D10 Supervisor Race and the "United Front" against Malia Cohen

Malia Cohen

With the vote for D10 Supervisor still six months away, the race has already lost its first candidate, and some of those remaining have banded together to take on an "Anyone But Cohen" posture.

Tony Kelly

The Potrero View reported this month that a couple of Bayview candidates - Ed Donaldson, DeBray "Fly Benzo" Carpenter, and Shawn Richard - and Marlene Tran from Visitacion Valley had joined Potrero Hill's Tony Kelly in the race to unseat incumbent Malia Cohen on November 4.  Donaldson, who garnered just 206 votes in 2010, has yet to file with the ethics commission, making him a candidate on paper only and unable to raise any money until he does.  Diane Wesley-Smith had filed her intent to run early on, but this week pulled out "to prevent a fiasco like the last election when we had over 20 candidates."

Marlene Tran

Of the five candidates running against Cohen, 36, Tony Kelly arguably has the strongest shot at unseating the incumbent.  In 2010, Kelly came in just ahead of Cohen in the first round of ranked choice vote tallying, but was felled by strong 2nd and 3rd place vote counts for Cohen that allowed her to prevail over him 52.7% - 47.3%.

Unlike Kelly, 51, who announced his campaign in February, Tran admits that her "very late entry" into the race was a "quick decision".  At least for now, she seems less prepared to make a run than she did four years ago, but given her strong third place finish in 2010, the 67 year-old Tran could become a viable candidate if she applies herself over the next six months.  A recent 2:30AM email from her indicates she knows that she has to "work extra hard now."

Interestingly, in posting her message to Nextdoor announcing her withdrawal from the race, Diane Wesley-Smith also announced the creation of what she calls a "United Front" of Marlene Tran, Ed Donaldson, and Tony Kelly against Malia Cohen.  Although perfectly fine to do, if they truly wanted to show a united front, wouldn't rallying behind the most viable candidate be the best way to do that?  Wesley-Smith's action of pulling out makes the most sense, while Tran and Donaldson appear to be spending time, energy, and possibly public money running campaigns they must know are at best long-shots to win.  Why not endorse Kelly and energize their respective bases to raise money and vote for him in the #1 slot?  Although it'll get their respective issues out in front of voters, instead of showing unity, this strategy may come across as fractious and even vain on their part.  On the other hand, this "united front" may be their way to help Kelly engage communities where he has a perceived or real racial and/or linguistic barrier in connecting with voters who look up to Tran and Donaldson and whose appeal could help get voters to the polls.  The collective wisdom of the candidates may be that Kelly has a better shot at getting a #2 vote on a Tran or Donaldson ballot than he would getting a #1 vote if it were just him up against Cohen.

Playing a purely hypothetical numbers game, in 2010 20550 voters cast ballots in the Supervisor race (I'll keep Ed Donaldson out of my calculations, as he garnered less than 1% of the total vote in 2010 and his influence on the race this year seems limited).  Of those, 3330 voted Tran in the #1, 2, or 3 slot. If we assume a similar vote total in 2014, and if votes follow the same pattern as the second-to-last round of RCV in 2010, with just three main candidates we'd have Cohen 7850, Kelly 6658, and Tran 6206.  If a similar proportion of Tran's votes were to go to Kelly and Cohen as they did in 2010, then Kelly would pick up about 60% and Cohen 40%.  This would put them neck-and-neck, with only 50 votes between the two.  

But 2010 was a race in which there was no incumbent, and everyone was, to a degree, and unknown entity.  Today we have to ask, what is Cohen's incumbency advantage?  The fact that she is addressed as "District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen" at every event she attends should give her an advantage.  Successes such as the new Grocery Outlet store and a preliminary agreement to put 1700 affordable homes at Schlage Lock in Visitacion Valley should help her.  But if opponents are to be believed, Cohen negatives outweigh her positives, and she may be so unpopular as to not have an advantage at all.  Issues like her support for redistricting Potrero Hill out of D10, Fresh & Easy closing down its Bayview store, and lack of support from many city leaders regarding a homeless shelter at Mother Brown's in Bayview are seen by opponents as a tarnish on her advantage that makes her weak.

