it might be the wrong reality. What this election shows isn't so much that Willie is pulling a few strings (although I'm sure he is) but rather that the vast majority of SF residents and voters aren't nearly as left-wing as you'd like.

More than 80% - four people in five - rejected left-wing politics in favor of the Lee/Yee/Herrera/Chui/Dufty style of moderate politics. We may be liberal but we're not socialists.

And if you accepted that, I think that would be a positive first step on the road to political redemption and relevance.

Actually, Tim ... the fact that Leland Yee came in fourth does not necessarily mean that Avalos or Herrera would have won. Absent Ed Lee, Yee would probably have won -- but once Ed Lee entered the race, his Asian-American base was decimated overnight.

Are there more recent results I don't know about that place Yee in fourth? Because SF Elections says he's in fifth place, 2,000 votes behind David Chiu.

http://www.sfelections.org/results/20111108/

Yee is in fifth, not fourth, no?

http://www.sfelections.org/results/20111108/

Beyond Chron has consistently made assertions about Ed Lee that seem to be inconsistent with the facts?

For instance, considering that Ed Lee refused public financing and flew past spending caps and apparently even had the support of PG&E through multiple layers of independent expenditure committees (BOMA), this comment from Randy seems almost corrupt:

"Lee never became identified as the candidate of the elite."

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=9673#more

If Lee was not the candidate of the elite, then who was????

The glaring fact is, despite the posturing from Herrera and Lee, 67% of San Franciscans didn't vote. That's the lowest voter turn-out in decades for a major race like Mayor. No one got excited enough among eligible voters to actually vote.

In the last round, almost a third of voters who did manage to go to the polls, did not vote for either Avalos or Lee, with 28.50% in exhausted ballots by that time. Lee got 44% of the actual votes tallied.

No one should be happy about the fact that 2/3 of San Franciscans turned off and tuned out this year. We have a Mayor with no mandate but a lot of big money to begin the slow privitization of our public square.

And Lee won 60% of a pathetic 33% voter turnout. Hardly a mandate.

These results are more an indication that two thirds of the voters are so jaded by politics that they couldn't even be troubled to vote for anyone, especially the incredibly milquetoast Edwin Lee.

On the other hand, Avalos gained more support and momentum during the full course of the election than any other candidate. The strong surge for Avalos was incredibly inspiring and was definitely a mandate from radical and progressive voters that his politics are where we want our movement to go.

And this brings up the following point to all you left critics of ranked choice voting. It is notable that in a winner-take-all election Avalos would have been -low- in the pack because people would have been afraid to vote for him, and instead would have cast 'safer' votes for more centrist left candidates like Herrera and Yee.

Lee also had the mantle of an incumbent which helped as well beside massive IE in which the cap had to be raised twice. Avalos came in a decent second thanks to the 2 and 3's of others and a surge on the last day by progressives. Now the question is that both irv and public financing will be on the chopping block, how does Avalos use his second place to mold progressives into a more potent force to challenge Lee. We have supervisors' races coming up, including his own, next year.

But the fact is, 2/3rds of SF eligible voters didn't vote on Tuesday and those that did, 2/3'rds voted either for Avalos or someone else beside Lee. Lee's strategy all a long was to hope with so many candidates in the race, his incumbancy and tons of money spent before he ran, that would in the end, guarantee he would win. Progressives do need to ask why so few voted and why, 1/3rd of those, did not vote for either Avalos or Lee.

But IRV itself had nothing to do with anyone candidate losing as Herrera may be asserting.
My vote for Avalos counted until the final round too.