Castro Street Fair Election Endorsements

Campaign volunteers carrying signage for the upcoming November 4th election were everywhere at the Castro Street Fair a couple of Sundays ago.



There were also plenty of candidates in attendance, such as Daniel Flores above who is running for Superior Court Judge.



Local newspapers have chimed in with their election endorsements recently, and it's a tossup which publication's are the most egregious. The revamped San Francisco Examiner has been surprisingly progressive, and their articles explaining the various propositions by Joshua Sabatini have been excellent. Meanwhile the San Francisco Chronicle and the right-wing, gay Bay Area Reporter are in concordance on most issues and candidates, so you can't go far wrong by voting the opposite of their recommendations.



So here are some wildly biased endorsements from Civic Center, a resolutely non-commercial site which is not worried about either advertisers or being invited to the powerful insiders' table.

First off, vote for Daniel Flores for Superior Court Judge because my friend Michael Nava above says he's the best choice and I trust him.

San Francisco Supervisors David Campos and David Chiu have both been corrupted by power during their years on the Board, but I have seen Campos act out of conscience to do what is right, while David Chiu has behaved like an amoral snake since the day he took office and became Board President. Vote Campos for California State Assembly.

I know nothing about the candidates for SF Board of Education, so if anyone does, feel free to add your comments. My only maxim for the Community College Board is not to vote for any incumbents (that would be Anita Grier and John Rizzo) since they helped the institution get into the frigging mess it is today.

On races where there is only one choice, DO NOT VOTE unless you personally think somebody is an exceptional public servant. Jeff Adachi for Public Defender is the only person who fits that bill for me.



On the San Francisco ballot propositions, VOTE NO ON A. The $500 million bond is being sold as a cure to MUNI and city transportation in general, but as Joe Eskenazi writes in the SF Weekly, there is nothing in the language of the proposition that says anybody "shall" do anything, only that they "may." If there's anything we have learned about the City Family kleptocracy that runs San Francisco municipal government, it is that their word means nothing.

Proposition B, put onto the ballot by Supervisor Weiner who is in the photo below, uses "shall" language while indexing bigger budgets for MUNI based on rising population figures. Mayor Lee and his minions were furious and vowed revenge on future pet projects for the supervisors who voted for it, and Piedmont Poverty Pimp Randy Shaw has been howling that it might take money away from the millions he's receiving from the city to house derelicts in the Tenderloin. So VOTE YES ON B.

Proposition C extends the Children's Fund, a do-nothing, bureaucratic fiefdom, for another 25 years. VOTE NO ON C.

Proposition D is an attempt to extend the gold-plated, lifetime retirement health care benefits one receives after five years of San Francisco municipal employment to former Redevelopment Agency employees and their scam-infested successor agencies. It's amazing to find out they weren't already on the gravy train before this. VOTE NO ON D.



Proposition E is the soda tax, which is another nanny state tax on the behavior and wallets of low-income people, as if they don't get dinged enough already. VOTE NO ON E.

Proposition F asks the voters to approve new height limits at a development on Pier 70, and none of the usual suspects has voiced opposition to it. This is probably because the developers actually talked with the community first instead of going through the usual back channels in the Mayor's Office. VOTE YES ON F.

Proposition G is an anti-real-estate-speculator measure which imposes an additional tax if you're flipping a property before five years are up, "subject to certain exceptions." The local and national real estate industry is up in arms about this one. The legislation is more symbolic than anything else, but it might help cool things down slightly in this insanely overheated real estate market. VOTE YES ON G.

Proposition H is an attempt to stop the Fisher Family Foundation from putting in toxic artificial turf for soccer fields at the west end of Golden Gate Park along with invasive night lighting. Everybody has signed off on the plan at City Hall, so this election really is the last-ditch attempt by San Francisco citizens to stop it. VOTE YES ON H.