Despite these things, a strong possibility remains that voters could ignore the tarnish and give Cohen the benefit of the doubt in November as they often do incumbents.  Similarly, Tran voters could ignore or be totally unaware of her endorsement of Kelly and choose the known over the unknown in their #2 vote.  Cohen's opponents are going to have to sow and grow an awful lot of doubt and discontent in the minds of a sizable chunk of voters to get them to make the leap of faith and call for a change.  Doing so without sounding mean and nasty is a political knife edge they'll have to walk.  Not impossible, but challenging to be sure.

Should be interesting to see what the next six months brings.

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Note: I was appointed by Supervisor Cohen in 2012 to the SFCTA-CAC.  I will do all I can to keep my personal opinions  about the race to myself, but if anything (including the above article) appear biased toward Supervisor Cohen in any way, please call me out, point out where you see the bias, and I'll endeavor to do better in the future.

Heroes & Hearts raises $1.5 million for S.F. General

From SFGate,

Stout hearts and hefty wallets were a thousand strong last week on the field at AT&T Park, where the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation raised $1.5 million during its seventh Heroes & Hearts Luncheon and Hearts After Dark after-party.

The lunch fete, expertly co-chaired by Connie Shanahan and Patrick Smith, moved like clockwork as honors, and heart-shaped awards, were bestowed on this year's heroes: SFGH's Institute for Global Orthopaedics and Traumatology co-founder Dr. Richard Coughlin, Project Pull science internship co-founder Harlan Kelly Jr., Visitacion Valley Asian Alliance founder Marlene Tran and Homeless Prenatal Program founder Martha Ryan.

Read more at SFGate

2011 NEN Awards Ceremony Video

In case you missed the award ceremony, at which five people and organizations from District 10 won awards for their outstanding achievements, here is the edited video. Enjoy, and again, congratulations to Leroy Loper (NEN Hall of Fame): The Bridgeview Community Teaching and Learning Garden (Best Green Community Project); The Alemany Island Beautification Project (Best Community Challenge Grant Project); The Visitacion Valley Greenway (Outstanding Park Volunteer Group); and Marlene Tran (NEN Lifetime Achievement Award).

San Francisco General Hospital Foundation Announces 2012 Heroes & Hearts Award Recipients

Local Heroes Honored at Seventh-Annual Luncheon on the field of AT&T Park

SAN FRANCISCO (January 11, 2012) - Today San Francisco General Hospital Foundation (SFGHF) Board of Directors President Matt Carbone announced four recipients of the 2012 Heroes & Hearts Award - an award which recognizes exceptional community service. The heroes include Richard Coughlin, MD, Harlan L. Kelly, Jr., Martha Ryan and Marlene Tran. They will be honored at the seventh-annual Heroes & Hearts Luncheon on Thursday, February 9, 2012 at AT&T Park. Tickets for the luncheon are available now by calling 415-206-4478 or visiting www.sfghf.net/hh.

"Each of this year's heroes is a community leader," says Carbone. "Honoring our local heroes for their compassion and dedication is one way San Francisco General Hospital Foundation aims to motivate others to create positive change in their own community."

The Heroes & Hearts Luncheon is an outgrowth of 2004's Hearts in San Francisco series - a city-wide art installation and fundraiser project. In addition to spotlighting exceptional community heroes at the February 9 luncheon, 14 new heart artworks will be displayed including six "table top" hearts that will be auctioned with proceeds benefiting SFGHF and its efforts to fund projects that enhance patient care and comfort at SFGH. Hearts in San Francisco artworks, combined with proceeds from Heroes & Hearts and the evening party Hearts After Dark (2006 - 2011), have raised nearly $7 million for SFGHF.

The Heroes & Hearts Luncheon takes place on Thursday, February 9, 2012 at AT&T Park. Tickets for the luncheon are available now by calling 415-206-4478 or visiting www.sfghf.net/hh.

