Green Mayor? - The Life and Thoughts of Zach
Dec. 8th, 2003
06:47 pm - Green Mayor?
Check it out. A Green (Matt Gonzalez) might be the next mayor of San Francisco.
http://sf.indymedia.org/
http://www.mattgonzalez.com/
http://news.google.com/news?scoring=d&q=%22Matt+Gonzalez%22
If you live there, don't forget to vote tomorrow. Also if you live there, please tell me more about this thing. Is the sense on the streets really that this guy has a chance?
I guess they've gotten Clinton and Gore to come out and pitch for Gonzalez's Democratic opponent. If there's any remaining doubt about why I'm so disenfranchised with the brass of the Democratic party, this sums it up. From some random article that isn't even particularly pro-Gonzalez.
While the former president was en route to California on a private jet owned by one of Newsom's backers, Gonzalez was wrapping up his final day of campaigning with a "Punks for Matt" fund-raiser featuring former Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra.Here's a race where the Green and the Democrat are within 7 to 10 percentage points the day before the race and there is no chance of a Republican winning no matter what the outcome. And yet the Democrats are bringing in a FORMER PRESIDENT to make sure those uppity Greens don't get their guy elected in one of the most radical-progressive-liberal cities in the country through a grassroots campaign. For years I've heard "Greens get Republicans elected" and "Greens should only run in local races where they can win". Why can't the Dems let us have this one? What are they so scared of? It's just a mayoral seat.
I heard this guy speak for an hour on the radio just now and he really seems to know his shit. He's on the city council and has been kicking ass in SF politics already. He's both highly qualified and completely grassroots. This is what it's all about. Again, I'm hoping to get some good perspective from the folks out there in the area. I'm bummed that my friends out there don't live in San Francisco proper.
EDIT: I hereby retract my senseless bitterness about the Dems fighting a hard fight to win this and pulling out all the stops. The posters here are right, it's a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do given the context. I spent all of an hour processing the news of this race this evening before posting what I posted. The closeness of the race was news to me (I think it's news to anyone not local to San Fran). Right now I want to spend the next 24 hours, not being bitter, but being GIDDY at the chance that Gonzalez could win this thing.
EDIT: The guardian in the UK even has a story about it. Bring Clinton in and everyone's writing about it (besides AP, Reuters, and UPI). christian science monitor, the nation, the age (Australia). These are just random non-newswire articles pulled down from news.google.com.
No one is forcing them to fly out the former president and vice president to support this random guy.
I've seen plenty of Greens run in safely republican districts. (xref the race against Tim Johnson, which the Democrats weren't even going to run in until the Greens entered a candidate) and get criticized for it.
I wonder if they'd fly Clinton out if it looked like a close race between a Republican and a Democrat for a mayoral seat.
From what I've read of the San Francisco race, the key concern is losing Willie Brown's machine in the city, which Newsom's opponents have vowed to reform. With the governor's mansion now Republican, Democrats feel the need to retain every power base they can to keep California in 2004.
some local links (not that folks couldn't find these on their own)
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/09/region.tmp>
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/12/08/mngrd3idda1.dtl>
(interesting stuff about age difference in candidate supporter pools)
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/06/bag7n3hh7j1.dtl>
for what it's worth at the law-student dinner party we recently had, where a lot of politics got talked by libertarian/Green/progressive people, this did not come up once. None of us live in San Fran though.
Regarding the age thing, I found this to be an amusing opinion posted on another forum.
So far the one person I've talked to from SF proper knows all about it though.
As for San Francisco, it falls within Nancy Pelosi's district. Pelosi is the leader of the House Dems. Which is why folks like Clinton and Gore have been turning out in support; it would be really embarrassing if she couldn't get her candidate elected. Which isn't to say I disapprove of the hardball tactics; if by hardball tactics you mean bringing in nationally prominent former office-holders to campaign for our candidates. Use 'em or lose 'em, I say.