EDITOR'S NOTES

By Tim Redmond

> tredmond@sfbg.com

I was grumbling to myself over a bagel way too early last Thursday morning when I flipped open the San Francisco Chronicle and, through my bleary eyes, noticed a headline deep in the obituary section on an inside page reporting the demise of "George T. Davis – top death penalty lawyer." He'd died in Hawaii, on his ranch, at age 98.

I hadn't thought about George T. Davis in years. I hadn't even realized he was still alive. The Chron focused, naturally, on his high-profile cases, particularly Caryl Chessman. The obit didn't mention the role Davis played much later in life as a key advocate for public power in a huge political battle involving Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

It was back in 1987, and I had just reported that San Francisco was quietly negotiating a series of long-term contracts to sell Hetch Hetchy power to the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts, with PG&E picking up a nice chunk of cash for transmitting the city's power over the private utility's lines. It all sounded kind of fishy to me, but the contracts were thousands of pages long, and I had no idea what they really said.

A day or two after my story came out, the phone rang and I found myself talking to a guy who said he was a lawyer named George T. Davis. He was wondering if he could come by and take a look at those contracts I was writing about. It wasn't until later that I learned the man who showed up at the old Guardian Building had once defended Tom Mooney.

A bit of background here: Back in 1916 a bomb exploded near the corner of Steuart and Market, killing 10 people. Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, radical labor activists, were quickly charged with setting off the bomb, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

The problem was, much of the key evidence was fabricated by the district attorney, Charles Fickert, with the help of the chief detective for PG&E – which, like the other big utilities of the era, desperately wanted to crush the increasingly militant labor movement. But Mooney and Billings languished in San Quentin, and Billings died behind bars. In 1939 Davis finally got Mooney out, and the parade welcoming him home to San Francisco was one of the biggest labor events of the year.

So Davis read the contracts and helped us expose how PG&E was about to steal millions from the city and undermine public power. We finally got the supervisors to hold a hearing, and Davis was there to testify against PG&E. But first we had to listen to some labor folks, including Walter Johnson, the head of the labor council, talk about how PG&E was pretty good to its unions and not such a bad company after all.

At which point Davis – silver-haired, strong of voice and incomparable of presence – stood up, looked Johnson in the eye, and said, "Do you know who I am? I was Tom Mooney's lawyer."

Which promptly shut everyone up.

But times change. In 2002, the year of the last ballot battle, SF labor leaders (including Johnson) strongly backed public power. And now even Willie Brown, who once was PG&E's best ally in City Hall, is changing his tune. On KQAK radio Feb. 16, Brown, who now hosts a lively talk show with Will Durst, demanded that PG&E send someone to debate Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann. Stay tuned.

SFBG