Event sponsors as of January 11, 2012 include Intel, Visa, Wells Fargo, Cummins West, Inc., Chevron Energy Solutions, McKesson Foundation, Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation, Stanley S. Langendorf Foundation, UnitedHealth Group, San Francisco Giants, Macy's and PG&E. Media sponsors include KCBS All News 740 AM and 106.9 FM, NBC Bay Area, San Francisco Business Times, San Francisco magazine and Where magazine.

Marlene Tran

Marlene Tran - Founder of the Visitation Valley Asian Alliance and advocate for educational programs, MUNI services, youth programs, job training, public parks and increased language access for residents in the Southeast neighborhoods of San Francisco.

For over 25 years, Marlene Tran has been working tirelessly as an advocate on many quality of life issues for the residents and communities in the Southeast sector of San Francisco. A resident of Visitacion Valley and a retired teacher of over 35 years in the San Francisco Unified School District and City College of San Francisco, she understands the challenges many families face in the City's Southeast neighborhoods. Starting in the late 1980s, she formed the Visitacion Valley Asian Alliance (VVAA) to help inform and empower the non-limited English speaking residents who were often targeted by crime. In addition to her surveys and VVAA monthly meetings, where she invited the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) and other city departments and residents to participate, Tran used her multilingual skills to help bridge community communications at neighborhood meetings, SFPD, the courts, hospitals and schools.

In 2010, she helped to mobilize thousands of residents via the ethnic media to attend two City Hall meetings concerning the brutal killing of an elderly victim. Working with different City departments, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asian Pacific American Community Center and other community leaders, the Community Ambassadors Program (CAP) was launched by the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs. CAP employs a 12-member multiethnic and multilingual team to assist residents and provide a visible, non-law enforcement presence in busy transit and business corridors along the MUNI Third Street and #9 San Bruno bus routes. The Ambassadors serve as role models and provide residents with safety tips, safe passage, language assistance, and information on critical City services and programs such as 311, MUNI, Healthy SF, City ID Card, and language complaint procedures.

Although Tran's journey into community involvement started with neighborhood safety concerns, her on-going advocacy for educational programs, MUNI services, youth programs, job training, public parks and increased language access have earned residents' respect, media recognition and honors. On November 16, 2011, Mayor Lee presented Tran with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Neighborhood Empowerment Network in the presence of over 500 people at City Hall.


About San Francisco General Hospital Foundation
San Francisco General Hospital Foundation is an independent not-for-profit corporation 501(c)(3) that provides fundraising support to San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH). San Francisco General Hospital Foundation is dedicated to promoting excellence in research, education and care for all at SFGH. The vital funding raised by SFGH Foundation allows SFGH to continue its long history of providing quality health care to San Francisco and the Greater Bay Area. Some of the programs funded wholly or in part by SFGH Foundation include the Avon Comprehensive Breast Care Center, ACE Unit (Acute Care for Elders), Institute for Global Orthopedics and Traumatology (IGOT), The Children's Fund, Women's Health Initiative, The Center for Vulnerable Populations (CVP), Cancer Awareness Resources Education (C.A.R.E.), Bay Area Perinatal AIDS Center (BAPAC), and the Orthopedics Trauma Center of Excellence. For more information, please visit www.sfghf.net.

Congratulations D10 NEN Award Winners

Congratulations to all the outstanding 2011 NEN Award Winners from D10!!

* Best Green Community Project
The Bridgeview Community Teaching and Learning Garden (Quesada Gardens Initiative)
 

* Best Community Challenge Grant
Alemany Island Beautification Project (Portola Neighborhood Steering Committee)

* Outstanding Park Volunteer Group
 Visitacion Valley Greenway Project

* NEN Lifetime Achievement Award
 Marlene Tran

More at http://empowersf.org/?page_id=1566

Gruesome details revealed in S.F. teen's slaying

The realities of this story are becoming harder and harder to comprehend.

KTVU has video of SF DA George Gascón discussing the charges against the 15-year old alleged gunman, who has been charged as a jeuvenile in the case.

From SFGate,

After a 16-year-old San Francisco boy was shot to death over the weekend, the accused killer and accomplices discussed sawing up his body to hide his death, then bungled an attempt to set him ablaze, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The victim, Andy Zeng, was found dead inside a gasoline-soaked room of a two-story duplex in Silver Terrace early Sunday, a gunshot wound to his head, which was partly covered with a black garbage bag, police said. His legs were also covered with bags.

