Category Archives: Politics of Political Reform

There’s a whole cottage industry revolving around “campaign reform,” and for the most part it’s produced a lot of nonsense, locally and nationally. However, I am daring to get in the game and make a few modest proposals of my own, not for the sake of helping one partisan side over the other, but instead to give voters a clear choice and to be able to understand for whom or what they are voting for.
Earlier this year, I proposed that anyone running for office in San Francisco in 2012 be asked to sign a pledge saying simply that if they won election (or re-election) to the office they campaigned for, they’d actually serve the full four year term they asked voters for.
This may sound a bit nitpicky, but look at what happened in 2008 – we had several people run for Supervisor who asked the voters to send them to serve as Supervisor. Halfway through their terms, these newcomers then decided they’d had enough, and ran for Mayor. So did a lot of other elected officials.
Not only did they spend a lot of their time away from their six-figure salaried jobs, they asked for taxpayer money to finance piles of junk mail. In fact, we had so many people last year running for Another Office, things pretty much shut down at City Hall, all at a time when we needed people on the job. Add to the fact that taxpayers subsidized most of the Mayoral races (and yet the guy with the Super PACs funded by the 1% won anyway) and it’s clear something is wrong here.
Today I amend my suggestion that candidates running in 2012 sign a pledge to serve out their full terms in office and not run for another during said term with this:
Any candidate that takes taxpayer money in 2012 to run for office in San Francisco should serve out their full term. If they do not, they should be forced to return the tax money they used in 2012 to run for office if they decide to run for another job (Assembly, State Senate, Dogcatcher, Sheriff, etc.)
I don’t think this is an unreasonable request. I’m sure the politicians will ignore it, as they do anything that demands accountability or gets in the way of taxpayer dollars to finance their career advancement. It’d be interesting to see who, if anyone makes such a pledge. San Francisco voters would certainly be the beneficiaries though, since now they at least can figure out who’s telling the truth when they say “vote for me in 2012” and who is not.

This morning there’s word some folks downtown are trying to change how we elect the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco (again). This time, there’s a proposal to elect some via district and some city-wide. As with any “reform” in San Francisco, this is less about making government work better for all, and is instead another attempt to game the system for one side over another.
That’s not to say that the current system, implemented in 2000, didn’t do the same thing. However, I’d suggest that the problem isn’t with district elections as a concept (even in a smaller city like San Francisco) – instead it’s been the inability of certain factions to adapt and overcome the new terrain. Put simply, if you are faced with district elections, you need to find good people that you can work with to go forth and run who are actually, well, you know, known in the neighborhoods they’ll be representing.
This is basic campaign strategy 101, and yet for almost 10 years, this concept seems to have been lost on some, who seem to want to only support candidates who merely take orders, like a waiter or a waitress in a diner. There are at least two Supervisors elected in 2008 who could have been defeated, had perhaps one side used some tactics not involving the political equivalent of a sledgehammer, but didn’t, and well, they lost.
However, there’s one thing lost in all the discussions about “district elections” that people have generally missed as they blabber on SFGate comments about “the system”- prior to 2000 it was literally impossible to run against a single incumbent Supervisor. Yes, you read that right. If you didn’t like what Supervisor John Doe was doing, and you wanted to run against him and give voters that choice, it couldn’t happen. (Yes, we did have district elections for a short time, which elected Sup. Milk, among others, but it was repealed soon after the assassinations in 1979.)
That’s because of the peculiar way Supervisors were elected prior to 2000. Basically you had many candidates run en masse for Supervisor for a few open spots. The top vote getters would get the seats on the Board, and everyone else would lose.
If we were using this system today, we’d have five spots for people to run for. Every single candidate from the serious to the goofball, would all be on the ballot. This, being SF, you’d have literally a bajillion names to choose from. You, the voter would pick 5, and the top vote getters would be elected, and the rest would lose. You can see how this protects incumbents, who’d have the most money available and “name ID” (which you San Francisco voters really get off on), and how difficult it would be to target a poor performing incumbent who has a lot of cash.
It’s fairly stupid, and between this, and the fact that in the 1990s at one point the Mayor at the time appointed most of the Supervisors anyway, you can see why people rebelled and sent a very loud, very pointed “FU” to Mayor Willie Brown and his appointed princes and princesses.
The only problem with district elections in San Francisco, frankly, is the size of the districts. They’re so small, and often so oddly drawn, they lead to some strange stuff. For example, I used to live on one side of Judah Street and was in Sup. Elsbernd’s district. I moved a block away, and suddenly was in Sup. Mirkarimi’s district. WTF?
There is one idea, however, that might have been worth considering, but I think back in those hyper partisan days when it was the downtown folks sticking it to everyone the way the progressives do now, no one was interested. In many cities (such as Seattle, where I lived for 7 years), they elect candidates citywide, but each position is “numbered.”
This way, each council seat has its own list of candidates to choose from. If there’s an incumbent people can run against them, and if there isn’t, then the seat is open. It creates some accountability with incumbents, but doesn’t have the limits of a district based system, which was a concern amongst some in Seattle. (Oh and in the Irony Department, it was I who first suggested district elections for Seattle based on experiences in the runoff of 2000. Ha!)
The point is simply this – we have been trying to game the system for one side or another with lots and lots of laws and rules, many of which contradict each other. We tried to punish “big time consultants” with a special tax and filing – we ended up punishing the low-paid campaign manager of the struggling citizen campaign. We passed IRV/RCV/WTF and it has been nothing but an expensive pain in the ass that hasn’t delivered on its promises, or gamed the system well (ironically since IRV it is protecting incumbents and “moderate” candidates for citywide office have been unopposed!). District elections have benefits, but there’s nothing suggesting that City Hall is any more responsive to the citizen on Real Issues (Muni, anyone?) than it was before.
San Francisco citizens deserve a process that allows them to choose who they want to represent them at city hall that’s free of too many corrupting influences, while also being compliant with the Constitution. We do not need the government to game the system to help one faction or another, and we do not need a system so complex, only the wealthy can run.
I can’t imagine how it is that a city with so many smart people has to make things slow, stupid, and difficult, and I’ve got to believe there’s enough Smart People out there who can press the reset button and end the howler monkey nonsense that passes for political debate about issues like this. People have had it with a City That Doesn’t Know How, and would like to get their money’s worth when they pay for a multi billion dollar City/County system that could be doing a lot better.

