Tony Kelly files papers to run for D10 Supe

From SF Bay Guardian,

After being narrowly edged out in the race for the District 10 seat on the Board of Supervisors four years ago, Potrero Hill political activist Tony Kelly says he will launch his campaign for the seat tomorrow [Wed/18], challenging incumbent Malia Cohen.

More at the SF Bay Guardian

Press Release from Tony Kelly:

February 19, 2014
Contact:  Tony Kelly
(415) 283-6607

Neighborhood leader Tony Kelly files papers to run for District 10 Supervisor
Says we need new voices on Board to address city’s affordability crisis

SAN FRANCISCO, 2/19/14 – Joined by a group of supporters representing youth, merchants, artists, tenants, and struggling homeowners from every neighborhood of District 10, Tony Kelly filed papers today to become a candidate for District 10 Supervisor.

Kelly, who has been elected nine times as President of the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association and who has worked on grassroots district issues for more than a decade, said it was time for fresh leadership on the Board of Supervisors to address San Francisco’s crisis in affordability. He said his campaign will be focused on having San Francisco plan and provide for affordable housing, equitable economic development, and cleaner air and water for district and city residents.

“Too many San Franciscans face an uphill battle, especially here in District 10,” said Kelly. “Our district is part of one of the richest cities in the richest state in the richest country in the world, and yet our neighborhoods are home to the highest unemployment rates in the City, our homeowners are at risk of foreclosure, and our tenants at risk of evictions. This is unacceptable, and we must do better. My family has been through bankruptcy, I’ve been a tenant my entire adult life, and gone through a no-fault eviction. I’ve been through the tough choices that District 10 residents go through every day.”

Kelly’s candidacy creates a re-match with incumbent Supervisor Malia Cohen, who was elected in 2010 through a ranked-choice voting system although she came in third place in the initial round of voting. Kelly received more first-place votes than Cohen in 2010, and eventually came in second with 47% of the vote.

Born at St. Luke’s Hospital on January 1, 1963, Tony Kelly is a second-generation San Franciscan. Growing up, Tony faced more than his share of adversity: his mother died of cancer in 1979 and his father, after falling into bankruptcy, died homeless on the streets of San Francisco in 1984. Despite these difficulties, Tony excelled in school, earned a scholarship to Stanford University, and attended graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University.

Tony returned to San Francisco two months before the 1989 earthquake, quickly becoming active in public service and establishing a theater company dedicated to diverse playwrights and actors. He moved to Potrero Hill in 1994, where he was elected President of the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association nine times, served as Site Council President at Enola Maxwell Middle School, and held leadership positions in community organizations including the Potrero-Dogpatch Merchants Association.

A well-respected voice for the neighborhoods of District 10, Tony has served on task forces and official advisory boards to the Mayor, the Port, and the Board of Supervisors. He has saved blue-collar jobs and affordable housing by leading the district’s neighborhood response to the Planning Commission’s massive planning and re-zoning process for the Eastern Neighborhoods.

Campos & Chiu Social Mixer

Join a Social Mixer and Q&A with Supervisors David Campos and David Chiu at the Bayview Pop-Up Market.  Both are seeking to represent State Assembly District 17 including the Bayview, Visitacion Valley, Potrero Hill, and Portola.   BYDSF will hold a short meeting shortly following the Q&A.

Thursday, Feb 13 6:00 PM Bayview Opera House

Q&A - begins at 6:00 PM

About the Bayview Underground Food Scene: The Community Pop-Up Market is a weekly place where local food and crafts vendors, from the Bayview and beyond, sample and sell a wide variety of goods. Including: Auntie April’s classic soul food * Beautiful You organic beauty products * Comfort Foods National healthy comfort food * Earl’s Bread & Brittle * Eji’s Ethiopian food * Fox & Lion hearty breads * Gratta Wines * Nia Soul afro-caribbean food * SF Honey & Pollen Co. * SF Mead Co. * Yvonne’s Southern Sweets

About BYDSF: An organization built of young professionals, students, and community leaders of all ages who actively advocate for issues facing Black/African American community. As the flagship Democratic club for young Black/African Americans in San Francisco, we work to ensure that our elected officials hear the perspectives of our community through our membership. We believe it is our duty to Engage, Empower, and Inspire.