Pissed off at neighborhood opposition that ties up "improvements" at SF Rec & Park facilities, seven supervisors led by Scott Wiener want to amend the Park Code so Phil Ginsburg can do whatever the hell he wants without interference. If toxic soccer turf and pay-to-play private takeovers of public space strike you as okay, then vote yes. Otherwise, VOTE NO ON I.

Proposition J is a minimum wage increase that was watered down by Mayor Lee to take place over the next four years. Better than nothing, VOTE YES ON J. Also completely watered down by the Lee administration was affordable housing legislation spearheaded by Supervisor Kim. She caved under pressure from the Mayor's Office, and now we have a symbolic piece of legislation which will mean nothing to anyone. VOTE NO ON K.

Proposition L is a cri de coeur from Automobile Drivers feeling used and abused in San Francisco. It's a completely advisory measure demanding automobile drivers should stop being gouged in parking garages and at meters. I have always hated car culture, but they have a point, although a stupid one. The SF Metropolitan Transit Authority treats everyone like crap, and overcharges as much as the traffic will bear. VOTE NO ON L.



For the California State Propositions, I'm voting NO ON 1, Governor Brown's bloated Water Bond that is yet another attempt to drain the Sacramento delta for Southern California, YES ON 2 which creates a rainy day fund when there is a budget surplus, YES ON 45 for more monitoring of health insurance price hikes by the state, NO ON 46 which calls for the drug testing of doctors because workplace drug testing is completely invasive, YES ON 47 to charge felonies as misdemeanors for a whole range of nonviolent, drug related crimes, and NO ON 48 because we don't really need another Indian casino in this state. Happy voting!

Michael Nava and The City of Palaces

Between 1986 and 2000, Michael Nava wrote seven California crime novels featuring lawyer Henry Rios. The series earned a devoted, admiring group of fans who were saddened when the author went silent for the next fourteen years. Nava has finally returned, not with a continuation of the Rios tales, but with The City of Palaces, an extraordinarily ambitious historical novel set in Mexico during the final years of president Porfirio Diaz and the revolutionary upheavals that replaced him. It was worth the wait, because the book is a masterpiece.



I stumbled across the Henry Rios novels in the late 1990s, and at their best thought them equal to the other great California detective novelists Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. Nava also brought some rare personal qualities to the genre, being born gay and Chicano in a Sacramento barrio, before receiving scholarships to study writing at Colorado College and the law at Stanford. Nava's vividly rendered characters range in economic class from high to low, and the gay and Latino characters are unusually three-dimensional, ranging from closet cases to gay libbers and hypocritical Latin politicians to sympathetic workers. They feel written from the inside.



I recently reread the whole series and was happy to find they sturdily stood the test of time. Among other things, they are an invaluable portrait of California during the AIDS plague years, in a world teeming with political, sexual, ethnic, and economic tensions. The series gets stronger as it goes along as Nava gains more confidence in his overlapping narratives and emotional effects. The Death of Friends and The Burning Plain are brilliant and savage, while the final Rag and Bone gives Rios something of a happy ending, on his way to a judicial appointment with a new lover in a new town.



in 1999, Nava above moved to San Francisco where he was hired by the California Supreme Court to write legal opinions. In 2009-2010, he ran for a San Francisco Superior Court Judge position on a campaign of ethnic inclusion, which was covered extensively on this blog. Nava eventually lost the runoff election by a small margin in a campaign that was an eye-opening, dispiriting closeup for both of us of San Francisco politics at its most craven.



The silver lining in the electoral defeat was that Nava went back to work in earnest at the novel on which he had been ruminating and researching and writing drafts over the last couple of decades. The scope of the tale, with its potent blend of family, political, religious, and artistic histories, kept growing in his mind until he realized the original plan for a single book had become gargantuan, and it would probably require a quartet of novels to do it justice. The first installment, The City of Palaces, has just been published by the University of Wisconsin Press (click here for the Amazon link), and it's great both as a stand-alone novel and the beginning of a grand saga.



