Tag Archives: San Francisco Values

San Francisco

Michael Breyer – The Stealth Conservative in San Francisco

When Republicans from around the nation want to really ramp up the rhetoric, they start attacking modern “San Francisco” values. You know, marriage equality, diversity, environmental activism, labor union solidarity and expansion of healthcare.

We expect this kind of anti-San Francisco rhetoric from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and even Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. But we don’t usually see it in San Francisco itself. That’s why the strange campaign of conservative Michael Breyer is so unusual. He’s running in a district that rests largely in San Francisco while calling to restore what he is calling “traditional” San Francisco values.

This normally wouldn’t even be a topic of serious consideration. But Breyer has already spent more than $600,000 of his own money on a relentlessly negative campaign and is on pace to spend more than twice that. He is also raising funds from conservatives who are leading the attacks against public pensions. And money from large corporate landlords is also flowing into his campaign. So, who is Michael Breyer and what is his problem with modern San Francisco values?

Michael Breyer – Another Conservative from Massachusetts

Breyer was born and raised in Massachusetts where he attended some of the nation’s most elite private schools. He then went to Stanford, where he graduated.

San Francisco is full of transplants from all over the nation and world, so there is nothing wrong with being from Massachusetts. Except Michael Breyer calls himself a “fifth generation San Franciscan.” His campaign literature shows pictures of local icons like Lowell High School. His whole campaign is about San Francisco “tradition.” Except he didn’t go to Lowell High School – and he’s not from San Francisco. Maybe this distance created the political myopia that’s causing him to attack modern San Francisco values, like protecting the environment and promoting children’s health.

After graduation Breyer went into the “family business,” so to speak, launching a company called Courtroom Connect to provide services to the courts, where both his father and uncle are ranking justices. He calls it a “small business” but it is an Atlanta corporation that has both large public contracts with the courts and a range of corporate interests, including big tobacco.

His first public record of serious interest in politics appears to be giving funds to an anti-choice, anti-marriage equality Tennessee politician known for his e-book, “God and Politics,” which Breyer endorsed on the back cover.

Breyer went on to become a part of the flood of so-called “Independent” expenditures around the 2011 San Francisco Mayor’s race. After a review by the Ethics Commission staff, he was actually barred from further participation in the Mayor’s race, although that determination was reversed on appeal.

Why does Michael Breyer think protecting children and the environment is zany?

In one of his first pieces of political literature, he attacked the successful efforts to phase out unwanted Yellow Page distribution, which account for unnecessary environmental waste. This was one of the major legislative efforts from the local Sierra Club last year.

He also attacked the effort to protect the health of children by phasing out the linkage between children’s toys and junk food contributing to childhood obesity and other health challenges.

His early campaign literature also pushed pension reform and said again and again he would be a representative of the “traditional” San Francisco values.

What is Michael Breyer Trying to Say?

We know what San Francisco values are. They are tolerance, diversity and justice. Breyer’s opponent, Phil Ting, is the former executive director of a prominent civil rights organization. Ting has won the support of virtually every single organization to take a stand in the race with the exception of groups representing large corporate landlords.

The race is already highly negative, with Breyer just mailing his fourth hit piece in two weeks. Negative campaigns are nothing new in San Francisco. But a campaign against San Francisco values from a candidate running in San Francisco certainly is.

You can stay up to date on the race at www.MichaelBreyerfacts.com

Uncategorized

SF Chronicle Bashes its Home Town

I wrote this for today’s Beyond Chron.

Yesterday’s Chronicle portrayed San Francisco as an elitist island of the fringe left – out of touch with mainstream American values.  Reporter Carla Marinucci used the recent commotion over Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment at a local fundraiser to explain how the right uses San Francisco to hurt Democrats.  Even as polls out of Pennsylvania show the race unchanged despite Hillary Clinton desperately pushing this issue, the Chronicle couldn’t help perpetuating the stereotype that we are the “land of fruits and nuts.”  Marinucci did not quote any San Franciscans for her article – except for disgraced Newsom aide and Clinton supporter Peter Ragone, who repeated the line that only conservative places like the Central Valley matter in California politics.  Does the New York Times politically marginalize its hometown, because that is exactly what the Chronicle did.