Mayor Lee opens D10 HQ this weekend

Mayor Ed Lee will be opening his District 10 campaign HQ this Saturday morning, Sept 17 at 9:30AM, 3801 Third St. at Evans.

If other candidates have a D10 event planned, or also open an office here, please let me know in advance so that I can post the news.

David Chiu is so far the only other candidate to have a Southeast sector office presence.  He opened his office last weekend at 3597 Mission St at Appleton, in District 9.

EVENT: SF Mayor's Debate in Potrero Hill, August 30

AUGUST 30th POTRERO HILL MAYORAL 
CANDIDATE DEBATE
Doors open at 6pm; event begins at 6:30

Please join us for what is sure to be a lively and informative evening. The format will consist of four rounds of candidates asking questions of other candidates, plus opening and closing statements. Each round has a particular subject:

·Creating Careers for San Franciscans (Jobs, the Economy)
·Preventing Cuts to Our Services (Budget, Transit, Parks)
·Keeping Families Here (Housing, Schools)
·Supporting Livable Neighborhoods (Health, Safety)

There will also be bonus minutes awarded for various reasons. For participating candidates' questionnaires, click here. To view the  different candidates' answers side-by-side, click here. After the debate, we will also post the questionnaires submitted by candidates who did not appear. Participating candidates are John Avalos, Terry Baum, David Chiu, Bevan Dufty, Dennis Herrera, Joanna Rees.

Co-sponsored by Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association, the debate will be videotaped and later posted online. PHDC member voting on Mayoral endorsements will occur in September, along with other endorsement voting.

WHERE:  International Studies Academy Auditorium, 655 De Haro at 18th St
WHEN:  Tuesday, August 30th, at 6:30PM - doors open at 6

Slice of the Left Key to Yee

From Asian Week,

LESSON OF OAKLAND: With the left’s support in the 2011 SF mayor’s race, State Senator Leland Yee could avoid being isolated like former state senate colleague Don Perata in his 2010 Oakland ranked choice mayoral loss to Councilwoman Jean Quan. Although Perata was the early 11 percentage point leader among first choice ranked votes, Council members Rebecca Kaplan and Quan played a tag team match by encouraging supporters to vote for each other, and not Perata. Kaplan’s ranked ballots helped Quan edge Perata by nearly two points to become the first Asian Pacific American elected mayor of a major metropolitan city.

Read more at Asian Week

As districts alter, so do their politics

From SF Gate,

Some San Francisco political stereotypes will never change. The Mission and Haight remain liberal even by local standards, whereas St. Francis Wood, Sea Cliff and parts of the Marina and Pacific Heights make up the city's most conservative pockets.

But there are some changes in the political winds. Most notably, the southeast quadrant of the city - including Bayview-Hunters Point, the Outer Mission, Visitacion Valley and the Excelsior - is voting much more conservatively than it did just a few years ago.

Read more at SFGate

S.F. ranked-choice mess looms for mayor's race

From SFGate,

We may be headed for a ballot box train wreck. November's election will technically be the first mayoral election to be decided by controversial ranked-choice voting. (Gavin Newsom was essentially unopposed when he was re-elected mayor.)

Today's Chamber of Commerce survey shows that voters find ranked-choice confusing and unsettling and would prefer a traditional two-candidate runoff. There's even been talk of repealing ranked-choice voting at the ballot box.

Good luck with that.

Read more at SFGate

San Francisco supervisor districts poised to change now that census data is released

From SF Examiner,

With new census data come new population counts. And with new population counts comes redistricting. And with redistricting comes politics.

Click on the photo to the right for more census data.

Let the line-drawing begin.

City elections chief John Arntz informed supervisors this week that he’ll be looking at population changes within their districts.

