For those who don’t live in San Francisco, our city probably seems like a one-party bastion of liberalism. Compared to the rest of the right-shifted country, it probably is. But scratching beneath the surface a bit, you find some pretty deep divisions. While most of us call ourselves Democrats, this is hardly a one-party town. For state and national offices, Democratic candidates get 80% of the vote. But it’s the local races where the divisions really come out, and that’s what I want to focus on in this diary.
First a quick primer for the uninitiated: San Francisco’s political divisions don’t break down so much on Democratic-Republican lines. You have some Democrats who align with Republicans on virtually all local issues, and others who align more with Greens and progressive independents more than they do with national Democrats. The words “liberal” and “conservative” are almost meaningless, because everybody and their mother calls themselves a liberal here, and no one dares call themself a conservative, even if they are. At least not if they hope to be elected. The operative words are “progressive” and “moderate.”
Progressives tend to take the well… progressive position on social issues such as marijuana legalization, the death penalty, war and militarism, civil liberties, open government, public power, same sex marriage, police accountability, police crackdowns vs. addressing root causes of crime, immigrant rights, etc. And they’re willing to push the envelope locally if national leaders don’t act. Moderates either take the opposite position, or at least shy away from addressing social issues and national issues on a local level. But the real divisions happen on economic issues. Progressives tend to be strongly pro-renter, pro-labor, and in favor of progressive taxation. They tend to want to increase services like expanding health care and worker protections like local ordinances for sick leave and citywide mimimum wage, and look for ways to find more revenue during tougher times. Moderates tend to oppose local level service increases and worker protections in good times, and cut first in tough times. They tend to oppose tax increases and align with business and landlord interests.
Of course I’m using the term “moderate” loosely… that’s the term they’d prefer to call themselves, while to me their positions generally sound conservative. Personally, I’m solidly on the progressive side, and that’s the philosophy that guides the following analysis. With that in mind, on to the races…
Supervisor
Aside from Mayor, control of the Board of Supes is the Holy Grail of San Francisco politics. Progressives have had a majority for 10 years now, while unable to capture the mayor’s office. For all local races, we get a ranked choice vote, eliminating the need for runoffs. This year the even-numbered districts are up.
D2: In this, the most conservative district in San Francisco, there’s really only one even halfway decent choice – Golden Gate Bridge Authority Board member Janet Reilly. Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about ranked choice here, because she’s the front-runner. Endorsed by the progressive-dominated local Democratic Party, but also by some moderates like Mayor Newsom and Dianne Feinstein, Reilly is not exactly a dyed-in-the-wool progressive, but she’d be much more independent than the outgoing supervisor for that district. In D2, that’s probably the best you can ask for.
D4: Incumbent Supervisor Carmen Chu is running unopposed. It’s a conservative district (by San Francisco standards), and she’s a conservative supervisor. Her politics are awful, but unfortunately there’s no way for her to lose.
D6: This is where it starts to get wild. My choice for first place, head and shoulders above anyone else, is Debra Walker, who got the sole endorsement of the Democratic Party. She’s an artist, a land-use activist, and a progressive member of the Planning Commission who understands landlord-tenant issues and has deep roots in the community as a 25-year D6 resident. It’s generally a progressive district, but there are a number of progressive candidates and only one strong moderate, so progressives would do well to use all three rankings, or they risk splitting the vote and handing the election to Theresa Sparks, the candidate backed by the Chamber of Commerce.
For #2, I’d probably pick James Keys, a young aide to outgoing 3-term supervisor Chris Daly. Few people gave him much chance of winning, but Daly made waves by endorsing him, and is working hard behind the scenes on his campaign. Daly has been the board’s strongest progressive, and downtown hates him with a passion for his abrasive but effective advocacy. More importantly, Daly’s a capable organizer, and when he says that Keys has a chance, folks should know by now to ignore him at their peril.
I’d go with Jane Kim in for #3. I have my issues with her candidacy. She only recently moved to the district. She’s taken some rather disturbing positions on a few local issues. But she’s been a solid progressive vote on the school board, and 90% of the time I think she’d be a good vote on the Board of Supes. She has a strong campaign, so I’d rank her third as an insurance policy against a moderate takeover of the seat.
D8: There are 4 candidates here. 3 of them are absolutely lousy, and one of them is awesome. That would be Rafael Mandleman. As for the rest, I don’t know if I’d even bother with ranked choice, because there’s really not much air between them. This district encompasses Harvey Milk’s old base in the Castro, and as such should be progressive. On the issues, it trends that way, but it’s also very wealthy. A lot of the graying LGBT residents are now more concerned with their property values than with social justice, and moderate candidates for supervisor have been able to pull it out lately. If Rafael wins, it would be a progressive pick up, but it’s not going to be a slam dunk by any means. Scott Weiner, one of the local DCCC’s most conservative members, has been running for 2 years now, and he could win. When the Democratic Party endorsed Mandleman as their first choice, Weiner took his name out of consideration for any of the other slots, saying that he’d win anyway without the party’s backing. Hopefully he’ll be proven wrong.
