Category Archives: San Francisco Politics

I will be posting an entry tomorrow morning about some ugly politcking at City Hall vis a vis the Taxi Commission. But right now I’m too irritated to write something I’d want to see in print, and I have a rule about never writing when I’m this pissed off.
Suffice it to say, if you ever want to see nasty, lying, scumbag politics, go local. And the smaller the issue, the nastier and uglier it gets. And when you are dealing with a couple of rogue taxicab companies and their minions, politics literally can get ugly. (Hint to rogue taxi-crabbies – try buying pants that hide your crack when you’re in public. You’ll seem that much more credible.)
Ok, enough for now. You can see me on SF Government TV when they replay tonight’s taxicab commission meeting on cable TV. I had to rush my comments but I made a mark as Ambassador from my other blog, The N-Judah Chronicles.
Time for some meditation, some pushing out of negative energy, and a cracker-jack post tomorrow. Taxi-crabbies, you have been warned.
UPDATE: You can read a very thorough accounting of the corruption in City Hall here, which has some history of the issue as well. It makes an interesting point though – that Mayor Newsom, who has prided himself on wanting a City Hall that is about accountability and results has the power to fix the problem – but has been strangely silent. Odd.

One final thought on the Ma/Reilly debate – and the issue of media coverage of campaigns in generals, as I issue a big raspberry and a rap on the knuckles to the Bay Guardian.
Why? Simple. This editorial, from Bay Guardian editor Tim Redmond loudly complained about the “lack of candidates” in the race in AD 12, and took a decidedly condescending tone towards Janet Reilly.
This, despite the fact she’s running a great campaign, and is likely one of the very few people running in the state much less so-called Liberal San Francisco on the issues the BG and “progressives” claim to care about. I guess you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t at the Guardian. At least self-styled “progressive” politicians are supporting Reilly!
As Mr. Redmond and co. point a finger at The Political Establishment, though, they’re going to notice 4 fingers pointing right back at them. That’s because both candidates have been running since last year, and this seat has been an “open” race for 2006 for a long time now. Everyone knew that.
Yet, the Guardian’s news coverage of the race, starting last year, has been barely noticeable, and I have seen no proclamations about this race, or the “lack of candidates” a year ago, 9 months ago, 6 months ago, or even 3 months ago. Yet now, 2 months before the election, the Guardian takes a “pox on both of you” tone, and treats a fresh face in politics like dirt. For shame.
Memo to the Guardian crew: Perhaps if you spent a little less time with dry cover stories about “Burning Man,” and other psuedo-edgy fare, and spent more time on, oh I don’t know, covering the politics and issues affecting the lives of ordinary San Franciscans with the investigative flair the paper was once known for in the old days, perhaps not only we might have candidates that are “better” in your view, but you might also find it easier to fend of challenges from chain papers who have you in their cross hairs.
Just a thought.

Running for a state Assembly seat in San Francisco isn’t like running anywhere else in the state. Unless there’s an open seat with no incumbent, they are rather placid affairs. When there’s an open seat, however, things get more interesting.
That’s because for all intents and purposes, the person who wins the AD seat in the June primary will likely serve in that seat for 6 years, barring a major catastrophe or an aspiration to even higher office. Thus, votes in San Francisco’s AD 12 have an extra special responsibility to check out Democrats Janet Reilly and Fiona Ma before they vote in the primary.
However, that’s easier said than done. It seems last week’s debate, sponsored by the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee is apparently the only chance voter’s had to hear these candidates talk to each other and to voters about why they deserve what will most likely be a 6 year term in the Assembly.
To her credit, Janet Reilly had suggested more debates where voters could hear the candidates, ask questions, and get past prepaid media to make their decision, but unfortunately, it seems Fiona Ma’s campaign, unwilling to “legitimize” their challenge, only agreed to this debate, which gave all the major questions of the debate in advance. Hmm.
I’m the first to suggest that the traditional debate format of 2minute1minutebackandforth doesn’t do much to get past the 30 second sound-bites of TV ads and the 8-second rule of mail pieces. That said, since nothing better is on the horizon, this is all I, and my fellow voters in AD 12, have to go on that won’t be an ad of some sort.
Since almost all the questions were given in advance, instead of really hearing much “debate” to compare, we had instead a chance to basically hear each candidate’s stump speech, separated into pieces. Most of the coverage of the event tended to focus on “stylistic” differences between the candidates – i.e. Ma grabbing the microphone and strolling out on the stage channeling her best Bill Clinton, while Reilly maintained a professional demeanor behind the provided podiums, for example.
And to be sure on many issues they did agree – both supported gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly’s idea to make community college free (like it was until about 20 years or so ago).
That said, the fact was there were some pretty big differences between the candidates on some pretty big issues. But you won’t hear them talk about these issues with voters and between each other in any debates before the primary where the questions were given in advance. Getting nervous? I am!

