The progressive agenda

Sup. Matt Gonzalez sent out a memo to his supporters Jan. 6 outlining "some of my thoughts on measures that the progressive community should be working on this year." Some highlights:

• Oppose Proposition J (Workforce Housing Initiative) and support Propositions I (resist USA PATRIOT Act requests) and E (junk polluting Muni buses).

• Make Muni service free for youths, seniors, and the disabled.

• Pass a new business tax based on gross receipts rather than payroll.

• Give local, small businesses priority in contracting with the city.

• Expand inclusionary housing requirements.

• Ban chain stores in certain commercial districts.

• Create term limits for and more economic disclosure from city commissioners.

• Put a municipal public power measure on fall ballot.

• Ban demolition on residential building with more than 20 units.

• Put a community land trust ordinance on the fall ballot.

Get involved The Gonzalez memo also announced two events to raise money and organize. An art auction fundraiser will be held Fri/16, 7 p.m., StudioZ.tv, 314 11th St., S.F. (415) 252-7666. There will be a permanent-absentee registration event Jan. 30, 9 p.m., 540 Club, 540 Clement, S.F. (415) 386-2706.

Strength in numbers
Unified behind Gonzalez, the Board of Supervisors' majority prepares for the treacherous political road ahead

By Steven T. Jones

Mayor Gavin Newsom has power. He'll hire hundreds of bureaucrats to run the city, propose budgetary priorities and a political agenda, and try to carry out his will with support from the city's wealthiest individuals and institutions. But his power is far from absolute.

To follow through on his ambitious campaign promises, Newsom will need the support of a San Francisco Board of Supervisors that is more powerful, progressive, and unified than it has ever been.

Voters in November continued the trend of handing mayoral authority over to the board, this time through Proposition H's police reforms. Even more significant were the six supervisors and 119,329 voters who backed board president Matt Gonzalez in his run for mayor.

"We are 47%. Don't let Gavin forget us," read the sign Gonzalez supporter Kevin McGuire held during Newsom's inauguration. His message was aimed at those six supervisors who opposed Newsom in the election: Gonzalez, Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, Aaron Peskin, Jake McGoldrick, and Gerardo Sandoval. His meaning: fight for us.

In the days leading up to the inauguration, the Bay Guardian interviewed each of those six supervisors about how they are approaching this pivotal political year.

Progressive unity

There's been much speculation among local political observers about what kind of front the board majority will present. Will they be an effective progressive check on Newsom's centrist agenda, or can the new mayor use the dynamics of an election year to divide and conquer them?

"I think 2004 is going to be a very important year," Daly said. "The big question is whether progressives can keep the momentum going that developed during the Gonzalez campaign."

Maintaining that energy will mean organizing activists outside City Hall while choosing the right fights inside: pushing a proactive economic and social justice agenda, extracting maximum public benefits from the developers who will benefit from Newsom's pro-growth push, and working to stop mayoral initiatives that run counter to progressive values.

"I hate to use a sports metaphor, but we're going to have to have a good offense as well as a good defense," Ammiano said. "We're going to have to be very artful and collaborative if we feel what the new mayor does is as harmful as his initial take with Care Not Cash."

Gonzalez said he isn't taking his current political power for granted but instead focusing on political organizing (he will host a pair of events in the coming weeks) while waiting for Newsom make his move.

"I don't want to overromanticize what happened," Gonzalez said of having the board majority back him. "They got behind me when it was me versus Newsom. That doesn't mean they'll back me on every issue."

Other supervisors are more inclined to place Gonzalez in that lead role.

"The board president should be calling the shots. Matt is my president, and that's the team that I'm very clearly on and that I've worked for," Peskin said. "We're got to get a very cohesive message out."

"The fact that there was a majority supporting Matt says a lot about his presidency and the cohesiveness on the Board of Supervisors," Sandoval said. "It makes us a force that Gavin Newsom is going to have to contend with."

Yet Peskin, Sandoval, and McGoldrick are all facing reelection this November in districts Newsom carried in December, so there are risks in aggressively challenging the mayor.

"They are the ones who are going to get the attention," Daly said of his three colleagues. "The newspapers will try to destabilize their bases. The other side plays hardball."

"The Chronicle is going to want to make every issue into a fight of Gavin Newsom versus Matt Gonzalez," Sandoval said. "The people around Newsom who work for him are going to want to start a fight."

Daly said that the District 5 and 9 seats held by Gonzalez and Ammiano, respectively, are safe seats for progressives but that for the District 1, 3, and 11 seats respectively held by McGoldrick, Peskin, and Sandoval, there will be "critical races on par with the mayor's race" in terms of the city's political direction.

Effectively stealing Newsom's thunder could help progressives consolidate their gains, but if Newsom can set the agenda and expand his base, the coming election could break the board's unity.

"You hear, 'Jake and Gerardo are in trouble, Jake and Gerardo are in trouble.' Well, if you repeat something enough times, it becomes the truth," Ammiano said.

McGoldrick admits the makeup of his district forces him to moderate his politics just a bit.

"You gotta love Chris for talking like he does. If I was from Chris's district, I'd probably talk more like a progressive too," McGoldrick said, noting that he now hews more toward a liberal populism than toward the more radical and ideological progressivism that marks Daly's style.

Sandoval said he feels invigorated by the movement that coalesced behind Gonzalez and more comfortable than ever taking leftist stands, even though Newsom won in his district.

"If you take care of the potholes and clean the streets, then you can pass progressive legislation," Sandoval said. "If you don't take care of the bottom line, then you're in trouble."

