Oh, how I wish that the SF Public Utilities Commission meetings brought me to such a brink...

Not so much. But as far as the peaker power plants are concerned there were some interesting developments today. Mayor Gavin Newsom is definitely playing the white knight in this scenario, and he's now brokering a deal in which the city fronts all the money to build the power plant, skirting the public-private partnership deal that's been floated to date. According to Jesse Blout, from the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the city will now be issuing debt to finance the peaker plants and own them outright, rather than have the private company, JPower, act like they own them for 13 years and then hand them over to the city.

In this new deal JPower still operates and manages the three combustion turbines that will be sited in the city. (The airport CT will still be built, owned, and operated by JPower for 30 years before it's turned over to the city, in order for them to make some $$$) The diff is that the city will own the Potrero plants straight-up, bypassing any sketchy loss of control or assets through the convolutions of a public-private partnership.

The PUC unanimously passed a really wordy resolution on all of this, and also asked Blout to check in with them every couple weeks to make sure all is on track. Blout, meanwhile, promised us a signing ceremony on an agreement that Mirant will shutter as soon as their contract is pulled and given to the city's power plant instead.

Photo from www.sfpartyparty.com
Was Halloween in the Castro this year a scary police state and fear-based waste of public resources, or was it an "incredible success" that San Franciscans should be proud of, as Mayor Gavin Newsom's press secretary Nathan Ballard argues? Will we be trying to learn from a year when poorly communicated, top-down planning triggered resentments by many citizens and business people who were intimidated into shutting their doors? When and how will the city start planning for next year, when Halloween falls on a Friday, and will the public be allowed to participate?
I tried to get answers to these questions from Ballard and it wasn't easy, as the following e-mail exchange shows.

Cambodian waterboarding photo by Johah Black from www.davidcorn.com
By Sara Knight, a Guardian intern
Our own Senator Dianne Feinstein announced today that she supports
Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael "waterboarding may or may not be torture" Mukasey.

Due to his equivocating remarks about waterboarding – an interrogation technique that simulates drowning – Mukasey's nomination was in danger of being stalled in the Judiciary Committee. Now, with Feinstein and Charles Schumer (D-NY) backing Mukasey's nomination, a full Senate vote is inevitable and will probably result in confirmation.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, continues to oppose the Mukasey nomination. "No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture."
Tell that to Mukasey, who hemmed and hawed over that question and ultimately refused to say one way or another.

And what is Feinstein's justification for supporting Mukasey's nomination? She and Schumer say the Justice Department is in desperate need of effective leadership.

The Justice Department needs many things, but expanding and exonerating the use of torture by our government under the guise of "effective leadership" is absolutely unacceptable.

Tomorrow! Go to Dolores Park at noon and for the National Day of Climate Change. Woo hoo!

March or ride in the parade of bikes and electric cars and other great, green stuff that's going down to UN Plaza. Carole Migden, Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi are going to be there, as well as mayoral candidates Quintin Mecke, Josh Wolf and Chicken John Rinaldi.

According to the press release, "UN plaza will be transformed into a carnival-like atmosphere complete with a Recycle That! art show filled with recycled and reclaimed art, the Sustainable Living Roadshow's Conscious Carnival, a carbon-eating generator from the Chlorophyll Collective and smoothies made on a solar powered van. Participants will call for real political leadership on global warming, and will ask San Francisco's political leaders to pledge to the following:

Put a moratorium on new coal and nuclear plants
Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050
Create 5 million new green jobs conserving 20% of our energy by 2015
Get back on track to meet San Francisco's Climate Action Plan

This is a national event, started by super-eco-friendly-guy Bill McKibben, but San Francisco's event tomorrow is extra-special because we're pushing an anti-nuke future, despite the kinder, gentler image that nuclear power plants have been getting lately.