D10: With 21 candidates, no one has a clue how this is going to turn out. My picks:
#1: Chris Jackson. He’s a solidly progressive member of the Community College Board, who fought for accountability and played a role in bringing down the corrupt administration of Chancellor Day. As a city-wide elected, he’s the only progressive with proven vote-getting ability. And he’s African American. Personally, I hate identity politics. But if an African American doesn’t win this district, the board won’t have a single aa member, and that’s going to be used as a wedge issue by those who couldn’t care less about aa representation, but want would gladly make it an issue in order to get rid of district elections.
#2: Tony Kelly, a longtime D10 activist and opponent of the shady Lennar development project.
#3: DeWitt Lacy. Honestly, I’m not too sure about Lacy. I think he tends to tell people what they want to hear. But he’s a civil rights attorney with experience fighting police brutality cases, and an opponent of gang injunctions and the draconian sit/lie proposal on the ballot. He also scored the first place endorsement of the Democratic Party, and second place from the influential San Francisco Bay Guardian. With that lineup, again, I’d put him in my rankings as insurance.
The two candidates who shouldn’t be anywhere near anyone’s list are Lynette Sweet and Steve Moss. Sweet is a BART board member who told the moderate group Plan C the other day, “I thought I was a liberal, till this race. Then I realized I’m as conservative as they come.” Fantastic, just what we need. Steve Moss is a real estate speculator who may or may not even live in the district. At the same forum, he told the group “People think I’m anti-tenant because I bought a 4-Unit Building and condo-ized it. I think that’s a good thing.” No, Steve, it’s not a good thing to evict renters so you can make a buck. If you don’t understand that, you have no business in politics in this town.
School Board
There are 11 candidates for 3 slots, and the only one who I find inspiring is incumbent commissioner Kim-Shree Maufus. She’s been a leader on restorative justice, closing the achievement gap, and opposing military recruitment in the schools. Besides that, she really helped change the culture of the school board from that of a rancorous debate society where members fought to score political points with each other, to one where the board members can at least talk to each other and work together constructively.
Three members will be elected, and there’s been a tendency for progressive organizations to fill up 3 slots. The Guardian and DCCC did this, trying to pick the “best of the worst” to fill up their endorsement slates. I don’t think that’s a terrific strategy. In a multi-seat constituency where there are fewer decent candidates than seats, sometimes it’s better to just vote for the good ones and leave it at that. This is NOT ranked choice, and your votes for other candidates can indeed hurt the chances of your preferred candidate of winning a seat.
The only other major contested races are BART Board and the judicial races.
For BART Board, my pick, and the DCCC’s, is Bert Hill. The current incumbent, James Fang, is a Republican who has coasted without a serious opponent for way too long. Part of the problem is that he’s run with the backing of luminaries like Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, and Dianne Feinstein (see what I mean when I talk about Democrats who act like Republicans on the local level!). Fortunately, this time the party itself finally gathered the courage to buck the politicians and stepped in on behalf of Fang’s opponent, Democrat Bert Hill. Enough is enough.
San Francisco Superior Court
Believe it or not, this one has turned into a real barnburner. It started when Michael Nava, an author and respected attorney who worked at the Supreme Court for Justice Carlos Moreno, gathered the gumption to… get ready for this… run against an incumbent (gasp)! Well, everybody knows that’s just not done. Incumbent judges are supposed to get a free ride, like the one-candidate elections they hold in places like Burma and North Korea. See, the way it works is that judges retire in the middle of their terms, so that their replacement is chosen by the governor instead of an election (and just by coincidence, that would be a Republican governor for 23 of the last 28 years). Then they have to run, by law, in these pesky little elections, where the hoi polloi ostensibly get to vote on them. But that’s no problem, because the legal community and the political establishment just circles the wagons and vilifies any other candidate who dares to run in these elections. That’s so that the judiciary can remain apolitical, because everyone knows that judges don’t get involved in politics!
