As always, Guardian political reporters will be in the field on Election Night, reporting live from City Hall and all the key parties via this Politics blog. We're gathering that list of parties now (send yours to me at steve@sfbg.com to ensure you make the list) and we'll post it by around this time tomorrow so you know where to go. And don't forget to vote.

I've gotten a lot of calls about the two redevelopment measures, and while I think our endorsements make the case for F and against G pretty well, let me add something else.

In many ways, this is the first of a long series of battles that will determine whether Southeast San Francisco becomes a high-end residential community. That's what Gavin Newsom wants to see, and it's what a lot of downtown and big-money forces want to see, and frankly, it's what the more moderate and conservative political activists want, too.

Because the more rich people you bring into San Francisco, and the more poor and working-class people you drive out, the more likely to are to change the progressive voting patterns of this town and get rid of politicians who want to tax big business and provide public services to the needy.

This is not conspiracy thinking -- dontown political strategists talk openly about it. As Calvin Welch likes to say, "Who lives here, votes here." W e know that; they know that.

I appreciate the fact that labor got some concessions out of the Lennar Corporation . But in the end, even if the labor deal holds up, the numbers are brutal: If Lennar agrees to build about 32 percent affordable housing, that means that 68 percent of the new housing in Bay View Hunters Point will be exclusively for millionaires.

That's the calculus. A developer promising to build one-third affordable units is also promising that two-thirds of the new housing will be affordable only to the very richest segment of American society, the top tenth of the top tenth, the people who can put down $200,000 cash and pay a mortgage of $6,000 a month on a one-bedroom condo. If two thirds of the next generation of San Franciscans are people with that kind of money, the city will change, dramatically.

Sup. Chris Daly's call in Prop. F for 50 percent affordable ought to be the absolute minimum floor. Again, that means half the new housing will go to the superrich, and only the superrich.

Lennar says it can't do the project at that level. I personally think that's horseshit -- remember, they're getting the land essentially free. But if the best Lennar can do is build housing two-thirds of which is unreachable to the vast majority of the people who make this such a wonderful, diverse and creative city, then we need to send Lennar packing and find someone who can do better.

This is the future of San Francisco, folks. That's why I'm yes on F and no on G.

As we predicted , Mayor Gavin Newsom used today’s budget announcement at at the Hunters Point Shipyard to campaign.
But there were, in fact, two Newsom’s at today’s event, but only one was told to shut it.

‘You can’t campaign here, it’s city property,” police told the guy, who was wearing a Newsom mask and protesting the Mayor’s Budget.

“I’m not campaigning,” the guy replied, his voice muffled by his mask, as his friend, who was wearing a Ronald Reagan mask handed out fliers that listed nine ways in which “Mayor Newsom terminates poor with massive budget cuts.”

(These included closing the Ella Hill Hutch shelter, Caduceus Outreach services, SRO Families United program, and a 22 percent cut of residential substance abuse and mental health treatment programs budgets.)

But no one said diddley when the guy who one was wearing a very well tailored suit and presenting the Mayor’s $6.5 billion budget, began to campaign by unashamedly pushing Prop. G, which out-of-town developer Lennar has spent $4 million to promote.

“You can’t have a budget speech about the future of the City and the structural challenges we face without talking about it,” Newsom said.

Nor did anyone say squat, when Newsom began to bash the competing Prop. F, which requires that 50 percent of housing built at the Shipyard and Candlestick Point be affordable to families of four who make $65,000 and under, which is the average median income for that size household in the Bayview.

Yes, it was cool to be inside the SFPD’s unit, without being on the wrong side of the law.

At today's Local Homeless Coordinating Board meeting, Mayor Gavin Newsom's homelessness “czar,” Dariush Kayhan, briefed the group on new ideas for improving city-funded shelters that he and the mayor have been hashing over.

There were just a few, and most of them seem like they need coordination more than cash, but they all answer, to some extent, some of the calls for help that have been coming from the city's homeless shelter system.

All of this comes from a Feb. 14 announcement by Mayor Newsom that he'd like to redesign the city's shelters, (the day after SFBG published an expose on conditions inside.) At the announcement, Newsom discussed possibly consolidating shelters into larger facilities, offering more medical respite care, and bringing Project Homeless Connect into the shelters. Ultimately, he called on the people working in San Francisco's homeless services industry to come up with for how to make shelters better.