Here's a fun/gross fact: every year vehicles in San Francisco emit more than 16,000 tons of nitrous oxide (nastiness that makes ozone). The Mirant peaker power plants that everyone's in a tizzy to shut down emit 92 tons.

Hmmm. The take-away = quit driving. Vote yes on Prop A!

We're having some trouble with our Web site -- until it's fixed, here's our complete local offices endorsements for the Nov. 6 elections. For more endorsements, please visit our 2007 Guardian Election Center, or for quick refence see our Clean Slate printout guide.

Mayor

1. QUINTIN MECKE

2. AHIMSA PORTER SUMCHAI

3. CHICKEN JOHN RINALDI

Let us be perfectly clear: none of the people we are endorsing has any real chance of getting elected mayor of San Francisco. Gavin Newsom is going to win a second term; we know that, he knows that, and whatever they may say on the campaign trail, all of the candidates running against him know that.

It's a sad state of affairs: San Francisco has been, at best, wallowing helplessly in problems under Newsom, and in many cases things have gotten worse. The murder rate is soaring; young people, particularly African Americans, are getting shot down on the streets in alarming numbers. The mayor has opposed almost every credible effort to do something about it — he fought against putting cops on foot patrol in the most violent areas, he opposed the creation of a violence-prevention fund and blocked implementation of a community policing plan, and he's allowed the thugs in the Police Officers Association to set policy for a police department that desperately lacks leadership. The public transportation system is in meltdown. The housing crisis is out of control; 90 percent of the people who work in San Francisco can't afford to buy a house here, and many of them can't afford to rent either. Meanwhile, the city is allowing developers and speculators to build thousands of new luxury condos, which are turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. Newsom only recently seems to have noticed that public housing is in shambles and that the commission he appoints to oversee it has been ignoring the problem.

I was on KPFA talking about the election this morning, along with Beyond Chron's Randy Shaw, and he put out there his prediction that Prop. H is going down, a point he repeated in a column today. Last I heard, this heinous measure was still too close to call, so I've been checking with people on the campaign and otherwise in the know this morning and they're all still worried. In particular, they say polls show Election Day voters evenly split on the issue. So don't put too much credence in the punditry and political prognostication -- get out there and vote No on H and Yes on A (the latter measure, by all accounts, really could go either way).

The Denver Post, flagship paper for Dean Singleton's MediaNews chain, went on a blinding-mad rampage against Colorado's governor in a rare front-page editorial Nov. 4.

If there was any doubt in your mind that Dean "Pinkerton" Singleton hates labor unions, this should be enough to dispel it right away. In a 2003 profile of Singleton that appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Scott Sherman explains that Singleton receives regular calls from the Post's editorial-page editor to finalize the paper's opinion pieces before going to press.

But placing Singleton's deep animosity toward labor unions on the front page would make even William Randolph Hearst blush. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that they share similar qualities.

In the editorial, the Post decries Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter as "a toady for labor bosses" and "a bag man for labor unions." Ritter signed an executive order Nov. 2 giving unions that represent state employees official recognition and bargaining powers covering such crazy bullshit Communist principles like improved health care, wages and workplace safety.

A news story that ran in the Post shortly after the announcement implies bargaining will be a bad deal for state workers, and another suggested bidness would flee the state as a result of the decision, a common refrain from anti-union factions.

According to the editorial:

"When Coloradans elected Bill Ritter as governor, they thought they were getting a modern-day version of Roy Romer, a pro-business Democrat. Instead, they got Jimmy Hoffa. Ritter campaigned under the guise of a moderate "new Democrat" but now we know he's simply a toady to labor bosses and the old vestiges of his party — a bag man for unions and special interests. The governor on Friday unveiled his plan to drive up the cost of doing business in Colorado by forcing collective bargaining on thousands of state employees. We're concerned this may be the beginning of the end of Ritter as governor."

Singleton's MediaNews empire snapped up nearly every major newspaper in the Bay Area except the Chronicle last year in a complex series of buyouts. The union representing Oakland Tribune employees has since charged Singleton with trying to stamp out guild representation there.