Without even waiting to hear what working-class voters in Pennsylvania thought about Obama’s infamous statement, the media pronounced that it changed the dynamic of the presidential race – with some comparing it to the Jeremiah Wright controversy.  Because Clinton and John McCain both attacked Obama for being “elitist” and “condescending,” the press allowed the story to run far longer than it should.  And because Obama said it at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Clinton made sure to remind voters about that fact.

So what does the San Francisco Chronicle – our hometown newspaper of record – do when the City gets smeared by politicians of both parties?  Write a puff analysis which reinforces the notion that we make Democrats look bad – a place where national politicians come to campaign at their peril.  Marinucci could have mentioned that the fundraiser was in Presidio Heights – one of our most exclusive (and conservative) neighborhoods – rather than tar the whole City with an “elitist” smear.  Instead, she quotes Pat Buchanan as proof that Obama really screwed up with that statement.

It’s not the first time that the right has attacked “San Francisco Values” as a means of marginalizing Democrats.  But San Francisco values are mainstream American values.  We were one of the first cities to pass a domestic partnership law – “civil unions” that even George Bush and Dick Cheney now find acceptable.  In 2006, we were the first place that required employers to provide paid sick leave – and now other cities have since followed our lead.  We’re a city of creative entrepreneurs who have started cutting-edge businesses that are household names.  We have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

But Marinucci didn’t bother to interview any San Franciscans for her piece – let alone ask working-class folks in Pennsylvania if they were offended by Obama’s remarks – except for one local politico: Peter Ragone, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s former press secretary, who (according to an earlier Chronicle story) helped the Clinton campaign’s media team in Texas.  Marinucci did not disclose Ragone’s conflict-of-interest when she quoted his take on the situation.

Obama’s statement, said Ragone in the Chronicle, “sounded like someone running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, not President.  The Democratic Party should have learned you have to respect people’s cultural experiences in order to get their votes.  If Democrats want to win in California, they have to win in the Central Valley, the Inland Empire and the I-80 corridor. If you truly feel that way about people in those places, you’re just not going to get their votes.”

It’s precisely such divisive talk that prevents Democrats from truly standing up for what we believe in – and depresses San Franciscans into believing that our values are not the values of mainstream America.  It is why liberals then allow Democrats to get away with taking offensive policy positions – all in the name of being electable to the average swing voter.  The Left has been so haunted by the ghost of George McGovern for the past 35 years that we’ve lost all will to believe that real change can happen at the ballot box.

Was Obama’s statement culturally insensitive?  Let’s take a closer look at his exact words, and see why it was not disrespectful to the swing-state working-class voter:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them … And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

To suggest that working-class Pennsylvanians who’ve had their jobs shipped overseas are “bitter” is not condescending – it’s simply stating the truth.  As Randy Shaw wrote this week, if Clinton believes that they are not bitter, she is almost as delusional as George W. Bush.  And when Fox News actually interviewed such voters, they pretty much confirmed that it’s true.

The tricky part, of course, was for Obama to suggest that they “cling to guns or religion.”  But he never suggested that guns or religion are therefore bad.  What he meant to say is that during hard times, people stick with what they are familiar with and where they take comfort.  Conversely, they also mistrust the unfamiliar – people who don’t look like them, people who come from other countries, and coastal elitists.  It’s the politics of fear – and when voters are anxious, they become vulnerable to such appeals.

Could such an honest assessment hurt Obama?  Maybe a little, but anyone who believes that it rises to the level of the Jeremiah Wright controversy – where Obama’s pastor was caught on YouTube saying “God damn America” – is completely delusional.  And Obama did a stellar job handling that situation, with the most eloquent speech he has given in his entire career – where he effectively said that we must have an honest dialogue about race in this country.  But after the “bitter” comment, the media said Obama was in trouble.

Five days later, we now have fresh polls out of Pennsylvania that show that the brouhaha had practically no effect.  A friend of mine who’s there said that it’s a bigger deal nationally than locally (even though it has been widely disseminated.)  The issue will boil over, although we can expect that Republicans will try to make hay out of it in the general election.  By then, people won’t care – and the voters who will care would not vote Democratic anyway.

It’s bad enough that San Francisco – and everyone who lives here – got dragged into the mud with this story, just because the media won’t admit that the Clintons are history.  But for the Chronicle to pile on when it’s our hometown newspaper was embarrassing.  If the New York Times reported that voters in the Big Apple were out of touch with mainstream America, there would have been an outcry.  As residents of San Francisco, we deserve better from our local newspaper of record.

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.