Since then, a series of long, comprehensive meetings have been held to gather ideas from homeless people, shelter clients and employees, non-profit groups, medical and mental services providers, and advocates. Meetings were held at shelters and other places convenient to the homeless population (though at all the meetings I attended there was a lot of criticism that the forums weren't drawing in enough actual homeless people.) Topics tackled included problems accessing the shelters and the quality of medical and other support services -- and suggestions were plenty. The Local Board pulled together a report, outlining the most frequent, concrete, and consensual, the most repeated being: don't reduce the number of beds. (Too bad: The Human Services Agency cut the shelter at Ella Hill Hutch from their budget, which means, as of June 30, 100 fewer mats will be available every night unless advocates rally the Board of Supervisors to put the funding back.) The other biggest cry was for more services in general, made more easily accessible, and a number of really smart ideas came out for how to do that and are included in the report [PDF].

Kayhan said he and the Mayor would be putting together an official response to the report with more concrete details of their vision. In the meantime, he threw a few ideas to the meeting.

They include:

The Coalition on Homelessness has done a quick survey of the budget slashes that were announced today.

To sum, if you're a cop, you're psyched. If you're down on your luck, without a place to stay and off your meds, and the city's been helping you sort all that out....well, you've got until the end of the month to get it together.

From COH's executive director, Jennifer Friedenbach:

Mayor Newsom released a budget today that will terminate critical health and human services, while pumping up salaries for police by 25% and adding many new high paid patronage positions into his own administration.

Some highlights of the devastating impact of the budget include:

1) Closure of Ella Hill Hutch shelter, serving up to 100 people every night in the Western Addition.

2) Closure of Caduceus Outreach Services, a mental health treatment and wrap around support program for severely disabled homeless adults with co-existing addictive disorders.

3) Almost total elimination (66% cut) of "SRO Families United," a program for families with dependent children living in hotels.

4) Cut of 22% to residential substance abuse and mental health treatment programs budgets. This includes:

a. Removal of support from Conard supportive housing program for severe psychiatric disabilities.
b. Closure of Cortland Acute Diversion Unit for individuals in psychiatric crisis.
c. Loss of 12 out of 24 community based medically supported detox beds.
d. Many more residential cuts yet to be determined.

5) Cut of 30% to all outpatient substance abuse and mental health treatment

6) Almost total elimination of STOP treatment program.

7) 1,600 people lose psychiatric treatment through Private Provider Network.

8) Closure of Tenderloin Health, homeless multi-service center in the Tenderloin serving over 300 people a day, 16,000 unduplicated people a year. Program provides health services, HIV case management, HIV prevention, mental health services, harm reduction work, improving quality of life by getting people out of rain, providing hygiene kits, bathrooms, snacks, crisis intervention, 30, 000 shelter reservations a year.

The Associated Press is reporting that Barack Obama has secured enough delegates to win the Democratic Party nomination for president, even before today voting in South Dakota and Montana. On to the White House.

Here's a roundup of the main local election night parties:
Yes on A – Great American Music Hall, O’Farrell and Polk streets

Yes on F, No on G – Grace Tabernacle Church, 1121 Oakdale

Yes on G, No on F – Javalencia Café, 3900 3rd Street

Mark Leno – Campaign HQ, 1344 Fourth Street (at "D" Street)
San Rafael, CA 94901 (he might also stop by Lime, 2247 Market Street, where some DCCC candidates – including Laura Spanjian and David Campos – are having a party)

Carole Migden – Campaign HQ, 121 9th St., near Minna

Joe Nation – Wipeout Bar and Grill, 302 BonAir Center, Greenbrae

Fiona Ma for Assembly – Soluna, 272 McAllister

No on 98/Yes on 99 – 1601 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland

League of Young Voters, Sandoval for Judge, progressive DCCC candidates and some Yes on F and No on Prop. 98 supporters – El Rio, 3158 Mission Street

And then there’s the Bay Guardian’s “Don’t Dodge the Drafts” election night party, 7-9 p.m. at Kilowatt, 3160 16th Street btw Valencia/Guerrero. Bring your voting stub for drink specials.

The Chronicle reports that turnout so far is really slow. That's bad for saving rent control (No on 98), stopping Lennar Corp. (no on G), electing a progresive judge (Sandoval) and stopping Joe Nation from becoming the next state Senator.

If you're reading this, go vote. If you're not sure where you vote, check here. If you don't know who to vote for, our recommendations are here

It only takes a few minutes, and your boss has to give you time off if you need it. Go on, head to the polls now.