At its heart, the book is a story of marriage between a seemingly mismatched pair in upper class Mexico City in the final years of the four-decade reign of President Porfirio Díaz (above). Miguel Sarmiento is a handsome, guilt-ridden young doctor, an atheist and believer in modern science. Alicia Gavilan is an aristocrat with a face scarred from smallpox, a mystical Catholic who takes the Christian concept of charity seriously. They could not be more dissimilar but their pairing makes perfect sense, particularly as the world around them ruptures. There are dozens of other characters, some of them so marvelous they threaten to become the center of the narrative. There is La Niña, Alicia's mother entombed in a decaying Mexico City palace, who is alternately an ogre and a shrewd fairy godmother to her grandson José, an artistic, sensitive boy who feels like an answer to her prayers.



Historical figures such as Francisco Madero above are also important characters, and the depiction of his part in the Mexican Revolution and subsequent assassination during La Decena Trágica (Ten Tragic Days) in 1913 is masterful on Nava's part. He makes a complex series of events lucid and gripping, bringing to light a part of history very few people know or understand. There are exquisite set pieces throughout the novel, including Luisa Tetrazzini singing Aida at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, marvels and terrors in the back of a coffin factory where early silent films are projected onto a sheet, the workings of the underground railroad saving Yaqui Indans from slavery, battle scenes in Ciudad Juarez, and slaughter in the streets of Mexico City. It is a very rich stew where each strand informs the others.



A California Chicano writing an historical novel set in Mexico is something of an audacious act, but Nava has pulled the challenge off. My hope and dream for the book is that it is translated well into Spanish, becomes a runaway bestseller in Mexico, and is then transformed into a big-budget, six-month telenovela which conquers the world. ¡Que viva México!

An Electoral Sigh of Relief

The election yesterday had a lot of people on edge yesterday in San Francisco, with fears that we were returning to another variation on the Dubya administration. The country and the world did not need that again.



Last evening at about 8 I entered Jillian's, a large bar-restaurant complex at 4th and Mission, just as Ohio was being projected for Obama. The looks on the mostly middle-aged female faces sitting down was not one of jubilation or joy, but rather of total relief.



There was a Yes on California Prop 34 party in a large back room for the group which was attempting to abolish the expensive, wrongheaded death penalty. Though most of the electoral news was great, they lost.



The interesting writer/photographer/activist Jan Adams (above left, with her longtime partner Rebecca Gordon) was the state field manager for the campaign over the last year, and she was quivering with a mixture of adrenaline and total exhaustion. "My friend Michael Nava who works at the California Supreme Court said you never really had a campaign," I told Jan, and she instantly agreed. "We won over the political class completely, but never really put on a campaign for the electorate." Since Jan is one of the wisest characters I've met, it seems likely this was not her particular fault.



At the bar, the smart and funny young Slanted Door chef Alex above was waiting for Romney's delayed concession speech and Obama's one of acceptance. It was taking forever so we went outside for a smoke and then returned to congratulate everyone in the bar on a rare, happy electoral night. The relief in the air was palpable.

Ulmer vs. Nava and the Judicial Shakedown

Peter Keane (above) is one of the most respected and accomplished legal scholars in the country. He served as Dean of the Golden Gate University School of Law from 1998 to 2003, was president of the San Francisco Bar Association, Vice-President of the California Bar Association, and has provided legal commentary for everyone from NPR to CNN. Last Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle published an "Open Forum" op-ed by Mr. Keane where he accused the San Francisco judiciary of "borderline ethical (if not downright unethical) campaign tactics by San Francisco judges to elect Ulmer." (Click here for a link to the whole article.)



Keane prefaces his accusation with the following:

"First, put aside whether you favor incumbent Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer or challenger Michael Nava (above). Whoever the voters choose is qualified and will be a fine, capable judge."

Keane voted for Ulmer in the primary election but has decided to change his vote to Nava this Tuesday because:

"With lockstep unanimity, the judges of the San Francisco Superior Court have savaged the democratic process and cheapened the important principle of protecting the independence of the judiciary. To their personal discredit, they have done this out of a self-serving fear that potential competitors will run against them and that the voters might legitimately and democratically decide that others are better qualified to serve."

