The newspaper editorial boards have been coming out overwhelmingly opposed to the Landlords' Scheme to end rent control and environmental protections. Just today, four newspapers have come out in opposition to Prop 98:

LA Times                          Fresno Bee

Lompoc Record              North County Times

Of course, some had speculated about the independence of  the LA Times' Editorial board becuase Times owner Sam Zell is a major donor to Prop 98 and stands to make a tidy sum if 98 passes. However, they came out strongly against 98:

With the ill-considered Proposition 98, property rights advocates once again have undermined themselves and poorly served homeowners, businesspeople and real estate investors by overreaching. It would have been so easy to give Californians what they need: assurance that no city, county, other local government or the state can condemn property, evict the owner and turn the land over to a developer who donated to elected officials and then convinced them that he could make the plot prettier and more productive. … The Times urges a no vote on Proposition 98 and a yes vote on Proposition 99. LA Times 

 This is what leaders and organizations throughout California have been saying for months: Prop 98 is a deceptive scheme in favor of landlords. That's why groups like the AARP, the League of Conservation Voters, and the California Democratic Party all urge a NO vote on Prop 98 and a Yes vote on Prop 99.

If you want to learn more, please visit our website at NoProp98.org.

Another quick reminder of a No on 98 rally and press conference at SF City Hall today at Noon. Bring your carboard box!

The SF Bay Guardian released their endorsements for local races and state propositions. These tend to be some of the most influential endorsements in the City, and to a lesser extent, in the region. As always, they do a laudable job presenting a thorough analysis of each race and the relative merits of each position. Hats off to Tim Redmond and the crew at the SFBG.  Here’s a summary of their positions, and I’ll discuss some of them over the flip.

Prop 98: No, No, No

Prop 99: Yes, Yes, Yes

SD-03: Mark Leno

SD-09: Loni Hancock

AD-13: Tom Ammiano

AD-14: Kriss Worthington

CA-08 (Pelosi): No Endorsement

Let’s start with Props 98 and 99. (I work for No on 98) They state the position that progressives across the state have come to, whether Jon Coupal thought the opposite might be true, Prop 98 is a disaster for California. And they even give us a nice little way to remember which is the good one: “We hate 98, but 99 is fine.” Cute.

On to the Senate Races, surely the most watched position in this endorsement slate was the issue of SD-03 (aka Rumble in the Bubble, that’s mine, I want royalties for that, even though I do work for Mark Leno.)  The BG has endorsed both Leno and Migden in the past, but they haven’t been so into Joe Nation. (I don’t know if they ever endorsed him in a primary…he ran unopposed for at least one term in the Assembly.) So, this came down to a decision between the two San Francisco gay candidates.

The BG sees strengths and weaknesses in both candidates. Migden has passed some good pieces of legislation like community choice and toxics legislation, and Leno has a record of protecting vulnerable populations from evictions and passing the marriage bill. But they also disliked Leno’s close ties to Mayor Newsom and Migden’s connections to Gap Founder Don Fischer who is a huge “school choice advocate.”

The BG, like me, is a fan of primary challenges in this one-party town., and they laud the attention the mostly absentee Migden has now paid to the district. But toss Migden’s “imperious and arrogant” ways to her campaign finance troubles, and the BG tilted towards Leno. “In the end, we’ve decided – with much enthusiasm and some reservations – to endorse Assemblymember Mark Leno.”

SD-09: Loni Hancock. I’m a fan of both Hancock and Chan. Whomever wins will be a great Senator to replace the, shall we say “imperious,” Don Perata. The BG went with Hancock based upon her work on the budget.

AD-13: Ammiano. He’s running unopposed, but that is, in and of itself, is a testament to Ammiano. People in SF love the guy, for good reason. He’s great personally as well as politically.

AD-14: Kriss Worthington. There are some great candidates here, but Kriss Worthington, the openly gay Berkeley Councilman that has been the heart of Berkeley’s progressive movement, for years will be a great legislator. He’s willing to stand alone for progressive values, if need be.  And, in Sacramento, need exists. Often.

CA-08: The Guardian chose not to endorse Speaker Pelosi, stating that she no longer represents San Francisco’s progressive values.

I’ll leave the other races to the Guardian’s excellent endorsement editorial, save one where I think they got it wrong. That is the SF DCCC endorsement of the so-called HOPE Slate. Besides the obvious play off of Obama’s campaign, my issue is with a few members of the slate.  Specifically, the inclusion of two San Francisco supervisors on the slate. Now, I understand that the Supervisors want to ensure that their political positions get into the Party’s apparatus, but frankly, the point of the DCCC should be less about policy positions and grandstanding and more about organizing Democrats in San Francisco to ensure turnout.