Just for the record, because there’s always some confusion this time of year:

The Guardian doesn’t distribute doorhangers or political fliers. We don’t print them, we don’t pay for them.

We don’t object to them, either.

Every year, someone we’ve endorsed wants to get the word out, and prints up a guardian slate card. That’s fine with me; I want our endorsements distributed as widely as possible. I’m happy that people want to reprint them. We do a lot of work on this stuff; the more people who see it, the better.

In this case, the Quintin Mecke for mayor campaign put the doorhanger together, with some financial help from other candidates. I didn’t see it in advance; if I had, I would have pointed out an error. The flier has our position as NO, NO, NO on Prop. F. We actually support that one. Not a huge deal, since Prop. F – a minor police pension issue – isn’t terribly controversial and is going to pass anyway. If you aren’t sure, just download our official slate here.

The main point is that the Mecke card pushes Yes on A and No on H, and promotes our three alternatives to Gavin Newsom. We didn’t do it, but I hope it helps.

The Chron story Sunday portrayed the battle over transportation policy in San Francisco as Don Fisher vs. Aaron Peskin, but actually, Fisher is going further. He's mounting an all-out attack on the Board of Supervisors -- and a pro-Newsom campaign committee is helping out.

Fliers that went to the west side of town attack the supervisors as childish -- and attack Prop. A as "another transportation solution from the Board of Supervisors." The first flier is from the campaign against Prop. E -- that's question time, the measure that would require the mayor to appear before the board once a month. The second is from Fisher's campaign against Prop. A.

The nearly identical messages aren't a coincidence -- the fliers have the same return address (150 Post St. Suite 405, the office of campaign lawyer Jim Sutton) and both were done by Rich Schlackman, a campaign consultant who is working with both No on A and No on E.

The plan, clearly, is to make people think the supes are idiots -- then saddle Prop. A with that image. The fact that Schlackman, who is one of nation's top direct-mail experts and who also works with Nathan Nayman and the Committee on JOBS, has adopted this strategy signals downtown's continuing effort to go after the district-elected board. Expect more of this crap in the months to come.

BY THE WAY: The battle over Props. A and H is still close. Labor and environmental groups had 250 people out on the streets talking up Yes on A and No on H over the weekend, but if people don't turn out to vote, Don Fisher could get his way.

The Yes on A/No on H party is Tuesday night at El Rio.

What do Newsom and Bechtel have in common?

They both oppose Prop. E, which requires the next Mayor of San Francisco to appear before the Board of Supervisors for public policy discussions.

Up until now, Newsom has been framing Prop. E as work of Sup. Chris Daly that will only lead to “political theater.”

Then, boom, four days before the election, Bechtel goes and plonks down $5,000 to defeat Prop. E, on top of the last-0minute plonking down of $10,000 from Republican Warren Hellman, $20,000 from the San Franciscan Association of Realtors, $25,000 from the Committee on Jobs Government Reform Fund, and $1,000 from socialite Dede Wilsey.

Looking at all these “No on E” money bags, it’s hard not to conclude that what Newsom’s No on E “Let’s Really Work Together Coalition” is really working together on is avoiding having to publicly debate tough issues, like the lack of affordable housing, or the rising tide of violence, or mental health issues among the homeless--issues that folks who aren’t millionaires and realtors would like to see their elected representatives hash out with the Mayor, but that rich folks can chat privately with the Mayor over fund raising dinners.

What’s bizarre about all this is that when you actually get Newsom talking, he seems perfectly capable of carrying out a well-argued and coherent debate.

So why don’t his handlers want their boy to be drawn into public debates? Could it be that they understand that once you get drawn into an argument, and express your opinion, people will take sides? That’s it safer to maintain a remote, inaccessible position, while you prepare for the next big thing, like governor, senator, or President?

