Let me get this straight, Tim. You're telling *all* of us Greens to "grow up" because the party didn't endorse exactly how you wanted it to? How are you any better than any other left sectarian on this...much less some of those who troll on your blog? That sounds more than a bit, well, childish.

I think you attribute too much organization and malice to the Green endorsement process. I wasn't privy to the endorsement process this election (and for the record, I support Tom and always have), but I suspect that there are lingering resentments from 2003, when Ammiano's supporters came into the party and tried to influence the mayoral endorsement. And yes, some people may have a sour taste in their mouths from Tom not endorsing Mark Sanchez. But there are very likely other factors at play here. Remember that the Greens endorse on consensus..and they set a high threshold for endorsing when a consensus can't be reached. Small dissents can hold up or kill an endorsement. So even though the vast majority of Greens will support Tom, the party endorsement may not reflect that.

You shouldn't throw stones at your fellow progressives, Tim. Make an effort to understand why things went the way they did, maybe express some disappointment, and move on. Calling Greens childish isn't helping the cause of progressive unity.

Timid,

You seem to forget (conveniently) that Ammiano also backed Demo disaster Heather Hiles over Sanchez. After she'd cursed Sanchez at a School Board meeting and then used the Downtown School Board majority of the time (their lawyer was David Campos) ... used their power to censure Sanchez instead of Hiles (I believe Debra Walker also chimed in to endorse Hiles over Sanchez). Tom's done lots of great things but he's a Democratic party hack when the rubber meets the road.

Your biggest weakness is that you're never able to admit when you've made a mistake, Tim. You put a PG&E tool (David Chiu) front and center in your endorsement edition because you couldn't admit that you made a mistake in pushing him in the first place. How the hell did you get Brugmann to go along with endorsing a guy who made 175k pushing PG&E and their agenda and 299k pushing George Bush?
You attacked Tony Gantner for saying that Hip Hop parties bring violence with them? Well, duhhhh! You're out of touch and Robert Haaland is a chief adviser?

h.

Hey Bruce,

Redmond is killing my responses to his online comments. Can you tell me if this is OK with you? I told you about the same problem a week or so back and you asked if I'd cursed him which was not and is not the case. Here's the situation.

Redmond is running an online piece criticizing the Greens for not endorsing Ammiano. I noted that he didn't mention that Ammiano not only endorsed David Campos in D-9 but that Ammiano also endorsed the horrible Heather Hiles against Sanchez in his last run for the School Board. I noted that
the District's lawyer at the time was David Campos when Hiles and Dan Kelly led a censure of Sanchez a week before the
election for the crime of? For the crime of being cursed out
BY HILES!

Now, I've noted that Redmond has played you into putting David Chiu on front page front and center with the Guardian endorsements. This is the Same David Chiu who took 175k from PG&E and 299k from George Bush and gave another 100k to
Dick Cheney.

Bottom line, I've always respected you, Bruce. I've never respected Redmond. Please tell me if I cannot post in your publication because right now I cannot.

Redmond is not helping you with this censorship.

thanks,

h.

I am the official spokesperson for the San Francisco Green Party, and Tim is definitely seeing some malicious intent where there is none. The fact is our endorsements are made by consensus of the active membership. Tim writes as if he believes there was some backroom political calculation made here.

The endorsement of Leno was indeed unprecedented for the Green Party, and it was something that many Greens opposed. But those who strongly supported an endorsement of Leno were able to convince those with concerns to stand aside.
In our voter guide, we simply expressed some of the concerns our members have about Ammiano, and where we think he could have done better as Supervisor.

First of all, h, how could I be censoring you when your comments are all appearing on the site? Lighten up, man -- I love your comments, even when they're deranged.

As for malicious intent -- I never implied malicious. I did say that there was some political calculus here, that if Ammiano had endorsed Sanchez instead of Campos he might have gotten the Greens and that the stuff the Greens wrote about him made no sense in the context of the Leno endorsement.

I respect the Greens process and your right to endorse whoever you want. And in fact, if the Greens had decided, as a matter of principle, that only Democrats willing to endorse Sanchez for Supervisor would get the nod, that would be fine, too. (We've generally taken the position that people who didn't endorse the Clean Energy Act, Prop. H, weren't getting our endorsement, and we declined to endorse School Board candidates who support JROTC.)

But the suggest that Ammiano is too partisan (and Leno isn't?) and that he isn't green enough on crime when the real reason, I still believe, is that he chose another progressive as his candidate for supervisor is a bit bogus.

But whatever -- I still love the Greens and agree with them most of the time.

While much of Tim's post was respectful, I think the phrase "Grow Up" is an insult to our activists. These are volunteers who sat through many, many hours of endorsement meetings and forums. Is "grow up" the argument we should use at 11:30 PM on a Wednesday night to expedite our process?
No one even proposed that we endorse Ammiano, so it wasn't even really discussed. Maybe things would have turned out differently had Ammiano endorsed Sanchez, maybe not.

Tim:
It is all too convenient of you to omit the fact that the Leno endorsement is the first time that Greens have ever endorsed a Democrat in a partisan race. On the other hand, great Green candidates like Ross Mirkarimi and Mark Sanchez running in non-partisan races are precluded from getting the local Democratic nod. Rather than complaining about how one local Dem didn't get the Green endorsement, maybe you should be asking for the local Dems to loosen up on their endorsement process...

Here is one reason why I did not support Tom Ammiano for Assembly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSXTLDjtM74

There are other policy based reasons which have to do with Ammiano's disengagement from critical land use decisions made in the Mission over the past few years which contributed to my position.