I understand that the endorsements of the party have a very strong impact upon the vote for local issues here in San Francisco. But it is hard to argue that the SF Democratic Party has been anything other than progressive in the last two years. And furthermore, while hope is terrific and all, after all I am an Obama supporter, the results of elections depends on the hard work of registering voters and turning them out. Under the leadership of Scott Wiener, the SF DCCC has done just that. SF is one of the few counties to increase Democratic percentages during 2007. Fighting the battle against increased apathy and DTS registrations, we’ve been winning.

Scott has been an enormous part of that success and deserves re-election to the DCCC and to the chair.

My Disclosure.

The LA Daily News takes a look at some of the people that could be harmed by Prop 98’s odious landlord power grab. This isn’t just some hypothetical, but real people living here in California. People will be forced to leave the cities and head out to the exurbs or out of state. For example:

He’s a disabled Vietnam veteran. She’s a retired teacher who spends most of her pension on health insurance.

Arnie and Marilyn Bernstein are among an estimated 1million Angelenos with a rent-controlled apartment.

But if voters kill rent control in a June ballot measure, the Bernsteins say, their monthly payment would jump from $876 to $1,300 – a 48 percent increase.

“We couldn’t afford another apartment,” said Marilyn Bernstein, 62, of Canoga Park, who has lived in the one-bedroom unit for 21 years. “We’d be living under a bridge – like `Tent City, here we come.’ The possibility of lifting rent control would be devastating.”

Emphasis my own. The fact is that while this is permanent vacancy decontrol, the rent control ends when the tenant moves out, Prop 98 makes it a heck of a lot easier to do evictions. Tenants are generally in a lot worse place if Prop 98 passes.  So, Jon Coupal, head of the local Destroy Gummamint Set (HJTA), has to defend this turdblossom.  Let’s see what he comes up with. Ah, yes, he lies.

“It doesn’t make it easier to evict anybody,” Coupal said. “All the protections under existing law remain in effect. Only when that unit is vacated can anybody raise rents. We actually take the existing protections against evictions and make them part of the California Constitution.”

Naysayers insist, however, that the landlord-backed measure would essentially end rent control in California.

Oh, those naysayers, always coming in with their facts and messing up your spin. You can read the proposition on the Yes 98 site. Look at Section 3, the part that would be grafted onto the California constitution. Do you see tenant protectsions there? Not so much. In fact the only time the word “tenant” is mentioned comes in the Sec. 5, where it eliminates rent control.

In reality, Prop 98 slashes into the heart of tenant protections. It is a dangerous ruse to use the issue of eminent domain to dramatically increase property rights in a way that was never envisioned in the past.

Given that George Skelton has written the opposing view in today’s L.A. Times, I thought readers would enjoy my opinion about California’s early primary.

Remember when California moved up its presidential primary from June to February – so that we’d have a “bigger impact”? We ended up sharing February 5th with 21 other states – and so had almost no effect on the nomination.  Barack Obama lost to Hillary Clinton because he didn’t have enough time to introduce himself to voters in such a large state, but made up for that loss by racking up huge victories elsewhere.  Now California has a state primary on June 3rd – where turnout is expected to be very low, so the right-wing Proposition 98 to end rent control could pass.  If we had kept the primary at a later date, we would have affected the nomination – and Prop 98 would have gone down in flames.  But the Democratic leaders in Sacramento pushed a February primary to extend their term limits – in a gambit that failed.

The case for moving up California’s primary had its valid points – such as why does Iowa get to hog so much attention from presidential candidates every four years, who then are forced to take a position on ethanol?  As the largest and most diverse state in the nation, California deserves its place in the spotlight.  Candidates must be held accountable on issues that matter greatly to us like immigration, suburban sprawl, education funding, affordable housing, public transportation and levee repairs.  But despite moving up our primary, these issues did not play a prominent role in the campaign.

That’s because California didn’t act within a vacuum.  The Democratic National Committee said that states could move up their primaries to February 5th without losing delegates, so a lot of states had the same idea.  We ended up sharing Super Duper Tuesday with Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Minnesota, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, North Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Idaho and Alaska.  Presidential candidates didn’t spend much time in California – because they were too busy elsewhere.

