Attention, please Attorney Randy Knox knew exactly how to pump up the crowd at the Sept. 2 kickoff event for Matt Gonzalez's mayoral campaign when he posited, "Do you want a mayor who has actually lived on $35,000 a year in San Francisco?"

Looking past his progressive rivals, Gonzalez clearly set his sights on well-heeled front-runner Gavin Newsom and, using distinctions based on class, intelligence, and vision as his ammo, cast himself as the artsy intellectual to Newsom's disingenuous dilettante.

In the process, Gonzalez blasted the downtown business interests that are funding Newsom's campaign, saying they have used their political connections to kill progressive reforms rather than to honestly engage with the city.

"We have to have that dialogue with them," Gonzalez said. "It can't just be a pretext."

Yet under a Newsom mayorship, he said, that kind of faux dialogue would continue, and the city would never have enough money to fund important social programs. As evidence, Gonzalez cited the deceptive rhetoric behind last year's Care Not Cash measure, authored by Newsom and pushed by business interests, as well as the hollow platitudes now coming from the Newsom campaign.

"If the voters pay attention," Gonzalez said, "then I can be elected mayor of this town."

As if to illustrate this key condition, the din from the bar at 111 Minna Gallery got louder and louder as Gonzalez went into detailed discussions of policy and political strategy.

It was refreshing to hear such substance and depth from a politician, but in the short-attention-span world we live in, it's still an open question: if Gonzalez has a hard time holding his supporters' attention, can he catch fire with enough voters to win the election? (Steven T. Jones)

Another CNC sequel The lives – and deaths – of the city's thousands of street dwellers continue to take center stage in the race to replace Mayor Willie Brown. Coming up Sept. 16, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is scheduled (again) to vote on Newsom's Care Not Cash homeless reform program.

If you're sensing a creeping feeling of déjà vu, it's because we've been here before, several times. The board have debated the measure over and over but have delayed voting on it all summer.

This time, though, there could be new intensity. Board president Gonzalez has long been one of Care Not Cash's most articulate critics. Now that he's running against Newsom, he's been raising fierce objections to the way Newsom has used the homeless to build his political career.

At his campaign-kickoff party, Gonzalez charged that Care Not Cash was never about finding roofs for the homeless, let alone giving them the support and services they need to become productive members of society. That, he said, would take money and commitment.

Instead of finding revenue streams to support needed programs, Gonzalez said, Newsom regularly votes for items that funnel money to the business community. In 2001 he voted for costly long-term energy contracts and has consistently opposed increasing the business tax. Last fall he opposed Proposition L, the real-estate transfer tax measure, which could have brought in some $30 million a year to city coffers.

"That's three votes there worth over $90 million," Gonzalez said. "Instead, Newsom does Care Not Cash.... It's ludicrous, and it's phony."

Also up for a vote Sept. 16: the alternative to Care Not Cash by Sup. Tony Hall (who was at Gonzalez's kickoff party to show his support) and a third measure, which is a merger of Hall's and Newsom's legislation. At last count, none of the proposals had the necessary six votes. (Jones and Rachel Brahinsky)

Debating the issues The folks at Coleman Advocates for Children managed to pull off an unlikely feat in this superheated campaign season. On Sept. 4 they put on an informative, issue-focused mayoral forum – one that certainly stands out among the best of those held this year.

What's more, there were actually real people with real problems jamming into the standing-room-only crowd in the California State Building auditorium – a far cry from your usual assortment of hacks, diehard activists, and members of political clubs.

Many of the questions from the audience came from youths who hail from tough neighborhoods that face major challenges in keeping children from engaging in self-destructive behavior: "We're facing a moral dilemma," said Jay Miranda from Homies Organizing in the Mission to Empower Youth. "What are we going to do? Are we going to have to turn away youth because we have no money?"

Tough to say how the panel of six candidates went over. The commitments of Angela Alioto, Tom Ammiano, Gonzalez, and Susan Leal to pumping more resources and funds into the school district and youth programs were definite crowd pleasers. And it was clearly not a Newsom-friendly audience. His comment that the school district needs to be held more accountable so the "philanthropic community, nonprofits, and corporations" would be more likely to fund programs and form partnerships with the city's schools was met with hisses from a crowd that largely took a dim view of Gap founder and CEO Don Fisher's efforts to privatize schools, such as Edison.

Even so, a tone of congeniality marked the forum – with Alioto, Gonzalez, and Leal taking pains to credit Ammiano for leading efforts in past years to even the field between families of means and those without.