The City’s charter now gives him 60 days to decide whether populations have changed substantially. If they have, the board convenes a committee to redraw districts for the 2012 elections.

Observers are already eyeing the process, and considering how it could change The City’s balance of power.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner

Census Data Will Likely Signal Loss of Political Power for Bay Area

From the Bay Citizen,

With the much-anticipated release of 2010 census data for California expected Tuesday, the San Francisco Bay Area faces the prospect of ceding political clout to its upstart neighbor: the fast-growing Central Valley.

The dramatic population shift under way in the state, redistricting experts say, will make plain that the Bay Area should probably lose a district. The population in the ascendant Central Valley has grown roughly 15 times as fast as the population in the San Francisco Bay Area over the last decade, according to federal population estimates.

In past years, powerful Democratic lawmakers from the Bay Area would have vehemently resisted any efforts to hand over a district to the more heavily Republican inland area. But the power to line-etch is now the province of the newly formed Citizens Redistricting Commission, created by a voter-approved initiative in 2008. The 14-member panel this year will try to combine communities that share common social, economic and other interests as it redraws California's Senate, Assembly, State Board of Equalization and congressional districts.

Read more at Bay Citizen

Bidding adieu to Newsom, Harris, and four Supes

4 veterans' last week on S.F. Board of Supervisors - SFGate

Four veterans on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will leave office this week, taking with them a collective 35 years of experience as lawmakers and leaving behind an eclectic legislative record.

Termed out of office, they lose their jobs at noon Saturday when their successors are scheduled to take the oath of office.

Two of the departing supervisors, Chris Daly and Sophie Maxwell, were swept into office with the rebirth of district elections in 2000 amid a call to embolden neighborhood power and loosen then-Mayor Willie Brown's strong grip on City Hall.

Read more at SFGate


Gavin Newsom lived on the political edge - SF Examiner

In a recent interview with The San Francisco Examiner, Newsom talked about both his achievements and missteps during his two terms as mayor.

Newsom cited the redevelopment of the Hunters Point Shipyard, which will be a major job generator for The City’s southeast neighborhood as one of his greatest legacies. He boasted about balancing the budget without raising taxes and repaving city streets. He even pointed out that Muni’s on-time performance is the best it has ever been.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner

Malia Cohen among new SF supervisors - SFGate

Malia Cohen was on a City Hall field trip in third grade when Dianne Feinstein, who was mayor of San Francisco at the time, invited the class into her office. The young student was hooked.

"It wasn't just the grandeur of the rotunda that really left an impression on me. It was also Mayor Feinstein, who talked about working in public service," said Cohen, now 32. "I knew I wanted to work at City Hall."

Read more at SFGate

Class of 2010: Malia Cohen - SFBG

Sarah Phelan at the SF Bay Guardian writes, 

Can a winner who lost the first-place vote in D10 be a bridge builder?

It took two weeks and 19 updates of San Francisco's ranked-choice voting system before Malia Cohen, a former Mayor Gavin Newsom staffer and partner in a firm that helps businesses and nonprofits create public policy, was declared the winner of the hotly contested race to represent District 10, which includes Bayview, Hunters Point and Ingleside. The nail-biting time lag was a byproduct of complex calculations that involved 22 candidates, no clear front-runners, and a slew of absentee and provisional ballots.

But when the RCV dust settled, the results proved that the D10 vote continues to break down along class, race, and gender lines. These RCV patterns personally benefited Cohen's success in picking up second- and third-place votes.

 Read more at the SFBG

Willie Lewis Brown: The man behind the icon - The Western Edition

The Western Edition writes,

Recently, according to Brown, District 10 has experienced a highly competitive race for supervisor. Brown said that the city should return to citywide elections. He said that he absolutely abhors ranked choice voting because the process dilutes the race.