Further, Tom is personally a very bitter and entitled individual due to having had an essentially unchecked lease on political power for so long, qualities not well suited for governing in a diverse city and diverse state.

Tom used to be nice and funny, now he's neither and were he effective, that would be okay. But if his land use absence changes the demographics, then there will be no San Franciscans left who would need to enroll in Healthy San Francisco.

Tom was reported to have said recently that "A progressive is someone who recycles." Not only does that concede the progressive political projects, but it also goes a long way towards explaining David Campos, who has recycled himself into a progressive to win an election.

-marc

A few more thoughts.

It is damaging to the progressive project that so many endorsing authorities have become wired to the extent that their independence is severely compromised. The Green Party, for all of its faults, rarely is wired.

And it is also quite telling that those who are secure in their power put themselves forth as very insecure. Gavin Newsom exemplifies this, with Tom Ammiano coming in a close second.

If these people cannot walk in power with enough confidence to not cower in fear before their critics, then you've got to wonder what they're going to do when confronted with their opponents.

Frankly, we are facing a paradigm shift in the economy, and all that is being raised by the local Ammiano partisans is that the Greens did not show appropriate deferential table manners to Ammiano who is virtually unopposed for election?

What's next up on the distract people from significant issues to sow divisiveness agenda because appropriate ass was not kissed, Joe the Plumber?

-marc

Tim,

As the person most responsible for our Voter Guide, I'd like to make a couple of points.

First, thanks for reading it. We don't expect everybody (even Greens) to agree with all our endorsements, but we put a lot of thought and work into explaining our positions. We could only afford to print 15,000 copies, so I hope people who didn't get a copy will read our full statements by following the link in your post.

As I wrote the statements, I tried to avoid saying anything negative about people we respect. On the other hand, I felt we owed our readers an explanation of why we didn't endorse Tom, and why we ranked the supervisorial contests the way we did. Finally, I didn't have space to go into as much detail as I would have liked, since we devoted 1/8 of our Voter Guide to a Prop H window sign--I had to cut articles describing our endorsement process that appeared in last year's Guide.

I'm not going to debate the relative merits of Tom and Mark at this time; I'll have more time to discuss it after the election if you want, but I still have several hundred copies to hand out!

I did participate in all our endorsement meetings this year, and it was clear that our reasons not to endorse Tom went far beyond his endorsement of Campos. I did not enumerate all of these in detail in our statement, because I (and other Greens) have great respect for Tom and didn't want to appear to be bashing him. However, "partisan" is a term that I absolutely stand by.

As others have said above, we make endorsements on an entirely different basis than the Guardian. That should be obvious to anybody who compares our endorsements in D7. Our endorsements are based on consensus and our 10 Key Values, not on a single progressive-conservative axis with personal relationships thrown in.

Um, Mr. MWBSF, we interviewed all three progressive candidates in D9. Tom Ammiano, who we respect, endorsed Campos. Ross Mirkarimi, who we also like and respect, urged us to support Sanchez. Chris Daly, ditto, urged us to back Eric Quezada.

There were lots of other people I like and respect pushing us in one direction or another. In the end, we decided -- all of us, not just Bruce -- that the best choices were Campos, Quezada and Sanchez, in that order. But if you read our endorsement, you'll note that we also said we'd be happy with any of them and that they all have strengths.

As I noted here

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2008/10/the_nonsense_about_daly.html

I'm not terribly worried about Ammiano or Peskin or the Guardian or anyone else trying to create a left political machine in this town right now. A machine only works if the troops stay in line. And for better or for worse, the myriad of wonderful people who make up the local progressive movement are rather difficult to order around. They certainly aren't going to follow directions from Ammiano, the Democratic Party, Peskin or us.

Also, rzu, I completely agree with you -- the Democratic Party shouldn't be so afraid of the Greens and should be willing to endorse Greens in nonpartisan races.

When is Bruce going to admit that his endorsement of Campos was because he was the one annointed by St. Tom and the liberal dem machine or hey even admit that you are running your own machine (sort of)?

Tim, the Guardian has long been conflicted by the values it espouses in its editorial section, the policies that further those values, and the friendships of various individuals involved with the Guardian.

Increasingly, the Guardian has preferred to ratify political kinship networks instead of prioritizing its coverage and endorsement support behind those most capable of furthering that shared policy agenda.

Essentially, if the Guardian is going to be palling around with the people who get paid to do politics yet whose compensation is not predicated on any measure of success, then several things are going to happen:

1. The Guardian's integrity will be compromised and its readers will know that the Guardian will choose to cast off policies in favor of maintaining friendships,.

2. The perverse negative feedback loop which tolerates incompetence and lack of accomplishment on the part of people paid to carry progressive water politically will prevail over that positive feedback loop of those who try and succeed in implementing progressive policies, and

3. The tough policies needed to bring the CIty to where the Guardian says it wants to bring it will never get implemented because the Guardian is supporting candidates who care more about stroking their friends and being a playah at the table (keeping others from the table) than in using political position to advance progressive policies. David "what new initiatives have you spearheaded?" Campos is doing at Police, and just as Tom has done over the last five years when he should have been at the top of his game, at his most productive, batting them out of the park every few months instead of being bored, checked out and asleep at the wheel as the Mission has faced significant challenges.

The courtiers fawn over one another as the City slides deeper into gentrification, but what do the courtiers have to fear? They are all employed as playahs in the game.

-marc