And that’s how we get a bunch of rich old conservative white guys dominating the courts, even in progressive San Francisco. Well, Michael Nava decided to cut through the BS and run against Richard Ulmer, a Republican-turned “DTS” appointed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I put “DTS” in quotes because up until a few months ago he was a Republican, who in fact contributed money to Republican candidates, including… Arnold Schwarzenegger (oh what a coinkydink!). As a friend of mine said, “he declines to state he’s a Republican.” Of course both parties play this game of circle the wagons. No sooner did the local Democratic Party endorse Nava, then none other than John Burton goes around twisting arms to overturn the endorsement! Maybe they all figure that they need to do this so that Republicans don’t challenge their judges when it’s their turn. There are just two problems with that… 1) Democrats haven’t gotten their “turn” very often in the past 28 years, and 2) Being nice to Republicans doesn’t mean they’ll be nice to you, as President Obama has found out.
Fortunately, the local Democratic Party understands this. They stuck to their guns with Nava. Slowly but surely, the people of San Francisco will make their court system representative of the people of this city. Nava for judge.
The rest of the Judicial races
It’s much the same deal with the rest of the judicial races. More one-candidate politburo-style elections where you don’t have the option of voting for anyone but the incumbent. In my humble opinion, it makes a mockery of the democratic process. But… you do have the option to vote NO. And if the incumbent doesn’t get 50%+1 yes votes, the governor will appoint a replacement. Well, I’m going to commit blasphemy here and recommend waiting a bit to see how far ahead Jerry Brown is in the polls at the end, and then if things look good for him, vote NO on every single one of them, with the exception of Justice Carlos Moreno.
Judges matter. They matter for the environment, corporate accountability, LGBT and other minority rights, police abuse, you name it. We need to stop pretending that judges don’t wade into politics. Judges are as political as they come, and the other side knows this. That’s why they had no qualms about torpedoing 3 great California Supreme Court Justices in 1986, permanently altering the court. Progressives need to start fighting back. Almost every one of the judges sitting on all levels of the court on the San Francisco ballot are conservative judges appointed by Republican governors, and their ideology affects their decisions. They may be “qualified” in a strict legalistic sense of the word, but I’m sure Governor Jerry Brown is perfectly capable of appointing qualified replacements.
A word on the Lt Governor and AG races
I’m not going to spend any time on state races already covered in other places, or local races where one candidate is the overwhelming favorite. But there are a couple of San Franciscans running for statewide office, and as a San Francisco progressive, I do want to say a word about them.
I may well get pilloried for this… but I cannot in good conscience vote for Gavin Newsom. Some progressives want Newsom to win, just so the Board of Supervisors can appoint a better mayor. Others want his career to end. NOW. I’m with the latter camp. This is a guy who opposes all revenue measures, brags about all-cuts budgets, wants to turn over immigrant children for deportation, uses the cops to crack down on poor and homeless people, and has consistently opposed all progressive measures to make life better for people in the city. He is bought and paid for by the Chamber of Commerce. If Maldo eeks out a win, Maldo can be defeated later. If Newsom wins, then it’s on to Senator, Governor, and whatever else. It’s going to be extremely hard to stop a good-looking young Democrat in a Democratic state, even if he’s truly awful on just about every issue. I don’t want to see him move up.
Kamala Harris… I’ve never been a fan of Harris. We had a good DA once. Kamala Harris came in and eviscerated some very effective pretrial diversion programs put in place by her predecessor. Her approach has been ineffective, and crime is up. She gets credit for sticking to her guns on opposition to the death penalty, but don’t expect that on a statewide level. She’s already said that she’s going to be a tough enforcer of the death penalty statewide. OTOH, Cooley is far worse. But for San Francisco residents, there’s an additional factor to consider – who the mayor appoints as a replacement DA. And yes, it’s selfish, but I am truly scared about what kind of an individual Newsom would appoint to replace her. Having Harris instead of Cooley as AG would be no victory for me, if that means a draconian DA in San Francisco who cracks down on victimless crimes and believes in Guliani-style “broken windows” nonsense. Harris isn’t the best, but it could (and will) be much worse if Newsom appoints. So I’m going to go by the following flow chart to decide on DA:
If Newsom is losing badly for Lt Guv: vote Green Party for AG
If Newsom is winning or close, but looks like he may still be able to appoint on his way out: vote Green Party
If Newsom is winning, AND the City Attorney issues an opinion that the new mayor will appoint: hold nose and vote Harris.
On to the local Props
As usual, there are a bunch this year
AA: YES Citywide vehicle license fee to pay for stuff like public transit. I’ve long been an advocate of this as a source of revenue
A: YES Earthquake safety bond for retrofitting thousands of seismically unsafe apartment buildings. Nice to know that after passing a bond for a shiny new police command center, they finally get around to making sure us renters don’t die in earthquakes.
B: NO Massive increase in health care premiums for city workers and their families. We’re talking thousands here.