“The system that has been designed by the Progressives in this town adversely affects the ability for a distinct racial minority group to organize,” Brown opined. “If you had citywide elections as we’ve had in the past, and we had candidates running against other candidates, rather than this wildcard contest where nobody runs against anybody, you would be able to consolidate resources.

“As long as you have this wild card configuration where people don’t get but 40 votes, makes it almost impossible.”

To resolve the issue, Brown suggested that people urge the mayor and the Board of Supervisors to put a measure on the ballot that will modify the method of electing the supervisors.

Read more at The Western Edition

Phil Ting Begins Organizing Campaign for Mayor to Reset San Francisco

San Francisco, CA – Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting today began organizing what he pledged would be “a different kind of political campaign focused on empowering San Franciscans to help make our city government work faster, fairer and smarter.”

Ting, accompanied by his wife Susan and two young daughters, pulled papers from the City Elections Department to begin organizing a campaign for Mayor in the November 2011 election.

Ting has been leading a growing online community, ResetSanFrancisco.org, dedicated to organizing San Franciscans from every neighborhood to promote the kind of “User Generated Government” that will help make our city more responsive to pressing issues like job creation, improving public transit and bringing solutions to the city’s endless budget problems.

Newsom and downtown groups court Cohen - SFBG

Steven T Jones at SFBG writes,

A rogue's gallery of downtown power brokers and moderate politicians is lining up to give D10 supervisor-elect Malia Cohen money during a fundraiser at Democratic Party money man Wade Randlett's house tomorrow night (Wed/1). And while the group may be trying to buy the support of a candidate they didn't support in the election, Cohen and some of her progressive supporters say she's been open to developing relationships across the ideological spectrum.

Read more at SFBG

On the perils of 'Instant Runoff' voting - SFGate

Ah, the Chronicle, going to press with inaccuracies.  For the record, Lynette Sweet had the most first place votes (2137, 12.07%), not Kelly. He came in second (2095, 11.83%), Cohen third (2083, 11.77%), a mere 12 votes behind Kelly.  What John Diaz of the Chronicle seems to be saying is that Cohen's victory with "less than a quarter of all votes cast" (24.4%) is somehow better than a Sweet victory with 12.07% of first-choice votes cast (with no runoff).  Either that, or, during a runoff between Sweet and either Cohen or Kelly (there surely would have been a recount for the #2 spot), we somehow would have gotten the 17705 people back to the polls to vote again.  In fact, as Richard DeLeon of BeyondChron points out, 

In December 2001, San Francisco paid approximately $3 million to hold a runoff election in which 70,000 voters, only 17 percent of those registered, turned out to elect the city attorney. Turnout plunged all over the city, especially in minority precincts.

In this 2010 election, 60% of registered voters voted.  17% of registered voters in a December runoff this year would have been 5000, and the winner would have taken the seat with presumably about 50% of that, more or less, which is 2500.  2500 is only 14% of the total number of people who voted in the November general election, and not much better than having no runoff at all.  As it is, Cohen took the seat with 4321 votes in the end, which is almost double that which the winner would have received during a December runoff.  

Read more at SFGate and BeyondChron

“I Heard That”: Bravo to 3 Dynamic Women - Beyond Chron

Rochelle Metcalfe writes:

"Cohen is a San Francisco native, has worked for Mayor Gavin Newsom, and as a policy analyst for the federal government. This young woman has a bright future. Active in the Democratic Party; received major endorsements in her first run for political office (the youngest to run in Dist. 10)."

Read more at Beyond Chron

Understanding D10 RCV Election Results - Fog City Journal

Steven Hill writes,

Though the results in the ranked-choice race for District 10 Supervisor have not been officially certified by the San Francisco Department of Elections, Malia Cohen, a liberal Democrat, is the presumed Supervisor-elect for the District.

Read more at Fog City Journal and FairVote

District 10 News

Police called to Visitacion Valley for Violent Dispute - SFAppeal

San Francisco's Political Winners and Losers - SFWeekly

Moderates make their move on BoS - SF Examiner

Moderates make their move on Board of Supes - SF Examiner 11/16/10