San Francisco has a lingering reputation for being a hotbed of militant pacifism, drug love, and random gay sodomy. But nowadays, the corporatized ghost of Ayn Rand lingers just beyond every political corridor. We are in the middle of a class war out here, and with elections coming up, local endorsements matter. That is why I attended an exceedingly crowded and unnecessarily long meeting of the San Francisco Democratic Party (also known as the SF DCCC) two days ago, where its elected members and proxies voted on a slate of local candidates and ballot measures.
Politicos in San Francisco care deeply about this body since it serves as a stepping stone to higher office, and conventional wisdom tells us that its endorsements are an essential ingredient for victory. I am not so convinced all of this is true nowadays. And with the recent takeover of the Democratic County Central Committee by the City’s “moderate” faction (well-off folks with fancy jobs, post-materialist attitudes, and gravitational fields throughout Mayor Ed Lee’s City Hall), average folks around town are growing even more suspicious, or at least more jaded, of the Committee’s machinations.
Nevertheless, the house was packed (and the deck probably stacked), for this big vote on the upcoming November ballot. (200 people or so.) The line wrapped around the California State Building to get in, as if Paul McCartney was rumored to be hanging around or something. After about 20 minutes, I finally got in. No air conditioning, no microphones, no seats. But plenty of friends and marginally-deserved anticipation.
A critical flashpoint in the SF Class War of 2014 deals with the town’s sky-high rents and mass evictions. Folks on both sides poured into the basement auditorium to testify on Proposition G, a measure that would tax real estate speculation and disincentivize flipping. There were diverse tenants on the yes side and Asian home-owners, many of whom could not speak English, opposed. Complicating matter is the fact that the SF DCCC is chaired by Mary Jung, Director of Government & Community Relations at the SF Association of Realtors, a woman certainly not immune to Republican-ish allure. A lot of us didn’t see it coming, but tenant activists narrowly won the endorsement.
In matters of war, transparency tends to fall by the wayside. So I promised to publish all of the votes. Hopefully, no other biographies are required at this juncture:
Yes on G: Avalos, Campos, Chiu, DeJesus, Dorsey, Dufty, Dwyer, Kelly, Mandelman, Mar, Migden, Rosenthal, Smith, and Ammiano.
No endorsement on G: Anderson, Fazio, Hsieh, Jung, Levitan, McNeil, Pimentel, Prozan, Wiener, Feinstein, Harris, and Ma.
Abstaining on G: Cohen, Nancy Pelosi, Speier, and Ting.
Another less-mentioned aspect of the Class War deals with Golden Gate Park and the ongoing efforts to install toxic crumified tires in the soccer field out on the westside of town, where I live. If passed, Proposition H would mandate the use of only natural grass and ban the use of stadium lighting in any renovation. Proposition I, on the other hand, would strengthen the power of the Department of Recreation and Parks to “renovate” all parks across the City as it sees fit, including the use of this tire crumb. Big money is involved: two of the trustees involved with this project are heirs to the late GOP heavy-hitter Donald Fisher.
Only four DCCC members voted Yes on H and No on I: Campos, DeJesus, Mandelman, and Migden.
The Sierra Club obviously endorsed the Yes on H and No on I. In your opinion, which organization has more credibility on this matter?
I cannot avoid mentioning Proposition E, an incredibly divisive effort to tax sugar sweetened beverages in San Francisco at the point of distribution, at about a quarter or so per drink. I vigorously oppose the idea of making thirst a taxable event and have caught both praise and hell for it ever since this rather elitist idea popped onto the local scene.
Prop E has opened up a brand new, and rather unpredictable, front on the Class War. Rather than pitting progressives against “moderates” (I prefer to call them economic conservatives), this measure is pitting the wannabe food police against a potential dietary underclass that would, if passed, fund various healthy-living programs and the self-perpetuating bureaucracies that come with them. Social libertarians are also up in arms over such a nanny-state move, but our arguments were of little consequence to the SF DCCC: it easily endorsed Proposition E. The question is whether the rank-and-file will listen to their advice when they vote in November.
No on E: Fazio, Hsieh, Levitan, Migden, and Smith.
Abstaining on E: Feinstein, Harris, Pelosi, and Speier.
Yes on E: Everybody else.
On the plus side, the SF Democratic Party refused to give voice to the local Republican Party and billionaire Facebook Founder Sean Parker’s cars-first efforts to build more parking lots across town and permanently ban the use of Sunday metering, or as far as a non-binding declaration of policy can go in those regards. Parker certainly has the ear of the mayor but hasn’t (yet?) figured out how to woo other corporate Democrats lower down on the food chain. The only yes vote came from former State Senator Carole Migden, who has had her own rather colorful history behind the wheel.
Another Republican showdown occurred over whether or not to endorse a viable (i.e., well-funded) Democrat for BART board. The incumbent, James Fang, is San Francisco’s only elected member of the GOP, but has incurred long-lasting political connections with the Democratic establishment since being elected in 1990. I have lived in his BART district for over 10 years and never met Fang, but his challenger Nicholas Josefowitz, has only been running for a couple of months, and we are on a friendly, let-me-introduce-you-to-this-person-Nick, basis. Fang walked a picket-line on behalf of striking BART workers, and that is nothing to sneeze at. But shouldn’t endorsing Democrats be the default-setting for the official Democratic Party of San Francisco? Apparently not: the committee went No Endorsement in the race, in effect a passive endorsement for our City’s last, and mostly invisible, Republican in office.