Keane continues:

"Last summer, all former bar presidents and I received a cryptic e-mail from Presiding Judge James McBride speaking for the entire court. It urgently summoned us to a meeting in the conference room of a prominent downtown law firm for the evening of July 7...

At the meeting, McBride and a delegation of other judges, announced that they spoke for all of the judges of the San Francisco Superior Court. They proclaimed that a Nava victory would be the destruction of judicial independence in San Francisco...

But that was not the most distressing part of the meeting. The bar presidents were then given marching orders by the judges to raise $350,000 to defeat Nava.

Remember now that present in that room was the top legal establishment of San Francisco. These were the heads of virtually every large, wealthy San Francisco law firm. The lawyers of those firms appear every day before San Francisco Superior Court judges in cases where huge amounts of money are at stake. Every lawyer in that room understood how essential the goodwill of San Francisco Superior Court judges is to the prosperity of their practices and to the success of each individual firm member.

This was a shakedown."

As commenter cosmo wrote, "It's really amazing--lawyers NEVER use this kind of language, so when a mainstream guy like Keane does, it carries extra force."

The San Francisco Chronicle has endorsed Ulmer over Nava, but I would urge you to do the opposite. Nava is thoroughly qualified to be a Superior Court judge after a long and varied legal career, but he's not a member of this self-selected club, which only increases the prospect that he will embody true "judicial independence." Above all, Mr. Keane is to be thanked for speaking out from behind a wall of judicial silence. He's a salutary example of what a professor of legal ethics should be.

Portrero Hill Festival 2: Politicking

The Michael Nava campaign for San Francisco Superior Court Judge joined the Potrero Hill Democratic Club booth at the festival on Saturday, joining a huge slew of candidates working the streets, such as Margaret Brodkin (below).



Brodkin is running for School Board in November, after being dismissed rather shabbily by Mayor Newsom from the Department of Children, Youth and Families last year.



Nava's campaign has picked up support from just about every group in San Francisco except for the Republican Party, the sitting judiciary who don't believe they should be forced to engage in elections at all, and the local dead-tree dailies. The latter have instructed their respective attack dogs, C.W. Nevius and Ken Garcia, to demean and belittle Nava in their opinion columns as often as possible.



The San Francisco Chronicle has also endorsed former BART board member Lynette Sweet for District 10 Supervisor, which encompasses the southeast waterfront from Potrero Hill to Bayview/Hunters Point. The endorsement is in spite of Ms. Sweet's well-documented ethical challenges, and is probably because she can be trusted to do whatever the old power structure of San Francisco wants her to do.



Though she has a campaign headquarters at the bottom of Potrero Hill, I didn't see Ms. Sweet at the festival, but did run into DeWitt Lacey (above), who has been endorsed by the San Francisco Democratic Party.



Steve Moss (not pictured), who has lately been demonized in the Bay Guardian weekly, was wandering around...



...while Community College Trustee and District 10 candidate Chris Jackson photogenically posed in front of appropriate signage.



I have no idea who you should vote for in District 10, and in fact am still ambivalent about my own District 6. Do vote for my friend Michael Nava for Superior Court judge, though. He will make a great jurist.

Political Campaign Snapshots 3: District 6 Candidates' Forum on Housing

Debra Walker, a candidate for San Francisco Supervisor this November, opened her campaign headquarters on Market Street near the corner of Sixth, which certainly is the epicenter of the downtown District 6.



I dropped by on Sunday afternoon to deliver a few Michael Nava for Superior Court signs, and a charming trio of volunteers welcomed me and said that Debra was at a candidates' forum at the Main Library a couple of blocks away.



In the Turkish restaurant across the street from the library, Glendon Hyde aka Anna Conda was fortifying himself before the two-hour event.



The lightly attended forum was sponsored by a consortium of nonprofit groups that are would-be and actual power brokers, including The Housing Rights Committee, The Central City SRO Collaborative, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, and La Voz Latina.



