It's over, and it's beginning

As you're probably aware, the final results are in, and Daly holds onto his seat (rather than getting a boot in it, as he so richly deserves). At least we can take some consolation from a few facts:

A. Thanks to term limits, the next four years will be the last we'll see of Daly. He'll probably try to run for some other office in 2010 (got to keep up the mortgage payments on that $700,000 condo, you know), but there's no way in hell that he'll be elected for anything city-wide. (Let's not forget that San Franciscans recently gave him a dismal 29% approval rating.) Daly's got too much baggage, and his opponents have too much ammunition to use against him for him to be able to refashion himself into a more broadly appealing candidate.

B. As opposed to the ABCD efforts of 2002 which was met mostly with apathy, there is now a considerable amount of momentum in opposition to him. For the past 6 years, many San Franciscans have viewed Daly with a combination of bemusement, indulgence and irritation. Many people were reluctant to speak up against him for fear of being portrayed as intolerant or against the truly needy. Clearly, he has capitalized on that lack of opposition, but he's not going to have that luxury anymore. We're becoming solidified and plugged-in.

C. Finally, Daly has always been his own worst enemy. He'll keep blundering along, digging his own grave. We're going to monitor the hell out of him, constantly looking over his shoulder. Whenever he does something questionable, we're going to use all the tools at our disposal to shine sunlight on his activities and document them. He'll no longer have the latitude to do what he pleases without being noticed by the public or the courts. When and where appropriate, we'll file suit or for injunctions.


It's never been our intention to merely be against Chris Daly. Opposition is important during elections, but it's not the real goal of our efforts; we're much more interested in making positive changes in District 6. That means that we need to sit down and determine what changes we want, then strategize how to achieve those changes. Since D6 is so diverse, there are bound to be hundreds of different objectives, but there are at least three things that we can all agree upon:

1. Public spaces (streets, sidewalks, parks, etc.) must be safe for everyone, and criminals must be prosecuted and punished. That's going to require the co-ordination of law enforcement, the District Attorney and citizens like ourselves.

2. Those spaces must be clean and free from the garbage, tagging and the mess that we've had to endure for so long. Too much of District 6 has been an eyesore for years now.

3. Public moneys that are spent on services for the homeless, et al, must be justifiable, cost-effective and accounted for. No more endless pork for Chris Daly's pals.


Beyond those basics, which Daly has ignored for the past 6 years, I think that most of us would agree that we need to revitalize the area -- especially the neglected neighborhoods west of 6th St. The mid-Market St. Corridor, the Tenderloin and SoMa all need to rebuild their sense of neighborhood, to create vitality and to encourage cultural development as well as business development (the two needn't be in conflict).

We believe that the public will exists to create this sort of change, and we think that Mayor Newsom and most of the Board of Supervisors is willing to participate in the process. We love San Francisco, and we want this District -- with so much squandered potential -- to be as vibrant, safe and picturesque as the best neighborhoods in town. Chris Daly has been opposed to much of these objectives, so we'll have to work around him.

If you would like to be part of this process, please e-mail us at uppertenderloin@yahoo.com, and say that you want to be included. We'll keep your name and contact information private, and we'll let you know the next step. And a big "thank you" to everyone who has read this blog and participated here for the past two months. It's heartening to know that we're not alone in seeking positive change.

Sign of the times

"BlackKat" writes "This pic kind of says it all, you know? About right that Daly would put his signs up outside liquor stores all over the tenderloin, he knows where his supporters congregate. I've seen 4 of these improved versions now, much better than the original!"

Chris Daly's "Big Brother"

Supervisor Daly wants you to know that he knows what's best for you, even if it's exactly the opposite of what you think you want. Daly proved this beyond a doubt on June 6 of this year, when he voted against the will of his constituents, to kill the very crime-fighting tool they had asked him for.

