Fighting back – to win

THE DEFEAT OF Eileen Hansen in District Eight was more than the loss of one supervisorial seat. It was another strong statement, at the opening of a key mayoral election year, that the progressive and neighborhood forces, which were defining the city's political agenda just two years ago, are suddenly on the defensive. There's still time to take back the initiative and elect a progressive mayor in 2003 – but the candidates and their supporters need to move quickly and aggressively to figure out what went wrong and to define the issues and the message that will defeat downtown in a pivotal citywide election.

Hansen should have won the runoff. She came in first in the general election by 1,000 votes. She was an appealing candidate, with impeccable community credentials and plenty of experience. She had enough money to run a good campaign, and an impressive grassroots organization. Turnout in the runoff, while hardly stellar, was not that bad: almost as many people voted in District Eight on Dec. 10 as had voted in the general election a month earlier.

But in the end, Bevan Dufty emerged victorious, in large part because of his ability to exploit the issue of homelessness and his support for Sup. Gavin Newsom's antihomeless measure, Proposition N. If the District Eight runoff is a prelude to the mayor's race (and like almost everything that happens in local politics these days, to a certain extent it is) then Sup. Tom Ammiano, who backed Hansen, will be trounced by Newsom, who backed Dufty.

Of course, it's easy to make too much of that: the mayoral election is a year away, and a lot can change in a year. (Six months before the 1987 mayor's race, then-assemblymember Art Agnos was widely considered finished as a candidate, thanks to a series of front-page stories in the San Francisco Chronicle detailing his connections to a Sacramento real estate developer. Agnos recovered and won resoundingly in the fall.) And let's face it: it's tough to run against the power of the machine. Dufty had the local Democratic Party (thanks to arm-twisting by the mayor) and $55,000 in soft money from the state party behind him. He had the Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Bay Area Reporter behind him. The only major paper supporting Hansen was the Bay Guardian.

But the fact remains that the progressive, independent, and neighborhood forces have taken significant losses in three elections in a row, and that's something everyone who wants to avoid the specter of Mayor Newsom needs to recognize. And when those conversations begin, it doesn't take long for the talk to turn to the question nobody really wants to face: can Tom Ammiano – a year ago, the hands-down consensus candidate to challenge Newsom – really win?

In theory, the answer is absolutely yes. Newsom is eminently beatable. He's really a political lightweight without much going for him except his ties to the machine and his ability to raise large sums of money. He's authored little in the way of significant legislation, and his voting record is awful: a 22 percent score on our Oct. 30 vote scorecard. Even the voters who supported Prop. N don't seem to like Newsom.

But Newsom has done something the progressive candidates haven't: he's picked up on an issue that everyone in town is concerned about – homelessness – developed (with the help of downtown money and slick ad agencies) an effective way to communicate his (admittedly simplistic) position to the public, and galvanized enough of the voters to make him appear like the mayoral front-runner.

Meanwhile, Ammiano is still trying to repair his relations with some core constituents who are unhappy with his recent move to the center – a move that hasn't won him a whole lot of centrist support.

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Before the supporters of Ammiano (or Angela Alioto, his most obvious progressive rival) panic, let's put this in context. The dot-com bust and the recession may have pushed the issues of gentrification and overdevelopment off the top of the agenda, but San Francisco voters are still clearly not happy with Mayor Brown or the direction of his administration – and they are generally happy with the district-elected supervisors. (A clear sign of that: The voters approved a measure in November making the supervisors full-time city employees, with a substantial pay raise. A few years ago, when the board was a mayoral rubber stamp, the voters wouldn't even approve health benefits for the supervisors.)

Brown is going to be even less popular as 2003 wears on and he is forced to make massive cuts in the city budget.

That gives the supervisors – and the mayoral candidates – an ideal platform from which to launch a clear, convincing alternative policy agenda. Their approach should be relatively simple: cut off the huge spigot of public money pouring out of the Mayor's Office and the commissions and agencies the mayor controls by scrutinizing and, when possible, eliminating all shady no-bid contracts. Eliminate the hundreds of do-nothing patronage jobs Brown has created (starting at the airport, the Public Utilities Commission, and Muni). Renegotiate every rotten contract or franchise deal (starting with Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s ridiculously low franchise fee). Then use every possible method to raise taxes on the wealthy and on big businesses to prevent cuts in basic services.

This is a populist agenda that can cut across the lines between the "left" and the "moderates." Nobody wants to see branch libraries closed, or neighborhood bus service reduced, or potholes going unrepaired. Small-business owners (who tend to hate tax increases) know that the current business tax system is terribly unfair – Chevron pays the same tax as a little corner store. And nobody on any part of the political spectrum likes to see Brown's pals earning six-figure salaries on the taxpayers' dime for jobs that don't even require them to show up at work. Combining a crackdown on real waste with new – and more fair – taxes to save services is a political winner.

Add in a study on how public power can rejuvenate the economy and bring the city more cash, and a comprehensive alternative homeless policy that can show real results (which Newsom's can't), and the progressives could be back on the offensive. (For more ideas see "Brown's Brutal Budget," 7/3/02.)

Meanwhile, if Ammiano and Alioto want to be taken seriously as mayoral contenders, they need to come up with a clear, visible platform, a list of concrete, positive proposals to get the city out of its fiscal mess and moving forward. And they need to do it now.