Tonight's election results will demonstrate how much money matters in local politics, and whether megadeveloper Lennar is able to essentially buy exclusive development rights for southeast San Francisco. That's because the $3.9 million and counting that Lennar has spent to approve Prop. G and kill Prop. F could be the most expensive local measure campaign in California history, according to former Common Cause of SF head Charles Marsteller.
To confirm that, I called Bob Stern at the Center for Governmental Studies -- the guru of California electoral reform -- who had a more qualified answer. Campaign finance records show PG&E spent almost $10 million last year to defeat a package of four public power measures in Yolo and Sacramento counties. PG&E also spent more than $3 million to defeat the Prop. D, the 2002 public power measure in San Francisco. And Stern was trying to get final figures for an expensive 2006 ballot fight in Sacramento over a new stadium. Yet he said Lennar is way up there, well beyond anything he's seen in his native Southern California.
"It is clearly one of the most expensive," Stern said. "It's an enormous amount of money for a local race."

Oh my. For all you folks that have been following the controversy around building new power plants in San Francisco, it just got even better.

Mayor Gavin Newsom sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors today outlining a “more promising way forward than the current proposal” to build two natural gas-burning “peaking” power plants in the city.

The way forward: retrofit three existing diesel turbines at the Mirant-Potrero Power Plant, while at the same time shutting down Unit 3, the most polluting part of the power plant, as soon as the Transbay Cable comes online.

“On Friday, May 23, Ed Harrington [General Manager of the SFPUC], City Attorney Dennis Herrera and I met with president of Cal-ISO – Yakout Mansour, the chairman of the CPUC – Mike Peevey, the CEO of Mirant – Ed Muller, the CEO of PG&E – Bill Morrow, and our respective staffs. In this meeting we vetted the possibility of retrofitting the diesel turbines [currently owned and operated by Mirant] and asked each stakeholder to give us the necessary commitments to advance this alternative,” Newsom wrote to the Board.

For anyone who's been closely following the nuances of this argument, this is a significant change in position from the California Independent System Operator [Cal-ISO], and it should be noted that it took -- not just the Mayor sitting down at the table -- but top dogs from PG&E and Mirant (who both stand to lose money by the city building its own power plants), as well as the CPUC's Peevey, who's never expressed a positive opinion about the true need for more power plants in the city.

Now, suddenly, Cal-ISO is departing significantly from all previously expressed demands that we build power plants.

The background: The state, through Cal-ISO, has for the last several years insisted that San Francisco needs 150 megawatts of peak electricity at the ready. We currently get this from Mirant-Potrero, but Unit 3 of that facility has a bad rep as the greatest single source of pollution in the city. People in the Bayview neighborhood, which have carried more of their fair share of pollution, have been waiting a long time for the plant to close. Stakeholders have been meeting for over seven years, working on ways to close the plant, and much of the leadership on the issue has come from Sup. Sophie Maxwell, who represents the Bayview district.

Cal-ISO has insisted that the only way to close Unit 3 is to build new peakers, which would be owned and operated by the city, run cleaner and more efficiently, and still supply that 150 MW of peak power. Even when the 400 MW Transbay Cable was approved, Cal-ISO insisted San Francisco would still need the peakers.

But in a June 2 letter, Cal-ISO suddenly had a different response for the Mayor.

It's very, very quiet here at City Hall, unusually quiet even for what's expected to be a low-turnout election. My sources say turnout on the west side of town is very, very low, which might not be such a bad thing .... but overeall, I'm nervous

Talking to Jim Stearns, one of the political consultants involved in what now will be the most expensive ballot campaign ever, I got an interesting perspective on G and F. Stearns says all the polling showed the measures moving together -- when the campaign pushed Yes on G, the Yes on F vote moved up, too. When they tried to trash Prop. F, the Prop. G vote went down.

So it's entirely possible that both measures will pass -- which will, of course, infuriate Lennar Corp.

Well, the minute we posted that last entry we got some absentee results -- and it looks like Lennar's money carried the day. Prop. G is winning handily, Prop. F is going down hard.

But there's fascinating news: Prop. E, the PUC reform measure that PG&E spent a fortune trying to kill, is ahead even in the absentees and will probably win.

Gerardo Sandoval is well ahead in the judicial race, but there may still be a runoff.

Leno is beating Migden handily in the city, and Joe Nation is way behind. That's good news for Leno, who needs a big win in SF to overcome what will probably be a Nation advantage in the north counties.

Remember, these are early absentees, but here's who's winning at the DCCC right now in District 13:

Leslie Katz
David Chiu
David Campos
Laura Spanjian
Aaron Peskin
Scott Wiener
Robert Haaland
Rafael Mandelman
Holli Their
Debra Walker
Michael Goldstein
Joe Julian

So far, it's most incumbents and the progressive "slate" isn't exactly winning. Chris Daly, for example, hasn't even made the cut. But the night is young and that will probably change.