For the past five years, San Franciscans in District 6 have been asking City Hall for surveillance cameras to be installed at the most crime-ridden areas of public spaces. Civic Center Plaza, the intersection of Ellis and Jones, Sixth and Mission and a few other areas have been openly -- brazenly -- used for criminal activity for years now. The Police respond to complaints when they're called, but that only causes the criminals to move away or cease their activity until the Police have left, at which point, they return and resume.

Surveillance cameras are not new to San Francisco. We have had them mounted on BART, MUNI, in libraries and other civic buildings, in community centers and schools for many years now. They have proven their effectiveness in both reducing criminal activity and in helping law enforcement collar and convict criminals. Nor are they new to the City's public spaces. The four traffic intersections that use automatic cameras to catch red-light runners issue more than a thousand tickets every year. Cameras and videotape recorders are mounted in a few trouble-spots in the Bayview-Hunters Point area to catch people who illegally dump refuse on public property. They are an unequivocal success.

And cameras recently mounted above sidewalks in the Bernal Heights area have helped the Police catch Bennie Powell. Powell had been arguing with another man on the 900 block of Ellsworth St. near Alemany this April, when he pulled out a handgun and shot at the other man. He missed, but the bullet hit a 13 year-old girl who was nearby. The camera caught Powell, and he was prosecuted and convicted partly on that evidence. Last July, two cameras were installed on Buchanan St. in the Western Addition; within 90 days, crimes in the area had gone down 30%. And the City is launching a new program with fifty cameras mounted around public housing projects to help make them safer for residents.

Fed up with the chronic crime in their area, residents, merchants and community groups in District 6 have asked time and again for the City to install surveillance cameras at the worst spots in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market corridor and South of Market areas. The City did some research, looked at the results of such cameras being used in other cities, and decided to go ahead with a pilot program. $275,000 was set aside in the budget for the pilot program. The Mayor supported it. The other Supervisors supported it. The Police supported it. It looked like a win-win situation.

Then came June 6, 2006. At the Board of Supervisors meeting that afternoon, Chris Daly voted to eliminate the funding for that program. An overwhelming nine of the ten other Supervisors voted against Daly, so thankfully his vote failed. So why did Daly oppose the cameras that his constituents wanted? Because Daly, like his pal Bruce Brugmann -- the founder, owner and editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian -- thinks that surveillance cameras in public spaces violate a constitutional "right to privacy".

Brugmann wrote an op-ed titled "Put away the cameras" in which he argued that very thing. But, like so many of Brugmann's notions, it falls apart under scrutiny. For example, he writes "(Mayor Newsom) wants to put surveillance cameras — perhaps as many as 100 new surveillance cameras — all over the city, recording everything that happens in big swaths of public space, 24 hours a day." But the cameras that the public asked for and the Mayor arranged for, may be recording 24 hours a day, but the tape wouldn't actually be viewed unless a crime had been committed, and the tape would automatically loop every 72 hours, so that the previous tape would be recorded over. It's no more of a threat to privacy than footprints left on the beach that briefly record the footprints of passersby, then fade away.

Brugmann writes "there's no evidence that cameras deter crime." This is such an absurd lie that I am shocked Brugmann would even suggest it. Brugmann uses the situation in Britain to support his claims. But Britain is totally different from the US. Handguns are almost impossible to obtain, search and seizure laws are different, and surveillance cameras blanket all public areas, not just in the worst of areas. Apples and pineapples. In fact, surveillance cameras are already in use in American cities like Chicago, New York City, Washington DC and others, and in those cities, the verdict is unanimous: where there are cameras, crime has gone down. Furthermore, dozens of criminals have been prosecuted with footage from the cameras. Clearly, surveillance cameras do deter crime and help convict criminals.

Brugmann goes on to say "And in exchange for this dubious benefit, San Franciscans will give up an immense amount of privacy." But it is no one other than the law abiding citizens of San Francisco who are explicitly telling their elected officials that they are willing to exchange a measure of their "privacy" (such as one has while walking down a street) for the fear they feel from criminals who hang out on those streets. Shouldn't citizens be able to make those choices themselves? Daly says "no"; all of his opponents say "yes". And even the term "privacy" is misleading. "Privacy" is to be expected on private property; no one is suggesting otherwise. But in public, one inevitably gives up some privacy. If I do something in public within another's field of vision or earshot, I cannot expect that person to not see or hear it, whether they are an ordinary citizen, a criminal, a police officer or the Attorney General.

