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SF-Mayor: Gavin WILL have a challenger

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And Chris Daly will make sure of that.  Daly is set to organize a Progressive Convention in San Francisco for June 2, whereupon he will get together all of the various progressive coalitions and leaders and make sure somebody run. 

Chris Daly is sorting out as he plans the 2007 Progressive Convention, the first of its kind in more than 30 years, to take place June 2 in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood, which Daly represents. The gathering is expected to be a who’s who of San Francisco progressives, at which attendees will consolidate a platform and nominate a candidate to challenge Mayor Gavin Newsom as he runs for re-election in November.  (SF Chron 5/15/07)

At the very least, Daly is considering a run for the position himself.  Carole Migden (SD-03) is expected to show up, Matt Gonzalez and former Mayor Art Agnos are unconfirmed as of now.  There are some great big pros and cons for all of the possible candidates, but perhaps you should check out the SF Party Party’s endorsement of, um, well, anybody against the Gav. 

There is an unspoken fear amongst all candidates of being some sort of sacrificial lamb, but that’s not universally true.  For some of these candidates, the mayoral race could serve as a good springboard even with a Gavin loss.  For example, Carole Migden seems to be having connections with the progressives that she claims to represent.  What better way to get your name out there than challenge the pro-business Mayor? And for Matt Gonzalez, aka “I’m taking my marbles home with me”, this is his shot. In four years, are people really going to remember him.  Matty G. could do a lot of great things, in SF or in Sacramento, but the guy has to show up…and pronto.  Oh, and perhaps he could um…make endorse a Democrat for president so people know he’s somewhat of a pragmatist and not merely a Nader acolyte. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that)

With the public financing and Gavin’s vow to break the spending cap, a challenger would have a big pot of money to play with.  Of course, multiple challengers would threaten that pot o’ money, but I think that’s what the convention is all about. Settling on one nominee will be crucial. 

Bay Area, San Francisco

A friendly reminder of the power of incumbency

(Updated…with pictures before and after the flip – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

UPDATE: I’ve now posted the image of the flyer. Personally, I’m of the mind that it gives the media far too much credit.  Incidentally, the SF Chron story that was attached quotes only one person as to how divisive the election will be quotes only Don “I must have another 4 years” Perata and political ally, but generally cool dude, Aaron Peskin. ANd in the SacBee story that was attached, Peskin seems to be mourning the loss of the political machine:

“Since the Jerry Brown-John Burton machine has retired, there are no kingmakers left in San Francisco,” Peskin said. “There’s nobody to knock anybody’s heads together to say who should and who shouldn’t run.”

Uh sure, them was some great days for democracy. Look, I have enormous respect for BOS President Peskin.  But he’s just wrong on the fundamentals here.  (oh…and I have a cool picture from SFPride with both leno and peskin over the flip)…

The SFYD endorsement apparently means quite a bit. Enough to send out some friendly reminders from political allies on why  incumbency ROX!! Woohoo!

Apparently, two electeds in the City haven’t been reading Calitics enough. You see the thing is “incumbent” alone isn’t enough anymore. Nobody owns a seat, you get what you earn, nothing more, nothing less. Our community is plenty strong. We can handle a little politics.

So, over the flip, I repeat my top 5 reasons, and I invite everybody to read my piece in Capitol Weekly.

Top 5 Reasons Primaries are Important

1) Primaries get the grassroots growing and are great training grounds for new leaders.
2) Primaries are, in many CA districts, the only real election at all.  Voters should get the chance to vote where it means something.
3) Primaries get people to register in a party (yay, more registered Democrats).
4) We get a real debate in places where that is frequently missing. Electeds should be held accountable to their constituents to explain their views.
5) Primaries force electeds to be more responsive to their constituents and to better represent the interests of those constituents.

Photo: (from left) Aaron Peskin, Hank “Mister SF” Donat, Wes Culwell, Mark Leno, and Brian Leubitz

Bay Area

Democracy. In Action.

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San Francisco Board of Supervisors Committee meetings can be, well, how do I put this, uhhh, boring.  And today’s meeting of the Budget and Finance Meeting was exactly the same.  A few conversations about a city car barn, and some greening on Alemany Blvd.  The meeting picked up a bit when the topic of community choice aggregation came up.  Several speakers from the Sierra Club told the Board that global warming is real. (Good point guys, but, let’s not use Katrina as the right uses 9/11).

But the real reason I was there was an email from Democracy Action to get the Supes to force Sequoia to release their source code.  As I said then, and I stick to now, I don’t think that the city should be doling out about $9 million to provide business to a company that has already been shown to be unreliable.  And by unreliable, I mean a recent report that computer scientists at  Princeton have hacked Sequoia machines to flip votes from one candidate to another.

A report from the meeting over the flip…

The Sequoia agenda item was introduced by Supervisor Tom Ammiano who acknowledged the criticisms as he introduced the representative from the Board of Elections.  The contract calls for a four year term with plenty of liquidated damages clauses to allow Sequoia to plan for any contingency. And even though Sequoia has promised to introduced IRV software, there is still no guarantee that the system will be ready for the November 2007 mayoral election.

What followed could only be described as a public outcry.  About 20 people came up and spoke against the contract (including me).  After everybody had finished speaking, Supervisor Chris Daly went on to savage the Sequoia representative.  He asked, repeatedly, if Sequoia would hand over the code.  And for every time Chris asked, three times did Sequoia-guy evade.

At this point, Supervisor Daly pushed the approval vote off to next week, and with both Daly and Ammiano in opposition, plus my own Supervisor, Bevan Dufty also opposed, this contract seems far from a done deal.