Whoops, read that one wrong. Gerardo Sandoval is at 37.09 and Thomas Mellon is at 48.04, with Mary Mallen at 14.44. So Sandoval is behind. But since his numbers will rise and Mellon's will fall as the election-day results come in, it looks like a November runoff between the two.

The early absentees tell us a few things, and Chris Bowman, a GOP consulant who is generally right on his projections, gave us his hit, and here's how it looks:

Prop. A, the parcel tax for schools, is going to be very close; it's at 60 percent now and that will be a squeaker.

F and G are over. F lost, G won.

Sandoval may come in first, or at worst a close second, and that race will go to a November runoff.

Prop. E (fuck PG&E) is going to win.

There are some early returns from Marin, and it looks pretty good for Leno -- he's at 31 percent in Marin, with Migden at a low 22.4 and Nation just at 45. So it's early, but the odds of Leno pulling this out are getting better.

We have about 20 percent of the vote in now, and here's how it looks:

Prop. A has gone up to 63 percent, and will probably pass.

Sandoval has picked up a bunch, is now at almost 40 percent, and now looks to be coming in first in that race, but not with enough votes to avoid a runoff.

F is still losing, G still winning, and that won't change.

Joe Nation is now leading Mark Leno -- not in San Francisco but district wide. Must be a bunch of north bay precincts reporting, because he's doing well in SF.

County Central Committee, D 13:
Campos
Chiu
Katz
Peskin
Spanjian
Haaland
Wiener
Mandelman
Walker
Daly
Goldstein
Julian

This is a near-sweep at this point for the Peskin-Daly progressive slate; the only two people winning who weren't on the slate are Leslie Katz (former supervisor) and Scott Wiener, the DCCC chair. So this is looking very good right now, and could be a bright spot for progressives looking toward the fall supervisorial elections.

After taking heat for weeks after the Guardian failed to endorse Carole Migden, I approach her party with a bit of trepidation, particularly after seeing her trail both Mark Leno and Joe Nation in early returns. She is speaking when I arrive, saying her thank yous. "Thank you, thank you, thank you San Francisco," she closes. Afterward I see one of her most prominent supporters, Senator Darrell Steinberg, the incoming president pro tem, whom I know a little from my Sacramento days.
"She's been a great legislator and whatever happens tonight, she has everything to be proud of. I'm happy to stand with her," Steinberg tells me. I catch the latest district numbers on the screen: Leno 37.2%, Migden 30.6%, Nation 32.2%, with 3.4% of precincts reporting. Soon, I bump into the most powerful backer of Migden's legislative career, former Senator John Burton. Feeling a need to be forthright, I introduce myself and say clearly that I'm from the Bay Guardian.
"The Guardian must be overjoyed. She carried their water for 20 years and they fucked her when she needed them," Burton bellows, asking me to make sure to pass his words on to publisher Bruce Brugmann, which I'm now doing.
Carole is a bit more magnanimous. She greets me with a hug. I tell her I'm sorry we couldn't be with her, poise my notebook, and ask how she's feeling about tonight. "I feel great and I have an enthusiastic crowd and I'm very proud of my years of service," she says, nods at me, and turns away.

So breaking out the absentees, Sandoval is winning 55 percent of the Election Day vote. That should put him in a strong position going into the fall runoff. There's a third candidate in the race, Mary Mallen, who is at around 14 percent, so the incumbent, Judge Mellon, will get far less than a majority vote, indicating that most of the voters want someone else.

On Prop. A: The election-day results have Prop. A winning by 74 percent. So that should make up for the absentees quite nicely. I think A is now going to win.

Now Leno's back ahead with 37 percent of the vote (district wide) to Nation's 35.8. This one's going to be close.

In San Francisco, on Election Day, it's all Migden and Leno in San Francisco, and Leno is way ahead. Leno's got 62 percent of the San Francisco election-day vote, and Migden has 37 percent. So it's looking good for Leno, who has to win SF very big.

We showed up at Joe Nation's election night party in the Marin County town of Greenbrae around eight o'clock. The event's being held at a restaurant called the Wipe Out Bar & Grill in a quiet strip mall here. State figures are showing Leno ahead of the pack by five percentage points. By the time we arrived at Wipe Out, the candidate wasn't around.

The restaurant's proprietor, Bob Partrite, told us Nation's crew was supposed to be here at a quarter of eight. Long after the hour, Nation was still missing in action. In fact, for much of the time we were hanging around, reporters outnumbered Nation supporters, as seen in the photos below. But Wyatt Buchanan of the Chronicle insisted on acknowledging that by half past the hour, a few people were trickling in. Most of the chairs remained empty, however, and a whole bunch of utensils went unused, at least while we were there. Just sayin'.