Read more at SFGate

District 10 News

Police called to Visitacion Valley for Violent Dispute - SFAppeal

San Francisco's Political Winners and Losers - SFWeekly

Marlene Tran's success shows strength of Asian voters - SFWeekly

"Tran, a retired teacher, had no campaign manager and only a handful of volunteers, and was barely mentioned in mainstream media.  Had Marlene run a real campaign and reached out beyond the Chinese community, she could have won." - SFWeekly

Top five

Initial numbers show that fewer than 10000 votes were cast in D10 for supervisor.

The top five vote-getters in round 1 of counting are:

Tony Kelly 1279
Lynette Sweet 1160
Malia Cohen 1150
Steve Moss 1089
Marlene Tran 944

It likely won't be until Friday that we maybe know who won. I still see it coming down to Kelly and either Cohen or Sweet.

Teresa Duque: The Sarah Palin of District 10

One of the fastest growing voting blocs in D10 is the Chinese community (read more at the SF Bay Citizen). Currently, 35% of the district is made up of Asians, with a large proportion of that first- or second- generation Chinese. If you walk into New City Bakery on San Bruno Ave for a cocktail bun, for instance, you'll see most of the clientele reading from the local Chinese-language newspapers. If you listen to the radio or look up at the TV, you'll hear and see that they're set to local Chinese-language stations. This is a group of voters that are difficult for non-Chinese media to reach and to gauge, because a lot of the news they get is in a language not understood by many outside the community, and so it's difficult for non-Chinese people like myself to know what they're being told.

Well, it came to my attention the other day that one of the local Chinese-language radio stations has for months been using its airwaves to talk up Teresa Duque's candidacy while talking down a true, long-time D10 hero, Marlene Tran, and using racially divisive language about African American candidates in the race. Duque, who moved to District 10 from Millbrae a month before filing her papers to run, has raised a great deal of money in this race, and could be a dangerous stealth candidate. In her words, "I am just following the tradition followed by Carole Migden, Chris Daly, Carmen Chu, et al. of going to where my services are most needed." Well, I'm not sure that we need the services of a carpetbagger who knows nothing of our district's history, difficulties, or true potential, who only offers complaints, fear, and no solutions, and who moved to the district for the sole purpose of running for office, as our next supervisor.

I recently asked her about claims one of her canvassers made to me that she had single-handedly been responsible for a 50% local-hire mandate for the new BVHP development, when in fact she had little to nothing to do with the crafting of guidelines (not mandates) in this regard. After a brief exchange on Facebook, she then sent the following paranoid letter to Kristine Enea (note, it was NOT sent to me):

"I am writing to you out of professional courtesy and concern. Mr. Chris Waddling, has been harassing volunteers, actually coming into our headquarter, and has taken to writing statements on my Facebook page. He was carrying a sign for Malia Cohen at the time, and Malia Cohen's people have said that Chris Waddling works with you. We would request that you please warn him to stop making such intrusions, either in person at the headquarters, or online. This serves to demean and cheapen the nature of the election."

For the record, I have never been to her office, talked to any of her volunteers (except her canvasser outside MY house), nor have I held a Malia Cohen sign anywhere near her HQ. Don't let the facts get in your way, Ms Duque.

She recently came out with a press-release about some D10 voters not receiving absentee ballots. Instead of offering solutions, like telling people how they can still vote without the absentee ballot, she went on a tirade about how voters are being disenfranchised by City Hall on purpose. Whine, fear-monger, repeat. Not one solution offered, which, in the end, does nothing but help keep those disenfranchised voters out of the voter-pool.

This candidate knows nothing of our district except how to keep it divided along racial lines. Her sole solution to every issue is to scare anyone who'll listen and to talk about bringing in more police to make things better. To hear her tell it, she wants D10 to be an armed fortress. How do you make parks better? More police. How do you improve MUNI? More police. This is the only thing you'll ever hear from her. Her campaign is about keeping our communities in fear of one another, not in bringing them together to help heal wounds and make all our lives better.