Choosing battles

The Newsom and Gonzalez camps right now are like two boxers, dancing around the ring after the opening bell, waiting for the right opportunity to throw a punch, trying to ignore the crowd of supporters screaming for a bloody slugfest.

"He may want to work together, and the Board of Supervisors may want to work together, but our respective followers may not want to work together," Sandoval said, noting that in this politically polarized city, both sides are feeling strong and uncompromising.

McGoldrick said the factions, which are currently very animated, will take their cues from their leaders.

"It depends on what [Newsom's] first steps are. He's going to have 200 to 400 people that he's going to put into place," McGoldrick said. "The question is: are they going to be a cabal, or a group of community-concerned citizens?"

To counter the institutional power possessed by the mayor, the board will have to keep the grass roots growing.

"The big question is whether the organizing outside the building is going on," Daly said. "We need to be building our bases out in our districts."

Right now Newsom says he wants to work with those to his left. While the supervisors are skeptical, they want to give him a chance. McGoldrick said, "He has an opportunity to show a willingness to work with people who opposed him."

Newsom's first gesture was to select many Gonzalez backers to join his 183-member transition team, which then developed 14 issue papers. The day before Newsom's inauguration, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Newsom as saying he hadn't yet read those papers. But even if he had, it's unclear what direction he would take from this contradictory hodgepodge of mission statements and policy summaries.

Gonzalez called the effort "a stupid idea" and said the media made a mistake in not scrutinizing Newsom's approach more carefully. "It speaks to a phony desire to show you are reaching out to people whose opinions you aren't really seeking."

Several supervisors said it's still unclear to them what Newsom will do, given his lack of a strong ideological bearing and the vagueness of many of his campaign promises.

"I don't think he's fully formed yet," McGoldrick said. "But he has potential, and that's exciting."

The uncertainty of what to expect from Mayor Newsom has been exacerbated by the slow pace of his transition work (by Bay Guardian press time, his only announced appointments were a new fire chief and a replacement school board member).

"Hey dude, you're getting inaugurated in a couple days. Do you know what you're doing yet?" Gonzalez said Jan. 6. "The subtext of this is he's made a lot of promises, he wants to please a lot of people, and he could end up paralyzed by it."

First up: housing

The first fight on the horizon will be over housing. The Workforce Housing Initiative, which was developed and promoted by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and adopted by Newsom, will appear as Proposition J on the March 2 ballot.

The measure would fast-track and give height and density bonuses to thousands of new middle-class housing units in the downtown and Mission Bay areas. It got a brief hearing at the board last year, but the Chamber of Commerce refused to modify the measure to meet the concerns of supervisors and instead pushed it onto the ballot.

"Is it all bad? No. But the way the chamber is stepping up makes me nervous," Ammiano said. "They didn't respond to the criticisms we had of workforce housing. We weren't listened to. They just did what they wanted to do."

Peskin and other supervisors said this kind of "ballot-box planning" isn't what's best for the city. "It undermines professional planning, and it's a slap in the face to [Willie Brown]," Peskin said.

Of the six progressive supervisors, only Sandoval said he still hasn't decided how he feels about Prop. J. "I hope that maybe it's not the bogeyman that people think it is."

"The concept is fine, but the problem is in the details," Gonzalez said. "For the height and density increase, are you getting a significant benefit as far as affordability?"

In fact, McGoldrick's office has been working on a community-benefits ordinance designed to assess the needs of San Franciscans in terms of things like social services, open space, and infrastructure and to make sure new development helps meet those needs. That measure could come before the board in late January.

"If you are going to develop, you have to identify what the community needs are," said McGoldrick, who added that he's been talking about the concept with the developers of the Rincon Towers project, which will also come before the board for approval later this month.

"We need to seriously address the issue of displacement here to give people some sense of permanency and stability," McGoldrick said.

Other housing issues coming quickly are the bond measure Newsom has proposed for low-income housing and supportive housing for the homeless, a community land trust ordinance that Daly is developing, the secondary-unit measure pitched by Peskin, and a proposal to make it tougher to demolish residential buildings.

"The Workforce Housing [Initiative] is not what it should be, and part of the board agenda has to be a real affordable housing plan for all income levels," Ammiano said.

Gonzalez agreed: "I think the progressives ought to come forward with something, no matter what happens in March."

What's next?

Beyond the early fight over housing, most supervisors predict a honeymoon period of three to six months before the political heat gets turned up. Then budget priorities in a fiscally lean year will accentuate the ideological rift between Newsom and the board.

"The other big thing going on where we're going to start seeing some mobilization is over the budget," Daly said.

Around May or June, when the budget debates kick in, is also when Newsom could begin feeling public pressure to make good on his ambitious promises to house the homeless. And if he clings to his Care Not Cash and anti-panhandling models, there will be battles with the board.

"If it's going to be that narrow," Ammiano said, "we're never going to get the policy we deserve."

"He hasn't shown substance on the homeless issue yet, but he could do that now," McGoldrick predicted, noting that Newsom could use his close relationship to House minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi to secure some federal funds.

On the purely political front, the supervisors know Newsom will try to use the November elections to create a more sympathetic board majority, and many feel he will also heed calls from the Chronicle and other downtown players and try to put an end to district elections.

"Newsom trashed district elections from day one, and the supervisors who were elected by it," Ammiano said.

When such life-or-death battles emerge, the board majority will need to fall back on their unity and community support. The rest of the time, they say, it's just about making sure city business is getting a fair and open hearing.

"I think what they really want from us is honest dialogue, not some bullshit public relations stuff," McGoldrick said. "We need to educate even those who disagree with us about the importance of our issues."

E-mail Steven T. Jones