Joe Nation's supporters weren't filling any of the chairs. Those are reporters in the background from KPFA.

We came upon stacks of unused utensils at eight o'clock when we showed, 15 minutes after the candidate was supposed to be here. But some food did start to fill plates at around 8:30. The candidate still wasn't around, however.

More empty chairs.

Mark Leno's election night party has been a stark contrast to what we saw earlier tonight at Joe Nation's event, which was situated at the unfortunately named "Wipe Out" restaurant in Greenbrae. Leno's campaign office in San Rafael is packed wall-to-wall, the crowd noisy and erupting in frequent applause when new figures from the secretary of state show up on a projector putting Leno ahead.

He told a radio reporter earlier tonight that overall during the election, he's had to raise $1.2 million (we've seen it in the piles of slick, anti-Nation mailers that have mounted in our mailbox). But he says there's got to be a way to overcome the cost of operating a modern campaign election, most of which put people with big ideas but no connections out of the bidding. Leno just thanked a litany of campaign staffers and volunteers for backing him over the last 15 months before heading off to San Francisco where we've heard he also has an event planned for the Lime club in the Castro.

We were situated in a Leno war room with campaign staffers -- including Leno's manager, Tom, described by colleagues as "eternally pessimistic" -- who still seem wary of calling the election for Leno. The numbers, however, are looking more and more inevitable. If he wins, Leno's gonna have to work on the music he rock, representing a district like this and all, which includes San Francisco. Someone just put the Dirty Dancing theme on the sound system. Not good. As far as North Bay events went tonight, Leno's has been much more electric than what Nation had going on earlier.

On the left, Leno field organizer Carole Mills, and on the right, volunteer coordinator Evelyn Woo.

Marriage equality activists and Leno supporters Dolores Caruthers, on the left, and Laura Espinoza, on the right.

Well, we got walloped on Props. G and F, but other than that, it's shaping up as a fascinating night for progressives -- and not all bad. The progressive slate nearly swept the DCCC in the 13 Assembly District. Prop. A, the school tax, won handily. Prop. E, the PUC reform, won pretty handily.

And it now appears that Mark Leno's big gamble paid off and he will be the next state Senator from District 3. And it seems like a decisive victory; with 70 percent of the precincts reporting, he's got 43 percent of the vote. At lot of progressives backed Carold Migden, and if Leno and Migden has split the vote in a way that gave Joe Nation the seat, Leno would have been blasted as the guy who, by challenging Migden, cost San Francisco and the queer community a state Senate seat.

But he didn't do that -- he pulled together the coalition he needed to defeat Nation.

He now has a huge challenge on his hands: He needs to reach out to the progressives who supported Carole Migden. How he does that (and I think this is something that Leno is good at) will define his career and success over the next few years.

Amanda Witherell calls in to report:

There's about 200 hundred people milling about optimistically at El Rio, for a party that's basically a catchall progressive fest for No on Prop 98, Yes on 99, Tom Ammiano, Gerardo Sandoval, Yes on F, No on G, and David Campos for DCCC.

Currently and unfortunately, 98 is failing swimmingly in SF but seems to be winning statewide (Ed Note -- this looks to have changed since I got Amanda's call). F is also failing in absentees. And despite the fact that Sandoval (running for judge) looks to be down right now against his opponent, Mellon, he's in a chipper mood: "I'm fully expecting to win," he says with a grin.

No balloons, but Ammiano's working the floor with some trademark comedy schtick -- he's at 97 percent, but he ran unopposed. Campos is also doing quite well, and is exuberant.

The crowd is surprisingly and inspiringly young -- many folks from the League of Pissed Off Voters. Legendary prankster/jester h. Brown has set up a table and is interviewing people, while a folk singer strums away in a corner.

The Great American Music Hall was a bit sedate when I showed up for the Yes on A party. The measure to fund teacher salaries with a parcel tax needed a two-thirds vote and it was a few points shy, but moving up since the conservative absentee ballots were counted. "I wish it weren't this close," school superintendent Carlos Garcia told me, lamenting the high vote threshold. "It's too bad. But I still have faith in San Francisco."
A few minutes later, that faith was rewarded when the new results came in: 69.6% yes with 88.8% of votes counted. The room erupted.
School board member Hydra Mendoza started to loudly whoop it up into the microphone, calling up her colleagues to say a few words and help celebrate. "These numbers show that people believe in public education. They believe in what we're doing," Garcia said. School board member Mark Sanchez recognized the measure's chief fundraiser: "Let's give a big shout out to Warren Hellman."
Mendoza closed: "Turn on the dance music. Wooooo!"