Only seven of the 14 candidates had been invited, leaving out my friend Harold Brown for instance who actually lives in an SRO, and this practice was defended by Richard May in the comments to a smart article about the forum written by the Tenderbloggers above (click here.)



Here's an excerpt from Mr. May's comments (updated info: not pictured above, this was a different emcee):

"I was the moderator for this event and also one of its principal organizers. I want to make it perfectly clear that if we could have invited every registered candidate we would have – even though in my opinion it would have been a disservices to the public to give voice to what can only be characterized as fringe candidates. Candidates whose only motivation for entering the race was a self serving interest of seeking name recognition and who have no interest in winning let alone governing.


For the sake of full discloser, I need to make it clear that you (the writer of this blog) and myself have never met.


Had you had the privilege of meeting me you would NEVER question my integrity by insinuating I choose to invite only those candidates that I or my associates liked. FOR THE RECORD – BEFORE ANY CANDIDATES WERE INVITED, I personally consulted with the nationally recognized ALLIANCE for JUSTICE organization to ensure that our criteria was both fair and legal. SIR!"

The candidates who made the Richard May/Alliance for Justice cut were, from left to right, Glendon Hyde, James Keys, Jane Kim, Jim Meko, Theresa Sparks, and Debra Walker. (Elaine Zamora was also invited but didn't attend.). If you're interested in seeing more, click here for a link to video of the event.



Jim Meko (above) and all of the other candidates onstage, with the major exception of the lightweight James Keys, would probably make a decent supervisor. I saluted them for trying to make a difference while fleeing into the beautiful sunshine of a September afternoon before the dreary speeches began.

Political Campaign Snapshots 1: Michael Nava

Superior Court Judge hopeful Michael Nava, along with his legally married partner George Herzog (above right with Pardeep Saini and John Trout), hosted a thank-you dinner over the Labor Day weekend for campaign volunteers.



The meal for two dozen people was from a local Mexican restaurant, the food and the company were great...



...and there was an interesting multiracial mixture of gay and straight, young and old, such as Sandy Mori (above) who had wandered into the Nava campaign as a Japantown activist because she liked him.



Last Thursday Nava (above) held a fundraiser at Medjool, the Mission District restaurant that has been ground zero for gentrification controversies.



We started at the rooftop bar and restaurant which couldn't have been lovelier, but the fundraiser turned out to be downstairs on the mezzanine level.



Laurel Muniz and her husband from Bernal Heights showed up...



...along with dignified looking characters from the Latino Lawyers caucus...



...and the former Chair of the California Democratic Party, Art Torres (above with Nava).



Along with Mary Ann Massenburg and Gabriel White (above), Nava is going to need all the help he can get. California's judiciary are circling the wagons over this race and are holding expensive fundraisers for Nava's opponent, the sitting judge Richard Ulmer, maintaining the unconstitutional stance that judges should never have to face an election. The negative ads are starting with a series of telephone "push polls" where interviewees are being asked, "Would you be less inclined to vote for Nava if you knew he was an opportunist?" or "Would you be less inclined to vote for Nava if you knew he lived in Daly City?"



Nava does live just over the border from San Francisco in a modest home in Daly City, on the foggy Pacific bluffs overlooking a popular hang gliding location. It seems that judges are not legally required to live in the counties where they sit, and Daly City was the only place Nava and Herzog could afford six years ago. His opponent Judge Ulmer's house is in Daly City's nearby antithesis, namely Hillsborough, though Ulmer rents an aparment in Park Merced so his daughter can be close to her private school at St. Ignatius, according to his website.

However, the last word I would use about Nava's character is "opportunistic." In fact, the glad-handing and backstabbing of politics seems to be utterly antithetical to his nature, and it's amazing he has managed to survive this far into the political process. To lend a hand before the November 2nd election, click here for Nava's campaign website, and join the volunteer army. There are some wonderful people involved.