California got some attention on Super Tuesday, but we were competing with 21 states just ten days after the candidates had duked it out in South Carolina.  With the cost of running a statewide campaign here, Clinton and Obama spared their resources – and devoted more attention to states on the East Coast, Midwest and in the South where a little money could go a long way.  Obama lost California, but his campaign also figured out the math on winning delegates – focus on the small states and rack up huge victories.

Could Obama have won California if he had spent more time here?  Maybe.  Clinton still won by a nine-point margin, but she was ahead by over 20 points a few weeks earlier.  Obama needed time to get acquainted with California voters – especially Latinos – and a more systematic effort in the Golden State could have been successful.  Bear in mind that he practically tied Clinton among voters who went to the polls on Election Day.  But with California’s early absentee balloting, Clinton blunted his momentum.

What would have happened to the nomination fight if California had not moved up its primary to February 5th?  Obama would have emerged from Super Tuesday as the clear winner – but Clinton still won enough states (New York, New Jersey, Arizona) to keep the race going.  Obama would have racked up a wider lead in the delegate count earlier, but Clinton would have refused to back out – insisting that the race must be decided in California.  By June, California would have been viewed as her “make-or-break” state.

It’s interesting to see how much attention Pennsylvania got in this race – because they weren’t greedy like the other states that moved up their primary.  California could have had that same privilege if we had just been patient – allowing each candidate to come here, address our issues and earn our support.  Obama will be the Democratic nominee, and it will be no thanks to California voters.  By trying to have a bigger impact, we ended up making ourselves practically irrelevant.

Some argue that a February primary was good – because it boasted a high turnout.  That’s good for democracy, but the unintended consequences may devastate our state’s future.  A subsequent statewide primary on June 3rd will see a very low turnout – where the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association is pushing Proposition 98 to abolish rent control.  Polls show Prop 98 trailing, but we still don’t know exactly who will vote.  If renters and Democrats don’t turn out, the right-wing agenda will prevail.

In fact, the President of the Jarvis Association has admitted that a very low (and conservative) turnout will help them on the June ballot.  They started planning over a year ago to gather signatures for Prop 98.  When it looked like they were going to qualify for the February ballot, they actually stopped gathering signatures – and then resumed after it was too late.  Make no mistake about it: they put it on the June ballot for a reason.

Of course, having more of an impact in the nomination process was not the real agenda for a February primary – it was just the “official” reason to get Californians to support it.  Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Don Perata – who were about to step down because of term limits – wanted to pass Proposition 93 to allow them to stay in power for another term.  They could have planned ahead and put it on an earlier statewide ballot, but instead wasted our money with a February initiative.  The voters ended up rejecting Prop 93 – so Perata and Nunez will have to step down anyway.

In order to prove that the February primary was not a waste of time and resources, Perata and Nunez must now make the defeat of Prop 98 a top priority.  Defeating Prop 98 won’t take back the money that the state spent on another election (which could go towards education, housing and transportation), won’t bring back California’s relevance in the presidential nomination process – but at least it will help save rent control.  And right now, it’s the only thing that Perata and Nunez can do about it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In his spare time and outside of regular work hours, Paul Hogarth volunteered on Obama’s field operation in San Francisco. He also ran to be an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

 My Disclosure.

The Yes on Prop 98 folks have launched what I think might go down as one of the most melodramatic ads ever.  It starts with a couple of kids, who we are made to believe who are siblings who have been ruthlessly forced to move by the big, bad “gummamint” through their evil eminent domain. They’ll never get to see their friends again! Too bad the ad is entirely misleading.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get to talk to the kids of renters who will be forced to move when the landlords who funded this measure kick them and their families out of their apartments. To the children who will be pushed out of California’s major cities because rent control is ended and eviction protections are obliterated.  Apparently, only kids whose parents own a house matter.

Of course, relatively few homes (typically on the order of a few dozen in the state per year) are actually purchased through the use of eminent domain. Furthermore the vast majority of these incidents involve public uses of the land, roads, fire stations, that kind of thing. But the truth was never really an obstacle the right-wingers cared much about.

But the tide is clearly turning against the Landlords power grab. Even Republicans, like former Governor Pete Wilson, and the odious and ineffective George Radonovich (R-Mariposa), are turning against this stinker of a proposition. But these ads are going up across the state, and turnout will be shockingly low. So, we need to turn out voters from LA and SF. Check out the No on Prop 98 Website for what you can do to help.