But this is San Francisco, where people thrive on debate. So here’s hoping that the next Mayor of San Francisco spares us the fake question time and does as voters requested last fall: show up before the Board and answer their gosh darn questions.

Turnout was pretty light in my Bernal Heights precinct this morning. Some projections say as few as 100,000 people will bother to vote. That would be less than 25 percent of the electorate choosing the next mayor and making key decisions on transportation policy. Which is exactly what Don Fisher and the downtown types hope for -- in fact, the only way something as dumb and regressive as Prop. H could ever pass is San Francisco is in a very-low-turnout election.

So if you're reading this, take a few minutes and go vote. Our endorsements are here.

**Commenting is temporarily disabled

by Tim Redmond

This blog is typically crowded on election night; I’m down at City Hall posting updates as the results come in and various Guardian staffers are reporting in from the evening’s events. It will be a little calmer tonight; we’ll get one set of results, at 8:30 pm, when the Elections Department releases its count of early absentees. But since the rest of the ballots have to be counted by hand, we won’t know much beyond that until later in the week.

So you can look here for the party scene, our analysis of the early results and some other fun – but we probably won’t be able to call the election until later in the week.

** Commenting is temporarily disabled

"However many votes we get,we know the Bay Guardian will say it wasn't enough." That's what Mayor Gavin Newsom's campaign manager Eric Jaye said in the intro of today's C.W. Nevius column in the Chronicle, so I thought I might as well address it and get into the political prediction game.
Also in the column, consultant Jim Stearns said of Newsom, "I would expect that he gets 75-85 percent easily." Stearns is probably the best consultant in town, so I don't dismiss his numbers, but if Newsom really gets that much, the Bay Guardian will definitely say, "Whoa, that's a lot." Even against a weak field, if Newsom gets 80 percent of the vote, he'll have his voter mandate and be in a strong position to set the agenda in the coming years.
Does that mean the Guardian will roll over and support that agenda? If he does things like legalize gay marriage, support the labor movement, and offer universal health care, you bet. We've always been supportive of the mayor when he's done the right thing, but unfortunately, that doesn't happen very often, which is why we didn't endorse him. And we won't support his efforts to subvert progressive values, no matter what kind of mandate he claims.
But I also think this is a moot point, because my prediction is that he won't get anywhere near 80 percent.

Start the night off at the Bay Guardian’s “Don’t Dodge the Drafts” party at Doc’s Clock, 2575 Mission Street, between 21st and 22nd Streets, from 7-9 p.m. Music and drink specials for attendees who bring their “I voted” sticker or ballot stub.

Right next door at 12 Galaxies, mayoral candidate Chicken John Rinaldi will be throwing his “Loser’s Ball” election night party. He hasn’t made many details available, but knowing Chicken, expect the evening’s most fun and unconventional party.

Most parties start at 8 p.m., hit a premature climax at 8:30 when absentee results (the only numbers of the evening due to state-mandated manual ballot checks) are announced then continue well into the evening, to varying degrees. Some of the parties:

· Quintin Mecke for Mayor: Peacock Lounge, 552 Haight Street
· Yes on A/No on H: El Rio, 3158 Mission Street
· Gavin Newsom for Mayor: Ferry Building, Embarcadero at Market Street
· Kamala Harris for DA: Tosca Café, 242 Columbus

The question of the day, of course, is What’s the Number? What percentage of the votes does Gavin Newsom get, and what does that mean?

The last time a mayor of San Francisco had such weak opposition was in 1983, when Dianne Feinstein ran all-but unopposed. It was a bleak time in the city, with the mayor openly selling the city to developers and the left lacking a contender who could take her on. Feinstein had just crushed a batty recall effort by a finger group of leftist gun nuts called the White Panther Party.; the White Panthers were mad that Feinstein had singed a bill controlling handguns in the city. The recall lost overwhelmingly, and left Feinstein appearing unbeatable.

