of the family, Bobby Vardakastanis. "I don’t know if the neighborhood could support it," Bobby told us. "But we have a lot of loyal customers who don’t want to see us get hurt."

Fresh Organics, on the corner of Stanyan and Carl, is also optimally situated to take a hit. "This place rocks," said Erik Christoffersen, with his daughter strapped to his back and arms full of local produce. But he confesses he’d shop at Whole Foods too. "They don’t get meats and fish," he says of the local corner store. A recent Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council meeting on the future of the site drew some 80 residents. According to Calvin Welch, HANC’s housing and land use chair, the major concerns were that Whole Foods is too high-end and, he included, that "people would prefer a unionized grocery store like Cala."

The union issue is huge all over California, where unionized grocery stores are trying to compete against giant nonunion competitors like Wal-Mart. And the San Francisco supervisors are trying to give locals a degree of protection.

A new Grocery Worker’s Retention Ordinance, signed into law by Mayor Newsom on May 12, mandates a 90-day period of continued employment for grocery workers when retail stores larger than 15,000 square feet change hands. It would benefit workers at union stores, like Cala, that are replaced by nonunion retailers, like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.

Sup. Fiona Ma, who introduced the measure, was inspired by a meeting with employees facing potential job losses due to new ownership at three Albertson’s stores in the city, Bill Barnes, an aide to Ma, told us. An endorsement of her run for State Assembly from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 648, which advocated for the ordinance, was probably pretty inspiring as well.

Still, the bill comes too late to help the Cala workers. Employees at the Haight Ashbury store have been transferred to other locations, while ten workers trumped by their seniority have been laid off. SFBG

20 questions for Fiona Ma

0

Sup. Fiona Ma, who is running for state Assembly, last week decided to skip an endorsement interview that she scheduled with the Guardian – making herself unavailable to answer questions important to Guardian readers – so we’ve decided to put some of our questions out the publicly.

We encourage voters to press her for answers before the June primary, and if you have any luck, please let us know by e-mailing City Editor Steven T. Jones at steve@sfbg.com.

1.   What kind of health care system do you support for California? Ma’s opponent, Janet Reilly, has made single-payer health care her top campaign priority and issued a detailed plan for what that would entail. Health care is one of just five issues that Ma discusses on her website (the others being Housing, Education, Budget/Jobs, and Transportation), vaguely indicating she support universal coverage and stating, “I support state measures to provide incentives for business owners to cover their workers and other such efforts, but we need the political will on the national level to be successful.”  The first part sounds as if she’s advocating tax breaks to businesses that offer private insurance health plans to their employees. The caveat at the end sounds like she doesn’t intend to do much of anything until the feds do. But then, during the only debate that she’d agreed to have with Reilly, Ma said that she support a single-payer health care system, without offering any other details. This is arguably the most important issue the Legislature will face in the next few years and we have a right to know whose side Ma would be on.

2.   What will you do to protect renters and rental units in San Francisco? Again, it was the sole debate and its aftermath that yielded much confusion about where Ma stands regarding renters. She has made no secret of her strong support for increasing homeownership opportunities and her record is one of opposing local efforts to slow the number of Ellis Act evictions. But at the debate, she went further by declaring, “The Ellis Act is sometimes the only way for some people to become homeowners and I support it.” After being criticized for the statement, she defended herself in a piece on BeyondChron.org that only seemed to dig a deeper hole, arguing that she supports “ownership units [that] are affordable to San Franciscans of all income levels.” And how exactly is that going to happen?

3. What’s up with the $20 million?    In that same Beyondchron.org column, to defend her bad record on renters, Ma cited an effort that she made earlier this month to amend the city’s $20 million housing subsidy program to prioritize those who have been evicted under the Ellis Act. City officials said it would have had little practical effect and the gesture seemed to contradict you statements of support for Ellis Act evictions. Why should we see this as anything but a crass political deception?

