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Dear Mayor Newsom: A Modest Proposal
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Aloha, Mistermayor!
I have heard from several people close to your campaign that you hate old-school fundraising, preferring instead to tweet, preach and otherwise engender mass crushes in the hopes that checks will be forthcoming. Several of those people have told me that you dropped out of the governor’s race because your detached method wasn’t going to work on a California scale.
Honestly, this may be the coolest thing I’ve ever heard about you.
Who wants to spend all their time giving some potential contributor “the girlfriend experience,” pretending to be amused by their dumb jokes and saying they look dashing in that tie? “Have you been working out?” you have to ask while squeezing their flabby biceps, feigning astonishment and hoping for a large donation.
Bah. I don’t blame you for taking a pass.
The curse is that you seem to have an ego that will prevent you from going gently into that good night when you are termed out as mayor in January 2012. How do you move to another office without having to do the dirty, flirty work of fundraising? And what office would that be?
Being lieutenant governor isn’t worth moving to Sacramento since it basically requires you to be the John Oates to the governor, who gets to be Daryl Hall.
Mistermayor, you’re no John Oates.
If only there were a position that would allow you to maintain your position in The Big Deal Club. Let us imagine the perfect job for you...
Your current and former employees seem to agree that you are a political dork who loves to ruminate on policy possibilities. Indeed, it feels like every day your office issues a news release about a green initiative seemingly conjured up by European political science students. The local politicking required to deal with potholes and crime don’t appear to be of interest to you, so let’s work with that. Your dream job should also reward the fact that, like a new iPhone, you easily provide up to eight hours of talk time.
Mistermayor, I humbly suggest the United States Senate.
I know, I know, you’d never run against our current senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. But what if Feinstein decides it’s not a good idea to leave the gubernatorial hopes of the California Democratic Party in the hands of Jerry Brown, a man whose 40 years of political eccentricities will be trotted out in Technicolor by Republicans come next fall? (Granted, Feinstein just got her dream job as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but that’s a renewable two-year appointment ending in January 2011 — right about the time she would be sworn in as governor.)
Feinstein is perhaps the only Democrat who can win a governor’s race, especially if you come through with the young’uns by getting all your Twitter followers on Team Diane. In exchange for the sorority vote, if elected governor, Feinstein could then appoint you to serve out the remainder of her term, which ends in 2013. You wouldn’t even have to fundraise!
So, there’s my idea, free of charge.
However, if you decide to go with this suggestion, it would be great if you would let me be the first to break the news.
(Ahem.)
Did I mention you look dashing in that tie?
-Melissa