More absurdly still, Brugmann claims "Those videos could be considered public record in California — meaning stalkers, angry ex-spouses, and people planning violent crimes will have access to the daily movements of their potential victims." The notion that stalkers and plotting criminals would have access to Police videotapes (which are automatically erased every 3 days) to be able to see a person walking down the sidewalk strains the imagination of even the most paranoid. It's the most baseless fear-mongering imaginable; Brugmann only leaves off the claim that puppies and kittens will be sacrificed if the cameras go up.

The "civil liberties" angle begs a substantial question: if a police officer can view a criminal doing something illegal, and that evidence can be given in court as oral testimony -- which is subject to a slew of problems, from subjective interpretation to outright fabrication -- then wouldn't an objective recording device be a better safeguard against police misconduct or criminals getting off the hook because an officer's testimony was incomplete? If a citizen witnesses a crime (say, Reginald Denny being beaten by cops) and videotapes it, self-professed "civil libertarians" seem to have no problem with that video being made. But stationary, automatic cameras? Somehow, we're expected to believe that they're more of a threat to our "right to privacy"? I don't buy it.

But apparently one person who does is Bruce Brugmann. Although the Guardian touts itself as "the conscience of the Left" in the Bay Area, it's more of a personal vehicle for Brugmann's notions about the way San Francisco should be: an ultra-"progressive" utopia devoid of any big business and off-limits to Republicans and other lower life-forms. Brugmann has used his paper to wage a one-man campaign (some would say "vendetta") against PG&E for the past two decades. If there's a kind word to describe Brugmann, I would suggest "prickly". Someone else might suggest "ultra-Left-wing paranoid demagogue". What would be more useful to such a person than a representative in the local government?

The 69 year-old Brugmann isn't without his own political inconsistancies and conflicts of interest. For example, Brugmann fought for as many years as he could to keep his printing facility non-union and his employees on a part-time basis, so he wouldn't have to pay benefits or relinquish any control (he still owns and operates the Guardian with his wife and son). And he also editorialized against increasing the tax on cigarettes in the 2002 election cycle because it supposedly would be a hardship for poor smokers, at the same time that cigarette advertisements were the most lucrative ads for the Guardian.

The Bay Guardian has heavily backed Chris Daly for the past 6 years, not only endorsing him in every election, but putting him on their cover last month. If you Google "Chris Daly" + Guardian, you'll get over 35,000 hits, which tells you something about the unique relationship between the two of them. But not everything. Because Brugmann also seems to see Daly as a sort of "little brother", showering him with fawning prose and attacking anyone who dares criticize Daly. And at the same time that the Guardian attacks any campaign literature criticizing Daly and/or endorsing Rob Black as being "illegal hit pieces", the Guardian incessantly promotes Daly, encouraging people not only to vote for him but to volunteer and make cash donations to his campaign (something that no other San Francisco paper would dare to do for any candidate they endorse). With free advertising like that, who needs PACs to donate flyers for your cause?

In his editorial about the surveillance camera program that Daly tried to kill, Brugmann ended the column thus: "The best solution here is to simply cut the funding for the mayor's cameras from next year's budget." Is it a mere coincidence that this is precisely what Daly tried to do? Is it a coincidence that Daly advances Brugmann's causes so avidly at the same time that Brugmann acts as Daly's informal campaign vehicle, giving a priceless advantage at the polls? Perhaps more "sunshine" should be directed towards the collusion between Chris Daly and his media mouthpiece at the Guardian. Maybe the best place for a surveillance camera is in Bruce Brugmann's office.