4.      Why have you been unwilling to provide details about your policy positions even on the five issues you raised on your website – so voters would know how you intend to vote?

5.      How do you intend to increase revenues coming into the state, which you will need for even the broad goals you cited in education, transportation, and business “incentives”? We’re particularly interested in this answer after watching Ma chair the city’s Revenue Advisory Panel two years ago. That body was charged by the mayor’s office with recommending new revenue sources, and ended up recommending none.

6. Are you just a pawn of downtown business?At luncheon speeches that she gave to SFSOS and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce over the last couple years, Ma you blasted and belittled her colleagues on the board while fawning over the business community. What is she willing to do to show her independence from downtown?

7.      Why do most of your colleagues on the Board of Supervisors support Janet Reilly —  and why shouldn’t voters see that as an indictment of your tenure as a supervisor?

8.      Is there anything new that you would require of the business community, such as improved labor or environmental standards, greater corporate accountability and transparency, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, health care benefits for employees or their same sex partners?

9.      Your record is one of consistent opposition to requiring developers to pay more or offer more public benefits, such as open space or affordable housing. Why shouldn’t rich developers making obscene profits pay a little more? Has your position been influenced by the financial support of people like Oz Erickson, Joe Cassidy, Warren Hellman, Don Fisher, and Bob McCarthy?

10.     Why did you oppose legislation that would have limited the number of parking spaces that could be built in conjunction with the nearly 10,000 housing units slated for the downtown core, legislation that Planning Director Dean Macris called critical to good planning? Did your support from the downtown developers who opposed it have anything to do with your position?

11.     You supported a deal that extended Comcast’s cable contract without requiring any new public programming requirements, even though other comparable cities have better plans. Do you think that’s why Comcast is supporting your campaign?

12.     You’ve been a big advocate of tax breaks for corporations, including the biotech and film industries in San Francisco. How would you make up for these lost revenues and are you concerned that having cities compete with tax breaks creates a race to the bottom that starve public coffers? And on the biotech tax credit, given that such companies often lose money for years before reaping high windfall profits, how would be insure those companies eventually pay taxes to the city rather than just moving somewhere where they won’t be taxed?

13.     You were a longtime supporter of Julie Lee, continuing to support her even after it was revealed that she illegally laundered public funds into political campaigns. Why, and do you continue to support her?

14.     In a recent letter to supporters, you warned that Janet Reilly was trying to buy the campaign so people needed to give more. At the time, she had raised about $600,000 to your $700,000. How do you justify what appears to be a deceptive statement to your own supporters?

15.     We understand you support the death penalty, but many studies have shown that those on death row have been represented by inexperienced and ineffective lawyers, that they are disproportionately poor and minorities, and that based on detailed studies conducted in other states, it is likely that at least a few are not guilty of their crimes. Given all of that, are there any reforms that you’d like to see in how executions are carried out?
16.     In the debate, you said that the state is not required to balance its budget and that the federal government may simply print money to cover its budget deficits. Would you like to clarify or amend either statement?

 17.     What is your position on drug prohibition? Are there any current illegal drugs that you would decriminalize or are there any other changes you would make to the war on drugs?

18.    
The statement you issued on your website dealing with “Transportation” – one of just five issues you addressed – is only 48 words long. Is there anything that you’d like to add? And are there any other issues facing the state that you think are important?

19.    
  The Reilly campaign has warned of a possibly illegal effort to attack her by a group called “Leaders for an Effective Government,” using money laundered by Comcast and your old boss, John Burton. Are you aware of this effort and have you taken any steps to stop or repudiate it?

20. Why do you think it’s okay to avoid tough questions from the press?

San Francisco needs better candidates

0

The last time we had a major Democratic primary race for state assembly in San Francisco, you didn’t see a lot of head-shaking. In 2002 you were for Mark Leno or you were for Harry Britt, and either way you had very few doubts. Two strong candidates, two people who were eminently qualified to represent San Francisco in Sacramento, two people who had the credentials to be Democratic party leaders.

