POLITICIANS USE ENDORSEMENTS all the time to bolster their credibility and the credibility of their projects. It's a pretty simple concept: We all know the Green Party (say) is a progressive group, so if the Greens endorse someone for office, he or she must be OK. The fiscal conservatives have always liked Judge Quentin Kopp; back when he could still make endorsements, a sizable part of the city figured that if Kopp was backing something, it wasn't a waste of taxpayer money.

But it works the other way, too. Sometimes the best way to realize there's something wrong with a piece of legislation is to discover that the wrong people are supporting it. Witness Frank Gallagher's column in the San Francisco Examiner last week essentially endorsing Sup. Tom Ammiano's new public power measure.

"Clearly, the moderate voices in the public power camp have won out over the more strident elements who simply want to put PG&E out of business," Gallagher – who last year was working as a paid PG&E flack – crowed in his June 24 piece.

Gallagher fully and properly discloses that he was working as a consultant to PG&E's campaign last fall. His past profession doesn't disqualify him from writing a political column. But it does mean he's unlikely to suddenly become a flag-waving advocate for public power. If Gallagher – whose column is pretty much defined by bashing the left in San Francisco, particularly the progressives on the Board of Supervisors – thinks this new measure is a fine and dandy idea, it ought to make Ammiano very nervous.

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In other news: The Civil Service Commission is, by most accounts, about to rule in favor of Tammy Haygood, the deposed director of elections who wants her job back. The Elections Commission, which fired her, shouldn't have done it in closed session, because Haygood can now raise all sorts of questions about the commission's motivation. But let's be serious: Haygood was terrible at the job. Among other things, she out-and-out lied to reporters on election night in November (I asked her if any ballots had been moved out of City Hall; she denied it, twice.) She refused to make public her plan to shift ballot boxes to two unguarded locations in an election PG&E won under suspicious circumstances. She fostered an atmosphere of mistrust and secrecy – and that, alone, is grounds for firing an elections director. The Elections Commission should hang tough and fight this one to the end.