Chris cooks some numbers

On Halloween, a local webzine called "Fog City Journal", who lists Chris Daly as a columnist, published an article titled "Daly surges ahead 20% in neutral phone sweep" . Underneath the large, fawning photograph of Daly, his wife and son, the article says

"With less than a week to go until Election Day, Supervisor Chris Daly appears to have the lead in the District 6 supervisor's race. A phone sweep of District 6 voters that identified the preferences of 2,190 residents indicated 1,326 (60.5%) favored re-electing Daly, with 864 (39.5%) opposed. Another 809 indicated they were undecided."

A week previously, Matier & Ross -- of the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate -- wrote in their column "Daly at risk of losing seat, new polls say", in which they wrote "First came a David Binder poll two weeks ago that showed Black surging 10 points ahead of Daly. Not knowing what to believe, the downtown folks commissioned a third poll, just this past week, from Evans and McDonough. The results: Black leading Daly, 37 percent to 31 percent."

Now, to have any political candidate's numbers move 26 to 30 points in 3 weeks is extremely unlikely unless he has just been arrested or outed. (Even Governor Mel Carnahan's numbers didn't budge that much after he died in a plane crash!) And so, smelling something a bit fishy about this turnaround, I did a little sleuthing. The FogCityJournal piece mentions that the poll was conducted "by Zata3, a Washington, DC based calling firm".

What is known about "Zata3"? Very little, in fact, and for a good reason -- they're not really a polling firm, they're a one-person business run by a guy named Brad Chism. Zata3's website is quite revealing. It's tagline reads -- "Advocacy is our calling", and it describes itself thus:

"We help elect Democrats and advance the progressive policy agenda by integrating telephone voter contact programs with a campaign's canvassing, mail and on-line advocacy."

Well, nothing like a little honesty about their agenda! In fact, their website never even mentions that they do polling, which ought to tell us something about whatever numbers they gave to the Daly campaign. The website does, however, talk about a service they offer called "persuasion messaging". Here's what they mean, taken verbatim from their website:

"We start by listening to our clients. We learn about the campaign strategy, targeted voters, plans for electronic media, and other direct voter contact efforts. We then review the available data (voter files, polling data, supporter lists, etc.) Only then do we recommend specific telephone voter contract programs. We script the calling program to drive home the appropriate message(s) and select the call center that best serves the campaign's needs. After we complete the calling program, we analyze the feedback from voters, and pass the reports along to campaigns for tactical or strategic adjusments [sic]."

In case anyone missed the obvious: the Daly Campaign hired a PR firm to poll for them. And not even a real PR firm, but a one-man push-polling business that's been around for less than a year. Zata3's website lists their office address as 1200 G St. NW, suite 800, Washington DC. But in fact, that address is merely a mail-drop (or rather -- an "on-demand professional center", the sort of place that rents mail boxes, has a photocopy machine and a couple of computer workstations. That website describes them as offering "virtual offices".

Compare Zata3 with those two pollsters who came up with numbers showing that Black was ahead of Daly -- David Binder Research, a 23 year-old, 7-person firm based in San Francisco with hundreds of clients, including the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the Sierra Club, the Trust for Public Land, the Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense and loads of other good causes -- and Evans-McDonough -- a national pollsters with offices in Oakland, who have been around for 17 years.

For all we know, Zata3 called people and asked them "Chris Daly, that tireless defender of the poor and oppressed, is running against Rob Black, a lawyer being controlled by Republicans. Are you going to vote for the good progressive, or the conservative tool?" That's the kind of crap that push-polls do; they lead and mislead. That's NOT the stuff that legit pollsters do, as they have their reputations at stake. But Brad Chism, somewhere back east? What's he got to gain from asking objective, non-leading questions? Or, more to the point: what's he got to lose from asking leading questions?

Faced with harsh numbers from two entirely legitimate and highly respected polling firms, why would the Daly campaign choose to respond by hiring an out-of-state, no-reputation, no-history, no-office, 1-man "persuasion messaging" service? My guess is that Daly tried to find any legitimate pollster who would produce some numbers in their favor, but all of them said "sorry, we can't do that". Then someone trawled up Mr. Chism, who saw the money and said "I can give you any number you want". I can think of no other explanation for why Daly's campaign would've gone him to conduct their only poll.