But I’ve talked to a lot of people about the June 6, 2006, race to fill the spot of Assemblymember Leland Yee, who is trying to move on to the state senate, and what I’m getting is: Gee, well, yeah. Gotta vote for somebody.

The thing is, Sup. Fiona Ma, the front-running candidate, has been absolutely horrible in office, a terrible vote on everything I care about. Her lukewarm supporters say she’d be a good liberal compared to most of the state legislators, and that may be true, but it’s hardly a ringing endorsement. Her opponent, Janet Reilly, is taking some excellent stands on issues, running hard to the left of Ma but she’s never held any elective office before, and, frankly, not that many people in San Francisco even know who she is. If she didn’t have a lot of money, she wouldn’t be much of a factor in this race.

Then you look slightly southward, at the race for state senate. The candidates: Yee, who has done almost nothing to distinguish himself in the state legislature, and Mike Nevin, a former San Francisco cop and San Mateo County supervisor. I don’t know a single person in the progressive San Francisco world who can get a bit excited about either of them.

San Francisco has got to start doing better.

Leno’s term will be up in two more years. I can think of a lot of great Democratic candidates (Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, Robert Haaland), but we all ought to be thinking about it, now, the same way we need to be thinking about the next mayor of San Francisco and the next member of Congress. Otherwise we’ll have a lot of Fiona Mas and Bevan Duftys in our future.

Now this: Speaking of politicians who need to get out of the way, Leslie Katz, the chair of the local Democratic County Central Committee, recently pulled an act of world-class political sleaze. She opposes Sup. Chris Daly’s Proposition C, a measure that would force the mayor to serve on the Transbay Terminal board, but the committee wasn’t quite ready to take a stand. So March 22, shortly after noon, she filed an official no-on-Prop.C ballot argument on behalf of the San Francisco Democratic Party.

In other words, she decided on her own to file a legal document to appear in the ballot handbook committing the party to a position it hadn’t taken.

In the end the party did vote later to oppose Prop. C. But Katz sent a clear signal that she had the committee wired and wasn’t even going to wait for the formality of an actual vote. Nasty business. It sends the exact wrong signal about the local party. She ought to resign in disgrace.<\!s><z5><h110>SFBG<h$><z$>

Don’t deregulate cabs

0

It’s not a great time to be a San Francisco taxi driver. High gas prices are taking cash directly out of drivers’ pockets, and fares haven’t kept pace. The only thing that seems to be solid is industry profits: According to a December 2005 city controller’s office report, cab companies have been making healthy returns even in bad economic times.

The way the companies make money, of course, is by leasing cabs to drivers, who are independent contractors. The "gate" — the cash the driver has to pay for the right to use a legal, properly permitted cab — runs about $91 for a 12-hour shift. That’s a lot of money to collect in fares before the driver makes a single penny, and it’s one of the reasons why driving a cab is less attractive today as a long-term occupation. Each year, the United Taxicab Workers union says, up to 25 percent of the city’s drivers turn over, meaning that one out of every four drivers has less than a year’s experience.

It’s possible the situation will take a turn for the better this spring, if the city moves forward with a plan to require cab companies and permit holders — who have the lucrative license to lease out their cabs to other drivers for profit — to help pay for health insurance for the drivers. It’s also possible things will get substantially worse, if Sup. Fiona Ma manages to win approval for legislation completely abolishing city controls on gate fees and allowing cab companies to charge drivers whatever the market will bear.

What the cab industry needs is more regulation, not less. In fact, it’s astonishing to see a San Francisco supervisor who is running for state assembly propose such a Bush-style deregulation plan that would enrich a few at the expense of many.

The Taxi Commission is slated to discuss the health insurance plan March 28. There are several options for how payment would be allocated; ideally, the drivers, permit holders, and cab companies would all pick up a share. But the Health Department has concluded that a working plan is possible — and the commissioners and supervisors should make sure one is put into action as soon as possible. *