This vote boiled down to the pro-union faction teaming up with the old guard (including Pelosi) vs. newer committee members and party loyalists.
Yes for Josefowitz: Anderson, Chiu, Dorsey, Dunning, Kelly, Mar, McNeil, Rosenthal, Smith, and Wiener.
Abstaining: Jung, Prozan, Leno, Speier, and Ting.
No endorsement: Everybody else.
Members of the (paid) San Francisco Board of Supervisors have a lot of responsibilities and thus a lot of allusions of grandeur. Many of them serve as elected members of the (unpaid) SF Democratic Party and are allowed to vote to endorse themselves. This ability, combined with the power of incumbency, led the committee to handily endorse all sitting supervisors up for reelection. But it is always informative to track dissent.
Progressive DCCC members John Avalos and Petra DeJesus voted to give the amicable Juan-Antonio Carballo a second-place endorsement in the City’s ranked-choice voting system for a District 2 in the Marina area. Chairwoman Mary Jung abstained and Levitan, Prozan, Ammiano, Dianne Feinstein, and Ma all voted no endorsement on the popular, left-leaning but Twitter-friendly Supervisor Jane Kim (South of Market, Treasure Island). Progressive diehards Avalos, Campos, DeJesus, Migden, and Ammiano voted no endorsement on the highly socioeconomically-conservative Castro Supervisor Scott Wiener.
With regards to the competitive race to represent the historically-black neighborhood of Bayview Hunter’s Point, incumbent (and DCCC member) Malia Cohen kept a lid on things by easily preventing any sort of endorsement for her main challenger, progressive Tony Kelly. For the first-place endorsement, Kelly received votes from Avalos, Campos, Dwyer, and Ammiano. (Everyone else went for Cohen, with DeJesus abstaining.) For the second-place endorsement, Tony Kelly picked up votes from DeJesus, Dorsey, Hene Kelly, and Mandelman but still lagged far behind.
And then we have the SF School Board, another stepping stone. This endorsement vote had more to do with City Hall insidership than any nefarious GOP meddling, but it is noteworthy that the somewhat independent incumbent Hydra Mendoza lost out in Round 4 while the more establishment incumbent Emily Murase easily got the nod in the first round of voting. Challenger, and previous school board candidate, Shamman Walton received near-unanimous support from the SF DCCC, except from Dorsey and Levitan. This, along with an endorsement from the mayor, means that Walton may have the broad coalition to win in November.
It would have been odd if the DCCC did not endorse one of its own members for School Board, especially in a multi-seat election. But Trevor McNeil, who has straddled the fence between progressive and “moderate”, eeked out a narrow endorsement in the fifth round of voting, hardly a vote of mega-confidence but a win nonetheless. Voting against McNeil in all rounds include progressives Avalos, Campos, DeJesus, Dufty, Dwyer, Kelly, Mandelman, Migden, and moderate Hsieh for some reason.
So let’s swing back to the Republicans. Or in this case, a former Republican who was appointed by the mayor to the tumultuous San Francisco City College Board two years ago and failed at reelection. So why did Rodrigo Santos, a controversial head of the Building Inspection Commission who hasn’t done all that much to keep City College accredited from what I have seen, sail through with an endorsement?
I had no idea he was running until one of the DCCC members announced his name at the start of the tally. Santos filled out no DCCC questionnaire, did not attend any DCCC interviews that I noticed, and wasn’t even registered as a candidate on the Department of Elections website at the time of Wednesday’s vote. This may be a case of an endorsement preceding a candidacy. Santos received solid support from those who are, who want to be, or who need to be close to the mayor, ending with an endorsement after three rounds of voting: Anderson, Chiu, Cohen, Jung, Levitan, Pimentel, Prozan, Smith, and Wiener provided the backbone of votes Santos needed.
The popular Thea Selby won in Round 1 and incumbent Anita Grier in Round 3. Unfortunately, I could barely hear the votes during the later rounds of Community College Board due to the inexplicable lack of a microphone and No on G folks around me mumbling in Chinese.
My friend Amy Bacharach easily won endorsement for a separate 2-year Community College Board seat, beating out another friend of mine progressive William Walker, who got votes from just Avalos, Campos, DeJesus, Dwyer, and Kelly. Walker, like Santos, also ran in that 2012 race and also jumped in late to run for this one. But apparently, the similarities between their two stories end there.
The SF Democratic Party endorsement vote was a contained chaos, a mixed bag of GOP this and GOP that, and an exercise in what voting has evolved and devolved into in this glib corporate paradise. War wages on, but the DCCC threw us some choice cuts of prime rib with an endorsement of the anti-speculation tax. (Go Measure G!) Too bad that meal came with chunks of grizzle staring back at us. Members are up for reelection in 2016, and it would be nice to see if they are forced to run on their voting records rather than their bank accounts for once, and whether or not the rank-and-file agree with their advice at the ballot box. All of this is assuming that DCCC elections matter any on the battlefield. Well, at least they matter enough to stick around that meeting for four hours or so and track all of these troop movements.