So instead of trying to repeal the district system, the Chamber has come up with this "hybrid" effort. The idea would be to reduce the number of districts to seven and elect four supervisors citywide.

What that means, of course, is that a third of the board, elected on a pile of money, will be pretty much call-up votes for downtown. With two more from the more conservative districts, you've got a majority.

So this is about money and political control, and about the political direction the city is going, and about who's going to set that direction. That's the message progressive leaders need to start putting out, now. And every incumbent supervisor, and every candidate for supervisor, needs to make preservation of district elections a public priority.