SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- San Francisco’s progressives have spent years planning to capture the mayor’s office. It began 15 years ago. But now the current succession battle to replace the current mayor, Gavin Newsom, may doom this long term effort.
Let’s flashback to the nineties. Office development was robust. Several key activists – like Sue Hestor and Calvin Welch – waged legal battles to stymie office development. Meanwhile, the Bay Guardian newspaper cranked out investigative reports and studies to show that the city’s large corporations and their high-rises were destroying the city and its skyline. Job growth, the Guardian suggested, using a MIT economist’s report, would come from the city’s small businesses.
For the city’s sake, San Francisco corporatism had to be stopped. To do that, progressives had to take control of the Board of Supervisors and the mayor’s office.
Step one, prevent big business from electing the Board of Supervisors. City wide elections must go. The large corporations easily dominated citywide elections through their political contributions.
Instead, San Francisco needed district elections for choosing supervisors. Neighborhoods would be represented, not the interests of the city’s big businesses. It would take much less funds to win in the districts. The progressives were successful. District elections were reinstated by Proposition G in November 1996 with a November runoff.
Step Two, overpower any attempt by downtown interests to dominate district elections by the introduction of rank choice voting. Now, several progressive candidates could band together, and by the mechanism of rank choice voting, a progressive could more easily wind up the winner. Runoffs were eliminated and replaced with instant-runoff voting with Proposition A in March 2002, and the Board turned progressive.
Step Three, prevent a replay of previous mayor’s races where big money interests dominated mayoral race runoffs. To prevent that, introduce rank choice voting for the mayor’s race. In 2002, the election system for city officials was overhauled as a result of a citywide referendum.
Then in 2010, Gavin Newsom won the race for California Lt. Governor. An interim mayor was needed.
Seeing that this year’s voters were now choosing less progressive, more moderate supervisorial candidates, the progressives have made securing the mayor’s office the priority. Waiting for November 2011 when rank choice voting will be used to select the next mayor could be too late.
And they are correct.
In an earlier article, I wrote that rank choice voting may favor moderate mayoral candidates, when you review the list of likely candidates. So, progressives need to have one of their own in office, running as an incumbent. But, the inherent disorganization of the San Francisco progressive movement will make that difficult. The leading progressive politicians have said ‘no’ to the post of interim mayor.
While the interim mayor may not be a progressive, we’ll still have to wait until November 2011 to see if the progressive’s multi-year plan will culminate with securing the mayor’s office. The fiscal crisis which San Francisco is facing makes that less likely. Contingencies have a way of deflating political strategies. Progressive programs only flourish with a healthy treasury.
San Francisco is facing a $2 billion deficit over the next three years. The perfect scenario for a tough moderate, not a progressive mayor.
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