Will Matt Run for Mayor?

by Paul Hogarth, 2007-01-22

It’s the burning question on the mind of every progressive who wants to see a challenge to Gavin Newsom in this year’s Mayoral election. Matt Gonzalez has said repeatedly that he will not run, while he stresses the need for progressives to field a candidate. But at this point, there really isn’t any other plausible candidate who can run. And if there’s one thing that we all know about Matt -- he’s unpredictable, and has been known to make sudden decisions that rock the political establishment. Whatever he’s telling people now about running or not is simply irrelevant.

In 2000, Matt Gonzalez switched his party registration from Democrat to Green after the general election and during a hotly contested runoff for Supervisor. In August 2003, he entered the Mayor’s race right before the filing deadline – and finished ahead of other progressive candidates to face Newsom in the run-off. Right after his narrow defeat, Matt shocked the political world by announcing that he was leaving the Board of Supervisors – although he was at the pinnacle of his political career and could have easily won re-election. With the Mayor’s race heating up, will Matt once again surprise us and take on Newsom for a second time?

Conventional wisdom says that Mayor Newsom sealed his re-election in February 2004 when he took the bold step of issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. San Franciscans are very progressive, but they don’t pay attention to local politics unless it makes national news – and the Mayor hit a home run on this issue. With Newsom a national hero for the Left and a champion for LGBT people everywhere, many who had voted for Gonzalez just months before were instantly impressed with the new Mayor. His approval ratings shot up and still remain high, in large part due to this one action.

But lately the Mayor has begun to show signs of weaknesses, causing many to wonder if his popularity is a mile wide and an inch thick. He has become detached from the everyday duties of being Mayor, governing by press release and letting the progressive Board of Supervisors set the agenda. He suffered a major defeat at the polls last November, implying that a Newsom endorsement for local candidates or ballot measures is practically irrelevant.

A Mayor who once promised to sign his own recall petition if the murder rate didn’t go down has opposed $10 million in violence prevention programs (Proposition A) and has picked a fight with the Board of Supervisors over police foot patrols. His pledge in December 2005 to clean up the Police Department has fallen by the wayside, and now the scandal over how police handled the Yale Choir boys incident on New Years’ Eve has renewed some serious questions.

In the past year, Newsom has had two vetoes overturned by the Board of Supervisors (police foot patrols), and one overturned by the voters (eviction disclosure.) Now he wants to put a measure on the same ballot as his re-election to challenge the Supervisors’ ability to mandate police foot patrols, although the public strongly supports what the Supervisors are doing. Besides having a blind ego, why in the world would Newsom want his re-election to be a referendum on foot patrols?

Despite his high approval ratings and no serious opponent, Newsom has lately shown to be incredibly thin-skinned. He blew up in front of Channel 7’s Dan Noyes when he didn’t like the question being asked -- even if you agree with Newsom that it was an inappropriate question, the way he handled it was unbelievable. He has blatantly ignored the will of the people on Question Time, turning a minor setback into a major story. And at the January 13th Town Hall meeting, we learned that he can't even handle questions from the voters, let alone Supervisors.

But while these developments may give the Left an opportunity to challenge Newsom in November, it’s all academic unless someone actually runs. And I don’t see any other candidate besides Gonzalez doing it.

Tom Ammiano is running for State Assembly, and Chris Daly himself admits that his own negatives are too high. Ross Mirkarimi doesn’t want to be a “sacrificial lamb,” and likely does not have the name-recognition.

Other candidates who could get progressive support (Dennis Herrera or Aaron Peskin) likewise do not want to run. From their perspective, why alienate some of their own supporters when they could run for Mayor in four years when Newsom will be term-limited?

Some gay activists have launched an online movement to draft Carole Migden – but let’s get real. She has enough to worry about with Mark Leno challenging her in June 2008, and the latest in that race shows her complete lack of grass-roots support.

Tony Hall says he might run, and Matt Gonzalez might support him based on their personal friendship. But even if Matt walked every precinct for him on the east side of town, don’t believe for one second that progressives will fight an uphill battle to elect a West Side conservative who wants to end rent control.

Just to illustrate how few challengers there are, the Examiner has a daily feature on its blog that evaluates potential candidates, ranging from Leland Yee and Art Agnos – to (don’t laugh) Frank Chu. Nobody except Matt Gonzalez has the high name-recognition, the progressive track-record and the willingness to take risks and surprise just about everyone that it would take to wage a spirited progressive campaign for Mayor.

If Matt runs, could he win? Some progressives point to two developments that were not present in the last Mayor’s race that would help Gonzalez (or another progressive) challenge Newsom -- Ranked Choice Voting and public financing of Mayoral campaigns. But Ranked Choice Voting is only relevant if progressives can recruit multiple challengers to run, and at this point they’ll be lucky to even have one. Public financing is more interesting because it would create a more level playing field than the 2003 election – where Matt was outspent by a ten-to-one margin.

But dollars don’t vote – people do, and this year Newsom will have solid support from two very large constituencies in the progressive movement. LGBT voters will back Newsom, although Matt could peel off some of the community’s more progressive members who look beyond single-issue politics. Organized labor will also support Newsom because they owe an obligation to their members and cannot afford to alienate a Mayor who will probably win and has been there for many of their issues. Matt has recently tried to expand his base among West Side conservatives, but that has not yielded impressive results (see the Laguna Honda measure that failed) and such efforts will discourage and alienate his progressive supporters.

Should Matt run for mayor? That’s a separate question from whether he can win, and brings up an interesting point -- what are the consequences for progressives if they give Newsom a free ride? Some will argue that it will only empower the Mayor and make it more difficult down the road to challenge his policies, while allowing him breathing room to recruit more protégés like Rob Black. Even if Newsom wins at the end of the day, some will say that there is value to having the Left run a candidate to put the fear of God in his eyes.

In August 2003, Matt entered the Mayor’s race half-an-hour before the filing deadline because he didn’t want the race to be a “coronation” of Gavin Newsom. Ammiano and Alioto’s campaigns were not picking up traction, and it was increasingly inevitable among progressives that something had to be done to shift the momentum. Matt’s entrance in the race gave it the necessary shot in the arm to put Newsom’s victory into question. But I never believed that Gonzalez had a chance in hell – until the run-off when polls started showing him with a slight lead over Newsom.

One thing is certain. If Matt does not run for Mayor, progressives will not have a candidate this year – for better or for worse. It’s that simple, and the ball is once again in his court.

Send feedback to paul@thclinic.org