Gonzo goes negative When Sup. Matt Gonzalez started talking about jumping into the mayor's race in late August, he assured activists – alarmed that his move might fracture the left and undermine the bid of fellow supervisor Tom Ammiano – that he had no beef with the longtime progressive leader and would not attack him on the campaign trail.

Rather, Gonzalez said, he saw the need to enter because many political insiders expressed concern that Ammiano just can't beat Sup. Gavin Newsom. Gonzalez stressed that the three progressives – Ammiano, former supervisor Angela Alioto, and himself – should focus their attention on attacking neoliberal front-runner Newsom and even pledge to endorse whomever among them makes it into a runoff.

So Ammiano supporters were horrified when a campaign piece pitching Gonzalez arrived in voters' mailboxes Oct. 16 tarring Ammiano as a washed-up candidate who "had [his] chance." The mailer featured a chart comparing the votes of Ammiano, Gonzalez, and Newsom on five issues and suggesting Ammiano votes more often with Newsom than with Gonzalez (which is not true).

The piece asks voters whether "the Millionaire Candidate" (a reference to Newsom) or "Politicians Who Have Had Their Chance" (Ammiano, and maybe even Alioto) "should be the next mayor." It introduces Gonzalez as a "new kind of politician."

"[Gonzalez] promised us ... he wouldn't campaign against Tom," Gwenn Craig, a longtime member of the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Club, told us. "This ... piece is a clear betrayal of that promise ... a deliberate attempt to fracture the progressive coalition that is largely responsible for putting him into the office he now holds."

Ross Mirkarimi, spokesperson for Gonzalez's campaign, told us the mailer shouldn't be viewed as a sign that the Green Party member is going to campaign hard against fellow lefties. "It may seem that our mail program is aggressive, but it's doing the job that the media hasn't – of comparing and contrasting the differences between the candidates on the left," Mirkarimi said. "We'll still stand by the notion that Matt ['s campaign] is the best nexus for unifying the left against Gavin." (Savannah Blackwell)

Mayoral debate The Gonzalez campaign headquarters in the Horseshoe Café on Haight Street drew a mosaic audience to watch the first televised mayoral debate Oct. 14.

While the loudest cheers were reserved for Gonzalez, there was much nodding of heads and little ripples of applause during the speeches of Ammiano and Alioto. Of the hundred or so who turned up, a few were still undecided on whom to vote for.

Robert James, a first-timer on the San Francisco political scene, admired Gonzalez for his "sincerity and intelligence" and thought he had a real chance of winning. Another supporter was overheard saying, "I don't think he can win this year, but he has a good chance of doing it next time." (Laura Paskell-Brown)

Caps off for final push The San Francisco Ethics Commission refused to reimpose a spending cap in the race for district attorney that would have stopped candidate Kamala Harris from spending any more money. And Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay rejected a request that Harris be fined the full amount possible under local law for breaking her legally binding pledge to stay under a voluntary spending cap.

Commission consideration of whether to reimpose the cap – which was lifted, some say inappropriately, Sept. 26 by commission director Ginny Vida – became a moot point when D.A. candidate Bill Fazio announced he had raised $211,000, the expenditure ceiling for the race, on Oct. 16.

Fazio was the only candidate in the three-person race who didn't sign a pledge agreeing to abide by the voluntary spending cap, which is lifted for all candidates when anyone who didn't agree to the pledge breaks that ceiling.

But attorneys for District Attorney Terence Hallinan and Gonzalez, who filed a lawsuit against the commission Oct. 10, said the issue of Harris breaking her January pledge is far from moot. They asked the court to force the Ethics Commission to concede that Vida should not have lifted the limit in the race and to fine Harris the full amount under the law – nearly $300,000 instead of the $34,000 the commission imposed Oct. 3.

That effort failed Oct. 17 when Judge Quidachay ruled that the two had "failed [to show] that the administrative actions taken by the Ethics Commission were arbitrary and capricious."

On Oct. 14 the commission voted 4-1, with commissioner Paul Melbostad opposed, that Vida had the authority to lift the limit in the race for all candidates after Harris filed a report showing she had spent nearly $100,000 more than the cap (see Campaign Watch, 10/15/03).

Green Party member Marc Solomon, who is part of a group of watchdogs raising the issue with the commission, and others have complained that the decision was illegal and that commission members seem uninterested in investigating whether Harris's claims that she did not realize she was committed to the pledge are in fact true. The law says that if a candidate is found guilty of knowingly breaking a campaign spending limit pledge, he or she should be disqualified from the race and fined three times the excess amount raised.

"The commission is completely detached from the law and appears to be covering for Harris so as to let her try to win this election by buying it," Solomon said. "At this point, they should just be kicked out and dissolved." (Blackwell)