"Guess what, folks: We're taking back San Francisco."

December 14, 2000 7:50 AM

"Guess what, folks: We're taking back San Francisco." -- Woo Hoo! Forget BushGore; on Tuesday progressives won big time in San Francisco. Chris Daly seriously kicked ass in my district, while progressives Matt Gonzalez (yes!), Aaron Peskin, Jake McGoldrick, Sophenia Maxwell and Gerardo Sandoval, will all join our hero Tom Ammiano on the board of supervisors. Take that, Willy Brown.
posted by johnb (10 comments total)

This is the last gasp -- Asian and moderate-white homeowner votes will take over at least 7 of the 11 SF districts in the next 4 or 8 years.

No way will people allow crazy-left politics to threaten their $500,000+ home investments. SF is inexorably on its way to becoming a bedroom suburb to Silicon Valley, with suburban demographics and suburban voting patterns.
posted by MattD at 8:10 AM on December 14, 2000

From the linked page:

It was incredible standing there with all these people clinking wine glasses and saying, "This is our city now."

I'll say it would be incredible, in the literal sense of being beyond belief. Imagine Bush saying "This is my country now." (Wouldn't the press have a field day with that one!) "We're taking back San Francisco," they say, as if they invented it. Wine isn't the only thing they're drunk on.

Nobody likes a sore winner.
posted by kindall at 8:27 AM on December 14, 2000

Sure, that rhetoric is a bit bombastic. Still, city government can now more appropriately be said to be "ours" in the sense of being more responsive to the broad interests of the majority of San Franciscans. That's progress, I say.
posted by johnb at 9:28 AM on December 14, 2000

I think renters outnumber homeowners 10-to-1 here, so people like Matt Gonzalez will have a long future in SF.
posted by mathowie at 10:31 AM on December 14, 2000

Ditenhafer got crushed. Were these just city council positions?
posted by capt.crackpipe at 11:10 AM on December 14, 2000

In that case, congratulations to San Franciscans for electing city officials who really represent their interests, instead of stupidly electing people who didn't, as they apparently did in the past. After a dark era in which democracy simply didn't work in San Francisco, it's nice to see that it's finally back!
posted by kindall at 11:40 AM on December 14, 2000

Did they ever finish taking back Vermont?
posted by thirteen at 12:01 PM on December 14, 2000

Anyone care to explain all of this to a silly Canadian sadly devoid of any knowledge of municipal politics in San Fran?
posted by Niccola Six at 12:30 PM on December 14, 2000

Sure, Niccola. San Francisco is a heavily Democratic city; the mayor, Willie Brown, although a Democrat, is widely perceived among the more progressive political activists in the city as being pro-business, pro-gentrification, and pro-development (and corrupt, which is probably correct but not the issue here). A number of people on the Board of Supervisors (i.e. city council) were cronies of Willie Brown, and the B.o.S. basically served to rubber-stamp Da Mayor's decisions. Recently, SF moved away from city-wide balloting for the B.o.S. and to district-by-district (with, what, two at-large seats?), and a bunch of leftists (including Matt Gonzalez, who previously lost a race for city district attourney, and Tom Ammiano, the board member who was defeated by Willie in the last mayoral race), no longer forced to run city-wide campaigns, were able to run strong, targeted campaigns and win -- which people seem to be taking as a slap in the face to Willie from the people of San Francisco.

Is the Bay Guardian still ranting about PG&E and a municipal utility? I mean, they were clearly right, but it seemed like that was every third cover story...
posted by snarkout at 4:01 PM on December 14, 2000

kindall: Keep in mind that the "democracy that didn't work" came about because we had citywide elections for supervisors before (i.e., the candidates with the most votes got into office and the electoral race wasn't split by divisions). This year was the first year that we voted in supervisors by district. Thus, the people finally got their vote.

At least we can see that representative democracy works on some level.



posted by ed at 5:17 PM on December 14, 2000