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Last weekend I decided to check out Janet Reilly’s 2006 kickoff for her campaign for the California Assembly. Loyal readers will recall that Janet had her campaign start in May of 2005, complete with an appearance by 2004 Presidential Candidate John Kerry.
While last year’s event was held downtown and was a gathering of both political insiders and grassroots supporters, the event held last Saturday was one dominated by local district residents who were solidly behind Janet’s campaign at West Portal Elementary, conveniently located just above the West Portal Muni tunnel.
Current Assemblyman Leland Yee (who is now running for the State Senate) introduced Janet and endorsed her to succeed him in the Legislature. Former Lt. Governor and Speaker Leo McCarthy also addressed the crowd. Here you can see a photo of Janet and Assemblyman Yee as Janet began to give her speech.
You can read her remarks here as well.
All in all she gave a good speech – clear, to the point, not too long, and not afraid to speak up on some issues that are sure to create some debate during this campaign.
What I liked best though was that it was clear to me that despite what some nadering nabobs of negativism might say in the press, she was running because she really wants to do the job of representing the district – which is rare these days when you see so many people run just to see their name in the paper and their picture on TV, or just find a gig to make plans for the next campaign – a nasty side effect of term limits. Besides, if she wasn’t serious, there’s no way she could have attracted a crowd like
this on a foggy Saturday morning.
It will be an interesting season for San Francisco/San Mateo County voters in both the 12th Assembly District and the 8th State Senate district, since they will have two very open races with many hard working candidates. But after seeing just how well organized Janet’s campaign has been to date, and how tech-savvy and people-savvy it has operated so far, I’d have to give the edge to Janet in this race.
Special Note to Los Angeles Readers: During a recent trip to Los Angeles to enlist support for her campaign, both the LA Independent and Joe Scott’s The Body Politic blog, among other places.
Part of being a legislator is of course to represent your home area, but part of it is also to be able to work with people around the state, and Janet’s got the edge in this race on that issue for sure.
Pictures graciously provided by Carolyn Weiss.

You know it’s getting bad for political appointee Annemarie Conroy when even the local TV news, not known for really going after news stories, starts an investigation into the qualifications of Ms. Conroy for one of the most critical jobs in a city that is certain to have a disaster.
KGO News, bucking the trend of faux journalism at the local level, took a hard look. And what they found wasn’t too great. The second half was broadcast last night, and frankly NO ONE looks good in all of this.
Not only is Ms. Conroy’s entire qualification that she’s a politico related to an ex-mayor (who gave her a first job in politics, only to be tossed out by voters a couple o’ years later!), and that now taxpayers are paying $40,000 a year to send her to Monterey to get a master’s degree.
Yeah. $40,000 so she can learn something about her job. If the Big One hits, or terrorists attack, she’ll be far, far away from San Francisco. Lucky her. Given how many classes one needs to take to get an M.S., one would imagine we won’t be seeing her around her office much.
Don’t you wish you could get paid $160,000 for a job you’re not qualified for, then have taxpayers pay you to go to school AND pay your tuition, so you could sort of be qualified for the job you’re being paid $160,000 for? I sure do! Beats working, that’s for sure. And that whole “disaster” thing? Well we can just rely on the feds to take care of us! Wowee the crack they’re serving these days is simply crack-a-rific!
Mayor Newsom is still defending the appointment, which seems odd. If we have learned nothing else from Katrina. we should all learn that putting unqualified political hacks into critical, technical jobs leads to disaster. Surely the Mayor who has often stood on principle, could realize that in this case, giving Ms. Conroy the boot to a job where she can be political and not harm anyone, in favor of someone certified to do the job, might be a good idea.
My previous posting on this subject saw a big spike in google searches. Clearly I’m not the only person worried about the issue. And, judging from some of the IP addresses that hit this site from those google searches, some are in City Hall.
UPDATE: Yet another salvo has been fired in the direction of Political Hack Annemarie Conroy, with two supervisors asking for her resignation. Only two now support her – including Assembly Candidate Fiona Ma. You can see the latest KGO TV report here.
Fiona Ma may want to reconsider her public remarks. If this is the kind of person she feels is qualified to take over 160,000 a year in salary, a free government SUV, free tuition for a Master’s Degree (aka on the job training), and other goodies, for a job Ms. Conroy is NOT qualified for and regards the public with contempt when challenged, well then, I’d say voters in next year’s primary may want to ask Ms. Ma some more in depth questions about the kinds of people she feels should be in jobs that literally can hold the power of life or death over them.
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com