Chris Daly's remarkable house-buying luck

Well, well, well.

I've long thought it odd that Chris Daly's fan club seemed to be distinctly unlike him. After all, most of them are staunchly against the rich and powerful, and certainly wouldn't support anyone who exploits them for his own gain. But Daly actually isn't very much like his base. He's a Southern Ivy League alumnus who owns a nice new home here in San Francisco, and gets paid about $118,000 per year -- many times what most of his constituents earn. The deeper I dig into Daly's finances, the odder things become.

In 2001, Daly and his then-fiancée Sarah purchased a new condo on Stevenson Street in the Upper Mission, just off Valencia St. The 1,360 square-foot home has three bedrooms, a full bath and two half-baths; quite spacious by SF standards, and the largest available in the 101 Valencia St. development. The condo was priced at $435,000 -- a daunting amount to most young couples, but Daly had an ace up his sleeve. The condo they were looking at was specifically designated "BMR" -- "below market rate" -- a term which means that, by law, it could only be sold only to an individual earning less than $76,600 per year for one person, or $87,500 for a couple. BMRs are specifically intended to enable low-income people to own their own home.

At that time, a Supervisor's salary was $40,000 a year, plus the additional income that Daly was paid in stipends for sitting on certain boards and commissions. His fiancée's income was $32,000 a year, which meant that they just barely made it below the threshold to qualify for the BMR property. Like most young people (and like the vast majority of his constituents), Daly and his fiancée didn't have $135,000 for the down-payment lying around. Fortunately for Daly, his mom loaned him $95,000 at below-market interest rates, and he sold $40,000 of his mutual funds for most of the rest. Must be nice to have such resources to draw from.

But here's where it starts to get curiouser and curiouser. A few months after Daly closed the deal on his new BMR condo, Daly and his cohorts on the Board of Supervisors introduced a measure known as Proposition J. It called for their own salaries -- $40,000 a year for the part-time positions -- to skyrocket to $118,000 a year. Significantly (but buried in the small print), Prop. J took the power for setting the Supervisors' salaries out of the hands of the public for all time, instead putting future raises in the hands of the Civil Service Commission -- roughly the equivalent of asking the bank robbers to mind the bank. Equally significantly, Prop. J did not prohibit Supervisors from continuing to receive income from other work (most Supervisors have long had other sources of income); many other counties ban such supplemental income. And at the same time that the Board of Supervisors were engineering a 300% pay raise for themselves, San Francisco was going through a recession in which we lost about 100,000 jobs.

The Supervisors placed the measure on the ballot, adding a lot of rhetoric about how the 300% pay raise was merely keeping up with what Supervisors were paid in some other cities (although the Statewide average for a county supervisor was actually $52,000 a year -- near the median income of San Franciscans). The public swallowed the story, and -- boom! -- just like that, Supervisor Daly and his fiancee were now making $150,000 a year, squarely disqualifying them for BMR housing. The more naive reader might think "my, how lucky that Daly managed to qualify for his 'low income' 3-bedroom condo just before that unexpected windfall!", whereas the more cynical might think "my, how clever that Daly managed to qualify for his 'low income' 3-bedroom condo just before he knew he would no longer qualify for it!"

As it stands now, Chris Daly and his wife co-own their condo with World Savings Bank until they pay off the mortgage. Presuming that their mortgage is for 25 years, that means that the Daly's will have spent just a few months of their time as mortgage-paying homeowners while actually qualified to purchase their condo in the first place. And given the certainty that the proposition which yielded such a great pay raise for the Supervisors was being discussed and strategized between the Supervisors during the months before it was formally introduced, it's extremely likely that Chris Daly knew that he'd be getting a monster of a pay raise very soon after he was trying to qualify as "low income". Kind of makes you wonder -- when Daly says that he's the champion of "affordable housing for San Franciscans" -- if he's just referring to himself.