Newsom isn’t in quite the same position; there are actually some candidates who have a bit of traction. The progressives are way better organized than we were in 1983 – and this race has a lot more, well, character.

I think Steve Jones is pretty much on point; I’ll go a step further. Let’s assume that 100,000 people vote; it may be a bit more, but I think 120,000 is tops. Say Quintin Mecke, the progressive front-runner, gets 15,000 votes, or 15 percent – not an unreasonable guess. He’s been working hard, had Chris Daly’s endorsement, and has a lot of boots on the street. I say Chicken John gets 10 percent anyway; he’s got a solid base in the artist/counterculture/weirdo community, and that’s a significant number of people. Between them, Ahimsa Sumchai and Josh Wolf get maybe 7,000 votes. Harold Hoogasian is the only Republican in the race, and has great name recognition because of his flower business; besides, the people who think Newsom is too liberal will vote for Hoogasian. That’s got to be worth 3,000 votes. So that’s already 35 percent – and there are quite a few other candidates who will pick up a few hundred votes here and there. By the time the counting is finished, Newsom may be stuck around 60 percent – hardly a stunning victory.

From the good folks over at the Union of Concerned Scientists, this is the coolest tool ever for tracking the oops I did it again spills at our nation's nuclear power plants. Plus, there are deets on all the plants-to-be, now that -- wipe the sweat off your brows, people -- nuclear power is going to save us from global warming!

You're probably already acquainted with the Guardian's 2007 endorsements for the Nov. 6 elections -- but what about the city's other hot and steaming political bodies (yes, that sounded dirty). Below are endorsements from other groups, from the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club to the San Francisco Tenants Union. (All files below are PDFs.)

San Francisco local offices

San Francisco ballot propositions

Early results are in, and the mayor's race is no real surprise -- Gavin Newsom's at 77 percent, which is just the absentees, and that will drop. But the big news: In the very conservative absentees, Prop. A is just slightly behind -- and Prop. H is actually LOSING. That's over, and it's over big -- in the most important race for progressives, it looks like a clear and convincing victory. You can take this one to the bank -- Don Fisher has lost, big, and Prop A, the competing transit measure, has won.

The other big surprise: Prop. E, the measure that wll require -- and I said WILL require -- Gavin Newsom to appear before the Board of Supervisors for "question time" looks like it's going to pass. So Newsom wins -- but he's going to have to answer to his critics.

Gavin Newsom has obviously won re-election, although we don't know his total yet. But the other winners tonight are Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly.

Peskin's Prop. A is an almost certain winner -- it's ahead 51-49 in the absentees and that's the most conservative of the votes, so it will win handily. His Prop K, the measure limit new billboards, is winning, too, overwhelmingly (60-40).

What this means is that Peskin defeated a rather vicious campaign by Don Fisher to smear him and the Board of Supervisors; in fact, the attacks on the Board didn't seem to work. And the measure Newsom and his allies really wanted to stop -- Daly's Question Time -- is behind by only two points, and will more than likely win. Again, the Newsom campaign was an attack on the supervisors, particularly Daly -- and it doesn't appear to have worked.

The traditional wisdom is the the progressives lose in low-turnout races -- and turnout here looks terrible. John Arntz, the elections director, says it looks like 26 percent turnout, only around 100,000 votes. And yet, on the key progressive measures, we're doing really well.

Lots of celebration at the Yes on A/No on H party at El Rio. Robert Haaland, who ran the field campaign, was justifiably exuberant -- the passage of A and defeat of H, which appears all but certain, was a demonstration that even in a low-turnout election, progressives can prevail. The labor-and-environmental-backed campaign did an extensive absentee-voter effort, extensive get-out-the-vote and effective mail. It helped that Sup. Aaron Peskin helped raise more than $400,000 for the battle.

