In This Issue

THE LOVELY THING about being a political reporter is that you get to look stupid on a regular basis. Political reporters identify trends and tell people which issues are going to matter; we anoint (and dismiss) political candidates and movements. We make all sorts of predictions. We do it all with great profundity and utter confidence. And fairly often, reality proves us wrong.

So it was with the Gonzalez campaign.

Six months ago I was on a cable-TV show hosted by Matt Gonzalez, and he asked me if I thought anyone other than Tom Ammiano, Angela Alioto, Susan Leal, and Gavin Newsom would be a player in the November mayor's race. Nah, I announced: What we have now is what we're going to get. Anyone else who was going to enter would have had to start planning much earlier.

And while I was as upbeat as possible about a progressive candidate's chances – after all, Newsom was stuck at about 35 percent in the polls, meaning the majority of voters preferred someone else – I knew, and most of us who were paying attention knew, that Newsom would be very tough to beat.

Even when Gonzalez was first making noises about entering the race, a few days before the filing deadline in August, I had my doubts. Could he really make a difference at that late date? Or would he just split the left vote and help Newsom cruise into office?

So I have to temper my usual proclamations about the meaning of this election with a bit of humility. That doesn't stop me, though, from saying, without a bit of hesitation, the mayoral runoff was a significant victory for the progressive movement.

Remember: Last March Care Not Cash passed with some 60 percent of the vote. A year earlier Mark Leno beat Harry Britt in a state assembly primary, and Bevan Dufty beat Eileen Hansen in a run for supervisor in District Eight. The left in this town, which was riding so high after the 2000 supervisorial elections, was looking sort of anemic.

But as we report on page 16, Gonzalez injected a whole lot of new energy into the mix and brought a whole lot of new voters on board – and made it clear the progressives are a force that Mayor Newsom will have to deal with over the next four years.

And I don't think I'm wrong this time.