Why we miss Father O'Donnell

Father Bill O'Donnell and I drove together to get arrested at a Presidio housing takeover, and I recited a song I'd written about unconditional love ["Father Bill O'Donnell," 12/17/03].

"You should enroll in the seminary," he said.

"I thought they didn't take women?" I asked.

"They will someday," he replied. I told him I didn't believe in God, and that that might be considered a problem.

"That doesn't matter," he responded. "You'd be perfect."

I think we laughed the rest of the way. And saved the housing.

Carol Denney
Berkeley

PG&E's bankruptcy scam

When Pacific Gas and Electric Co. filed for bankruptcy in 2001, chairman Robert D. Glynn wrote in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed (4/16/01): "For our customers, our action should have no significant impact." Today PG&E customers find out that, under the reorganization plan passed by the Public Utilities Commission, we must pay PG&E $7 billion to $8 billion. That's an average of about $1,500 per customer. (This after years of paying the highest electricity rates in the country.) Perhaps Mr. Glynn means that such a sum isn't significant for someone in his socioeconomic class: As a reward for "staying the course" during bankruptcy, Mr. Glynn's salary was doubled to $1,800,000 – more than most PG&E customers will earn in their lifetimes.

If this plan goes through, it will prove that more than just PG&E is bankrupt.

David Fairley
San Francisco

Rising star?

After reading about how Gavin Newsom is the "Democrats' rising star" ("S.F. Mayor-Elect Hailed as Democrats' Rising Star," San Francisco Chronicle, 12/11/03), I felt the need for some perspective.

According to the article, San Francisco is the "Bluest spot of the Blue states." Our Democrat, up against a Green challenger, spent six times as long preparing for this race and outspent him 10 to 1. He organized a record number of absentee voters, and he had the endorsement of the major local media and business interests. To top it off, he had the active support of nearly every single major Democratic politician, local as well as national. It should have been an easy win, yet in this Democratic city, whose voters overwhelmingly rejected the recent statewide recall, he still only won by 5 percent of the vote.

When you consider that Republicans make up 13 percent of registered voters, yet the Greens only make up 3 percent, it's clear Newsom wouldn't have won without the overwhelming support of the Republicans, and Matt Gonzalez couldn't have done so well without major support from the city's Democrats.

This is the Democrats' rising star?

Soren Goodman
San Francisco

The left did lose

Despite the vain attempt to put a happy spin on Matt Gonzalez's narrow mayoral loss ("Matt's Momentum" and "How Gonzalez Won," from the 12/17/03 issue), the fact remains that big corporate money, big political machines, and ruthless operators still know how to take elections, and Gavin Newsom's coronation was no different.

What was more significant is that the left in San Francisco was, even during Gonzalez's eleventh-hour zenith, hopelessly fragmented and unable to unify behind him.

From the national to the local level, the left typically expends more time and energy fighting among its own (Greens versus Democrats, etc.), whereas the right has learned how to rally behind its candidates in spite of differences.

Larry Chin
San Francisco

Was the Gonzalez campaign shafted?

'Tis the season to be jolly and all, but is it Grinchy to declare that Matt Gonzalez's campaign got shafted by the Department of Elections ("Gonzalez Aide Rips Elections Dept.," San Francisco Chronicle, 12/18/03)? Part of the reason Newsom had the huge absentee vote advantage lies in the fact that he'd been campaigning for two years already. Gonzalez and everyone else were originally expecting a one-time campaign with instant-runoff voting, mandated by law but fumbled about, almost certainly intentionally, between Elections director John Arntz and Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, so that at the last moment it was declared unready for this cycle. Newsom might not have won outright in an IRV election, because the nature of the campaign would have been different, with all kinds of open alliances possible – as opposed to the sort of late, backroom deal Newsom and Angela Alioto made. The extra time of the runoff gave an ultimately panicked Newsom more breathing room to call out the big Democrat guns and money.

It is furthermore necessary to reexamine the absentee voting procedures. They are too easily exploitable by the professionals and insiders hanging out in the bowels of City Hall, while a recount is complicated and costly.

Barry Eisenberg
San Francisco

For the record