Campaign Watch

Kamala vs. the Bay Guardian On July 16, we told readers that recent polling data suggested district attorney candidate Kamala Harris's tenure on two high-paying state commissions in the 1990s won't go over well with voters because Mayor Willie Brown, who had a past personal relationship with Harris, appointed her to the posts (see Campaign Watch, 7/16/03). Shortly afterward, we received about half a dozen letters expressing outrage (see Letters, 7/30/03).

Some of the missives, we quickly noticed, featured identical wording. All were huffy – accusing us of sexism, misogyny, racism, and 1950s-style reporting. Our offense? Having the audacity to go anywhere near what now appears to be the "third rail" of the Harris election bid: the Willie issue.

It sure looked like an orchestrated letter-writing campaign – and, it turns out, that's exactly what it was. We've obtained an e-mail sent out by Debbie Mesloh, a Harris campaign volunteer, urging supporters to "take five minutes to take one of the attached letters, personalize and send [it] back to [her]'' for submission to the Bay Guardian.

Let us explain the issue to the letter writers and the Harris campaign: Brown's administration has been the most corrupt in modern San Francisco history. The commissions that Harris served on, the California Medical Assistance Commission and the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, are considered classic examples of the patronage that has defined his career.

Among the temporarily out-of-a job pols who have served on the panels, courtesy of Brown's largesse: state senate president John Burton, who Brown appointed to the California Medical Assistance Commission years ago after Burton resigned from Congress, and former San Francisco mayor Art Agnos, who Brown sent to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board after Agnos lost his 1992 reelection bid to Frank Jordan.

All of this has been widely reported (and criticized) in the mainstream media, and even Burton admits that these are patronage posts and ought to be abolished.

Harris's two state commission appointments show she's benefited from and been part of the established, machine-based patronage system. It has nothing to do with sex, or sexism. The big questions are: Can we trust her as district attorney? Can she aggressively go after the political corruption when her friend and, yes, patron, has been a bastion of crooked politics?

Harris's campaign manager, Jim Stearns, says she can do the job: "Kamala Harris will act independently. Take a look at her strong support of the police-reform initiative. She has a track record of independence that voters can trust."

We think the jury's still out on that one. (Savannah Blackwell)

Representative democracy As the San Francisco Elections Commission prepares for an important Aug. 6 vote on whether to kill ranked-choice voting (see "Reform Denied," 7/30/03), fights are breaking out over who rightfully speaks for the minority voters that RCV opponents say would be disenfranchised by the new form of balloting.

The latest came from the Chinese American community when political activists Eric Mar, Leon Chow, and Henry Der wrote a letter July 28 to mayoral front-runner Gavin Newsom criticizing his $5,000 donation last year to the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, whose executive director, David Lee, has been among the more vocal critics of ranked choice, also known as instant-runoff voting.

"Recent reports have raised the question of whether special interests outside the Asian American community are unduly influencing the community's consideration of IRV in order to promote your candidacy for mayor," they wrote. "In this light, your contribution appears to be an attempt to buy unfair influence, and only serves to undermine the integrity of CAVEC."

The Newsom campaign did not respond to Bay Guardian calls on the matter, but Lee sent an e-mail calling the allegations "false and defamatory."

"Reasonable minds may object to CAVEC's conclusion that IRV is not yet ready for prime time, but our community should decide this question with intelligent and fair talk about the issues," Lee wrote. "The falsehood promulgated by Mar & Co. clouds the real issues and lowers the standard of clear debate." (Steven T. Jones)