C: YES Mandates the mayor appear in person at one meeting of the Board of Supervisors every month. Common sense measure that would allow for more transparency in government and better communication between the mayor and board
D: Non-citizen voting in school board elections. I’m really torn on this, and not for the reasons most people would be. I have no problem with non-citizen voting. Lots of countries and some US states allow it for some offices, and the sky doesn’t fall. We all live here, and we all have a stake in who governs us. The problem with this particular measure is that it only allows parents of kids in SFUSD to vote, and ONLY in school board elections. The unspoken assumptions underlying this measure are that 1. Only parents have a stake in who gets elected to the school board, which is an insult to all the other stakeholders in elections. 2. Young people don’t matter (again). See, if an immigrant student is 18 years old by the time of the election, this measure doesn’t give him or her the right to vote. But their parents? Sure! Young people are invisible to politicians, and I’m sick and tired of that attitude. On the other hand, what a great message to send to the teabaggers and the minutemen that San Francisco supports immigrant rights!
E: YES Election day voter registration. It increases turnout, particularly for young voters. It works. Let’s do it.
F: NO There’s something really fishy about this one. Moderate supervisor Sean Elsbernd really pushed for this change to the way people are elected to the Health Service Board, all to save the city some $30,000. If he really wanted to save $30,000, he could have scraped it up from the spare change in his own office budget. What is this really all about? Elsbernd says it’s just a tiny little good guvmint measure But it seems like a lot of effort just to save a little bit of money which could have been saved in a million other ways than fiddling with the elections to an obscure board. Teachers unions are suspicious, because Elsbernd has never been a friend to labor, and so am I.
G: NO Another bright idea from Sup. Sean Elsbernd, but this one’s pretty transparent. He wants to capitalize on people’s anger at MUNI and hope that the electorate will stick it to the drivers. The problem is with management, not rank-and-file drivers who have a tough job (driving massive vehicles through narrow, hilly streets without so much as a bathroom break) and live in the most expensive city in America. An attack on labor that deserves a resounding NO.
H: NO Newsom didn’t like who San Francisco Democrats elected to represent them on the DCCC, so he decided to put an initiative on the ballot asking Republicans and independents as well as Democrats to forbid Democrats from voting for certain public officials for DCCC (but not others – he gets to keep his seat). It’s undemocratic, cynical, heavy-handed, spiteful, hypocritical, and almost certainly unconstitutional.
I: NO Opening precinct polling places on Saturday is a good idea. Paying for elections with private funds is most emphatically NOT! I’m all for Saturday voting, but not at the cost of privatizing elections.
J: YES Increasing hotel taxes by 2% is exactly the kind of creative revenue solution the city should be looking for to fund vital services.
K: NO It’s a poison pill to kill prop J, put on the ballot by Gavin Newsom, who has bragged about his all-cuts budget and opposition to any new taxes. It’s a knee jerk measure that Assembly Republicans and Howard Jarvis would be proud of.
L: NO Lets cops fine and arrest people for sitting on the sidewalk. This is the most unbelievably draconian thing I’ve ever heard of. Supporters say they need it because they don’t like some of the kids hanging around their businesses. But not to worry, they say. Cops won’t use this law to rough up protesters, artists, or just “ordinary” people sitting and talking to each other. They’ll just have the discretion to go after whichever people they don’t like. That makes it even worse! It means if you’re sitting on the sidewalk wearing armani and gucci, the cops will probably be cool with you. But if you’re sitting on the sidewalk wearing baggy jeans and sporting spiked hair and tatooes, off to jail you go. Last time they did this in the 70s, they said they needed it to get rid of the hippies. Instead the cops used it to harass gays in the Castro (not that harassing hippies is any better!). Harvey Milk fought to repeal it. How quickly we forget. This is wrong on so many levels.
M: YES I’m not wild about Prop M, the “community policing” measure that would mandate foot patrols. Foot patrols aren’t always the right way to go, and in some cases just serve to provide another avenue for police harassment. But I’m voting for this one, because it’s presented as an alternative to the infinitely more draconian Prop L. It’s written in such a way that if it passes, Prop L doesn’t get implemented. The sky won’t fall if we have more cops walking the beat, and it represents the best chance to kill the sit/lie measure.
N: YES Increases the real estate transfer tax on real estate valued over $5 million, mostly big commercial properties. Billed as a way of getting downtown to pay their fair share, in fact they’ll still pay nowhere near their fair share, considering the increase is tiny. 0.5% increase for properties valued $5 million to $10 million, 1% increase for properties over $10 million. The “moderates” and real estate lobby oppose it of course, but their arguments are specious.
Full disclosure: The author has absolutely no financial relationship to any of the candidates/ballot measures mentioned above, but they’re putting their money/time where their mouth is, and have contributed to the campaigns of Debra Walker, Rafael Mandleman, Chris Jackson, Michael Nava, and No on Prop L.