One of the bigger lies that was told during the campaign to force IRV/RCV/WTF down everyone’s throats was that the system would “save money,” because it would mean no runoff election.
Well, once again, that absurd little promise is proving once again to be false. Last year we had to hand count and re-do people’s ballots for them, all by hand, because of problems with our voting systems. Now, the ugly little problem no one wants to talk about rears its head again, as it’s been revealed NONE of the City’s voting machines are certified for use. Yes, really.
There’s a hearing, of course, but it is scheduled 6 weeks before the election. There is a good chance that the vendor in question might not make the cut – meaning that in an election with a huge turnout, a ton of things on the ballot, and yes, IRV/RCV/WTF, we will be hand counting at tremendous expense, for weeks.
Last year we saw the specter of IRV/RCV/WTF advocates actually attacking Secretary of State Bowen for doing her job to maintain the integrity of the election system – because they wanted to defend their ideological vies, voter rights be damned. Look for a repeat performance this year.
IRV/RCV/WTF’s many promises have mostly been proven false as the system has been implemented. Campaigns are NOT nicer, the top vote getter on Election night wins anyway, incumbents are ensured re-election (thus essentially giving all elected officials 8 year terms) and the crowded podium at debates and in news coverage ensures that the discussion of complex city policy is reduced to 15 and 30 second soundbites at endless “debates” that tell you nothing about what these people plan to do. That is, when we even bother to have people run against each other.

CA Clean Money And Gavin Newsom

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As most people don’t know, there’s the one and only “debate” between the Mayor and his Baker’s Dozen of no-names. No one is really covering it, and the TV cameras won’t be there, so you probably won’t see much of it. But, if you have nothing better to do and get a chance to ask Mr. Mayor just what is his position these days on “public financing” of campaigns.

Now don’t get me wrong – there’s no question that the term “campaign finance reform” is a loaded term designed to help one side over the other. Fine. But here’s where I get confused when it comes to Mr. Mayor’s position on the allegedly important issue of taxpayer financed elections (which have done so well here in San Francisco).

I got some plea for money from the from the so-called “Californians for Clean Money” campaign, and as you can see in the accompanying image, I was asked to “join Mayor Newsom” who apparently endorsed the effort at some meeting at some new office in Our City.

Now, let’s put aside the many failed predictions made when the proponents got this thing passed, since that’s obvious. Instead, let’s look at the record of Our Mayor on this supposedly important issue, and wonder if perhaps the folks at the “California Clean Money” campaign might need to do a little more homework before putting press releases out for their cure-all.

Even a cursory glance at the archives of the Voice of the West, little blogs and the Bay Guardian reveal the fact that the mayor has proposed cutting matching funds Continue reading →