SAN FRANCISCO — This is a city of some 815,000 people, about 49 square miles and exactly one World Series championship. And how many votes does it take to get elected mayor?
Six.
Already accustomed to some of the most combative — and liberal — politics in the land, San Franciscans have recently been rapt by a palace intrigue as to who will run the city, a debate set off by the recent election of the city’s popular two-term mayor,
Gavin Newsom, as California’s lieutenant governor.
Mr. Newsom is due to step down in early January, leaving the job of naming his successor to the city’s Board of Supervisors, a highly opinionated 11-member group whose political beliefs range from left-leaning to leftist. All are Democrats, but they come in various shades of blue, including a bloc of five progressives who view traditional Democratic positions as too conservative (a navy blue, perhaps); four moderates (who are solidly teal); and two political wild cards (sea foam, anyone?).
None of those add up to a majority, which does not bode well for a speedy transition of power, say veterans of the local political scene.
“There seems to me to be millions of ways to get to six,” said Peter Ragone, a Democratic political consultant and an adviser to Mr. Newsom. “And none of them actually work.”
At stake is not only the spacious mayoral digs in San Francisco’s ornate City Hall, but also the possibility of running the city for nearly a year until voters formally elect a new mayor for a four-year term next November. It is also a position that, because of the city’s role as conservative punching bag, has often put its occupants in the national limelight, including Mr. Newsom, who found fame as an early supporter of
same-sex marriage, and
Dianne Feinstein, who has followed her time as mayor with a long career in the
United States Senate.
The job is not necessarily going to be fun. The city is wrestling with an estimated $400 million budget deficit, a stagnant economy, potentially crippling public pension payments and one of the highest costs of living in the nation.
“You’re not going to be welcomed into the job of interim mayor as a conquering hero,” said Tony Winnicker, a mayoral spokesman. “It’s a job fraught with peril.”
Mr. Newsom, who has often tangled with the current board, even injected a bit of his own political maneuvering into the process when he recently suggested that he might delay his inauguration as lieutenant governor — planned for Jan. 3 — for several days to allow four new supervisors to be sworn in, thus creating, in his opinion, a more moderate board. (The board cannot formally name a new boss until the old one steps down, though discussions about the process are already under way at weekly board meetings.)
Mr. Newsom has since backed away from that possibility. Well, almost.
“He’s 99 percent likely to be sworn in,” Mr. Winnicker said.
Amid all that uncertainty, the list of potential candidates has continued to grow, and it includes some stolid, serious caretakers (Ed Harrington, the city’s public utility chief, for instance) and overtly sentimental and stylish characters like former Mayor
Willie L. Brown.
Then there are the members of the board, several of whom harbor mayoral ambitions, including Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a moderate from the gay-friendly Castro district,
who has already declared his candidacy for the 2011 election.
One name recently floated was that of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a well-known progressive, outspoken gay-rights advocate, stand-up comedian and former member and president of the board who has run unsuccessfully for mayor twice before.
Mr. Ammiano, a San Francisco resident who was elected to the Assembly in 2008, declined to comment. But Mr. Ragone said that Mr. Ammiano could be elected with the support of the board’s five-person progressive bloc — plus a moderate — to make it to six. But he added, “it’s a risk for him,” as he could be appointed by the board and then lose in the fall.
That is also the calculation under way for the city’s progressive bloc, which has slowly and steadily built political power in the city over the last decade, said Corey Cook, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco. In 2003, progressives nearly elected one of their own, Matt Gonzales, as mayor, but he lost to Mr. Newsom.
Now Mr. Newsom is leaving, Mr. Cook said, “and the question is whether this is really the opportunity for the progressives on the board to finally find a way of electing a mayor.”
Also complicating the process is the very nature of the board, a cauldron of personalities that Mr. Cook likened to the
Supreme Court. “It’s just hard to imagine there being any consensus,” he said.
Indeed, it has already taken two meetings — complete with long and sometimes oddball public comments — to decide the rules for picking the succession procedures, which will allow each board member to nominate one person for the job — any voting resident of the city — but forbids them from nominating themselves. If they are nominated by another board member, sitting supervisors will be asked to leave the board’s chambers and be sequestered without a laptop or cellphone, so as to prevent influence peddling or vote trading. (Or Web surfing, for that matter.)
The man overseeing that process, the board president’s, David Chiu, said he was impressed so far by the board’s professionalism in taking up the succession issue, noting that the votes on the procedures were all unanimous.
That streak, however, is likely to be broken when actual nominees are being voted on. A long stalemate could put Mr. Chiu in the job, at least temporarily; under the city charter, the board president is named acting mayor in the event an interim mayor is not selected.
But last week, Mr. Chiu would not comment on his own ambitions, saying he only wanted the best for the city.
“I think the most important thing is to ensure public safety for the city, readiness in case of any emergencies and to make sure the city government continues to function,” Mr. Chiu said, sounding vaguely mayoral. “And working with my colleagues to ensure that an orderly transition occurs.”