Peskin said the results were a great victory for the battle against global warming, which is true -- but it was also a victory for the president of the board -- and for the idea that policy in San Francisco remains centered at the Board of Supervisors.

The polls that political consultants rely on show that the board's popularity is low compared to the mayor -- but on the ground, where it mattered, that wasn't the case tonight.

By David Crockett
In what was maybe the least surprising news story since that guy from ‘N Sync announced he was gay, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom seemed headed for an easy reelection, even with the sparse returns on election night, when he and his supporters gathered at the Ferry Building.

“The best is yet to come,” Newsom told his followers, at the beginning and end of his speech, adding, “As great as we are, we can still be so much more.”

San Francisco may have to wait weeks for election results and undergo an complicated ballot-counting procedure, but we may not end up having to pay for it. That's because the city is suing its election vendor, ES&S, for breach for contract, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and other city officials announced this morning. His press release follows:

What does it take to override a wartime Republican president’s veto? Water, apparently.

Thirty five years ago, facing a rising tide of discontent over polluted water, Congress overrode d Nixon’s veto of the October 15, 1972 Clean Water Act. As a result, municipalities were able to apply for federal funds to help build and improve their local sewage treatment plants, and water got cleaner, as a result.

Yesterday, facing a mounting tide of discontent over global warming and rising sea level are real, Congress (unable to end the war or provide health care for kids,) united to reject Bush’s veto of the Water Resources Development Act.

As a result, 900 water projects will receive federal funds, including restoration in the Florida Everglades and the replacement on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers of locks that farm groups say are crucial for shipping grain.

Here in California, the Act authorizes $1.3 billion for 54 projects, including $106 million to strengthen the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levees—a shoring-up project that has profound implications for San Francisco Bay.

As Will Travis of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission told me this week, one of the central questions now facing this region is, 'How do we build around a Bay that we know is going to get bigger, but we don’t yet know by how much?

"It’s a bit like seismic safety," Travis said, noted that the 8-year plan that BCDC is proposing is just a proposal.

“It’s the beginning of a long conversation," Travis explained. " What’s not in that proposal yet is how the federal agencies and the business sector and the research facilities and laboratories fit in.”

Travis also admitted that this conversation could be "a struggle.”

“The first reaction of most people when they realize that sea level is rising and that we have a lot of extensive development on low lying areas around the Bay is, ‘Run for the hills!’"

"And that’s a reasonable course, until you realize the implications in an estuary that is the most urbanized in the United States," added Travis, who believes that what's needed is "a more nuanced approach.”

Part of that approach, suggests Travis, may involve some counter intuitive steps.

“In some places, we may see the encouragement of more development along the waterfront so we can use the economic engine to protect that development—and the low-lying areas behind it. That’s where it’s going to get interesting.”

As a harbinger of what’s to come, consider the battle that is breaking out over 1,400 acres that Cargill owns in Redwood City. Save the Bay and other environmental groups are urging Cargill to abandon plan to build homes on those acres, while Cargill is committed to developing those lands, and Redwood City is trying to decide what to do.
Fun, huh?

Guardian illustration by Danny Hellman, from our Oct. 31 cover story
The big story of this election was the improbable triumph of environmentalists over car culture and grassroots activism over downtown’s money, a story being played out in the likely approval of the Muni reform measure Prop. A and lopsided defeat of the pro-parking Prop. H.
The latest elections results show Prop. A extending its narrow election night lead to a seven point margin and Prop. H being rejected by almost 64 percent of voters, despite its poll-tested simplicity and big time backing from Don Fisher and other downtown conservatives.
As expected, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s election night high of 77.46 percent of the early absentee votes has fallen to 72.47 and will probably continue its downward trend, while progressive favorite Quintin Mecke is slowly climbing out of the electoral cellar to third place with 6 percent now, a trend also likely to continue. Harold Hoogasian has 6.83 percent and Wilma Pang dropped to 5.6 – expect both to keep falling.
Prop. E,