By Savannah Blackwell

During her eight years on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Angela Alioto frequently found herself at odds with the city's political and financial establishment – especially in her ceaseless effort to free San Francisco energy consumers from the stranglehold of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

The San Francisco Labor Council even snubbed her when she ran for mayor in 1995, at a time when she was waging war against PG&E on several fronts, including taking the utility to court for violating its sweetheart franchise deal with San Francisco. After she left office, the city backed down and settled the case.

Eight years later, and after playing roles in two failed campaigns to get voters to approve public power plans, mayoral candidate Alioto has unveiled a proposal that continues the fight. "The bottom line is I'm going to do this," Alioto told us. "This is a mission to me, to have the [publicly owned] San Francisco Gas and Electric Co. would be huge."

But Alioto's "Plan for a Bright San Francisco Future" is actually far more modest than what she's proposed in the past. The plan doesn't mention the Raker Act – the city's historical legal mandate for public power – until the last page. Nowhere does it directly call for an immediate takeover of PG&E's transmission facilities.

Alioto said the results of an April poll she commissioned on the issue show that words used in the failed campaigns (like "municipalization" and "Raker Act") tend to turn off voters, who've been snowed by the multimillion-dollar ad blitzes against public power by PG&E over the years. And it also showed that almost half of the voting public still doesn't understand why public power will save them money or bring safer, cleaner energy to the city. So Alioto is calling for the creation of a foundation that will provide educational outreach to San Franciscans. In addition, Alioto is pledging to keep additional polluting plants out of the city's southeast side.

Alioto isn't the only public power champion in the race. Sup. Tom Ammiano led the effort after she left office in January 1997. In 2001 he put a detailed plan on the ballot that actually would have implemented a public power system in San Francisco. One year later he modified his own position and proposed a scaled-back public power plan. Board president Matt Gonzalez made sure the measure that got on the ballot in 2002 included a provision making municipalization possible.