Dividing Nine
Progressives challenge Ammiano, creating yet another battle on the left

By Tim Redmond

Sup. Tom Ammiano, who for more than a decade has been a progressive icon in San Francisco, is facing a reelection challenge from an unusual quarter: the left.

We're not talking the loony left here, either. Two credible progressive candidates, with long track records as Mission District community activists, are launching campaigns to unseat Ammiano in District Nine this fall.

Eric Quezada, acting director of Mission Housing Development Corp., and Rene Saucedo, community empowerment coordinator for La Raza Centro Legal, both say they're in the race to stay, and both already have lined up some powerful supporters. San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Matt Gonzalez has endorsed Saucedo, a Green Party member. Sup. Chris Daly is backing Quezada.

As Quezada points out, this is one of the good things about district elections: even long-term incumbents with good track records can and will face challengers. Besides, he told the Bay Guardian, "I think that one of the good things about having a strong progressive movement is that we're not stuck choosing the lesser of the evils. This could be about choosing the better of three goods."

But it also guarantees that a considerable amount of progressive energy and resources will be going into a fight between people who are generally allies. And with Gonzalez bowing out of the District Five race, and several progressives scrambling to succeed him, it means much of the left's attention this fall may go to internecine warfare – at a time when allies of Mayor Gavin Newsom are almost certain to try to pick off progressive in other districts.

And it threatens to reopen the old wounds between the queer community and the Greens that emerged in the mayor's race last year, when Gonzalez entered at the last minute and effectively pushed Ammiano out of contention.

"As a Latina lesbian, I don't relish any of this happening," Esperanza Macias, a longtime community activist and former director of the Women's Building, told us. "Nobody wins with this sort of divide-and-conquer politics."

Quezada, a 38-year-old housing organizer whose base is in the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, has been talking about running for supervisor for several years and was counting on Ammiano losing his job to term limits after 2004. In fact, some insiders suggest Ammiano might have supported Quezada if he'd been unable to run himself.

But thanks to a loophole in the law that brought in district elections and term limits, City Attorney Dennis Herrera ruled earlier this year that Ammiano can serve one more four-year stint – and Quezada doesn't want to wait.

"This campaign has been in the works a long time," he said.

Saucedo, who has tangled with the city over her staunch advocacy for day laborers, told us she's a "progressive woman who has a history in this neighborhood on a deep level" and has been "effective in pushing the envelope."

Saucedo and Quezada argue that Ammiano has lost touch with the neighborhoods in his district, particularly the Mission. "I think he has a certain style that's based more on a citywide perspective that's been hard to shift to an era of district elections," Quezada said.

"People didn't feel that he was present, that he spent enough time on district issues," noted Saucedo, who has lived in the Mission for 10 years.

And indeed, both challengers – like many progressives in the city – have disagreed with Ammiano over a handful of issues in the past few years, particularly his support for a 2001 settlement of a lawsuit by downtown corporations over the business tax and his more moderate approach to public power. The Bay Guardian has disagreed with him – often strongly – on those issues too.

And both challengers make the valid point that Latinos represent a large part of the district and that the board needs more people of color.

But Quezada and Saucedo also agree that, overall, Ammiano has been a good supervisor. In fact, Quezada supported him over Gonzalez in the 2003 mayor's race. "I've been close to Tom and his folks for a long time," Quezada said.

Saucedo added, "It's not that he hasn't done good things in the past. But district elections was put into place so people like me could run for local office."

That's what makes this so tricky. Nobody's saying Ammiano desperately needs to be replaced, or that he's done a horrible job. In essence, his challengers are saying that the incumbent has been around a long time, that the board needs new blood, and that District Nine needs a different type of representation.

Ammiano sees that as an "ageist" approach. "I think there's plenty of new blood on the board," he told us. "But you also need someone who has the experience, who knows how to get things done."

As for the criticism about his connection with the district, he calls that "wrong and self-serving."

"Whether it's trash pickup or stop signs, we have an excellent record," he said. "We've been very district sensitive. Nobody has carried the torch more for the rights of day labor. I carried the interim [zoning] controls legislation that went after loft development in the Mission. How could anyone say I'm out of touch with the district?"

Macias goes even further: "It's crazy not to make use of Tom's leadership experience," she said. "We shouldn't step on the people who opened the door for us. That just ends up creating hostilities."

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