Teresa Duque would be a disaster of a supervisor. Listening to her speak, it is plainly clear that the shallowness of her knowledge on the most basic of topics is truly incredible. She is the Sarah Palin of our district election. Heaven help us if she somehow pulls this one off.

Editorial

The articles sounding the death-knell of the progressive candidates seem to forget the fact that we have ranked-choice voting and a growing population who vote first along ethnic lines.

First, I think that Beyond Chron's analysis that the progressive vote is too fractured for a progressive to win it all is wrong. I think quite the opposite - I think the split on the moderate side is so fractured that it creates an opening for the top progressive candidate to hang on long enough to pick up the #2 and #3 votes of all the other progressives who get eliminated first.

The moderate group is pretty evenly split among Moss, Sweet, Cohen, and Enea, and unlike on the progressive side, I see all of them getting an equally (within 10-20%) strong showing compared to one another. They'll stay in the rounds of elimination until close to the bitter end, while the candidates getting knocked out along the way will slowly add more and more to the top progressive's totals, and not as much to theirs. Remember, Marlene Tran has suggested her supporters pick Tony Kelly as their #2. Tran deservedly commands a huge amount of respect in the Chinese community, and her word will be heeded by many. Of course, the more conservative bent of many Chinese voters means that many will ignore Tran and throw their support behind the moderates, but again, their votes get split, although Moss probably comes out ahead here because of, sad to say, racial reasons, despite Sweet trying hard to woo these voters.

I've also been hearing a lot of grumbling about Moss, Cohen, and Sweet for their various alleged and confirmed transgressions, lack of experience, and general knowledge gaps. Although anectodal, people looking for a moderate who has a voting record on important land-use issues, but who is otherwise untainted, are looking to Enea, and she may very well come up the middle here.

The above all said, Moss could still pull this out. In running so hard against him in their reporting, the Bay Guardian may have shot progressives and all other, more palatable moderates in the foot, steering moderate voters to rebel and vote for Moss en masse out of pure spite. Moss has done a good job of working the 'poor me, the Guardian is out to get me' angle. He can tell his supporters and those on the fence that he's done all he can to placate them, but they still keep coming after him. Poor Steve. What they've ended up doing is rally his base, as it were, and galvanized his supporters against the progressives in the race. They've given him nearly daily press coverage that he couldn't have gotten in his own paper. He's played the Guardian like a fiddle, and will have them as much as Coates and all the anti-tenant forces for his victory, should he win.

District 10 candidates face diverse challenge - SFGate

John Wildermuth over at the Chronicle talks a bit about the crowded field of candidates and changing demographics in our supervisor's race, giving a relatively bare bones report, and not making mention of all the candidates who were in attendance at the Visitacion Valley Rec Center that evening.

Questions for the Candidates

Steve Moss (D10 Candidate and publisher of the Potrero View) asked me last week to compile for his newspaper some basic biographical information on the top candidates. Apologies to those I haven't asked for info, but my 'top candidates' are those who've garnered the greatest buzz (press), have collected the largest amounts of money (yes, money), and quite honestly, have the greatest chance of winning among the remaining 21 candidates.

I sent an email to all the candidates last week asking for basic stuff, and have heard back from... Steve Moss.

OK, candidates, if you're reading this, I'm not doing some Steve Moss-centric piece for the PV. I don't work for Mr Moss, and he's not paying me to do this. I'm posting what I find here on my site, as well as writing the piece for the PV. Potrero Hill is important to your election, and how you come across to the voters there WILL affect your chances of winning. I am writing this completely unbiased, and am basically putting in the PV information that you have on your websites or that is totally public if people care to go looking for it. I'm just doing the legwork for them.

For you to be cast in the absolute best light, it would behoove you to send me some info (pretty basic, really) instead of having the words 'no reply' next to the simple questions I've posed. If I can't find info on your website, you're going to get a 'no reply'.

My deadline is Thursday. It'd be great to hear from all y'all.

You'll find the stuff that I find on the left side of this page under the "D10 Candidate Pages" section.

- your humble blogger, Chris

Why I'm Voting For Marlene Tran

I'm voting for Marlene Tran because ...