By evening the turnout proves to have been fantastic. Nearly 600 people -- a mob in the world of project area committee elections -- have turned out to vote. When polls close, the results are completely in doubt.
For each side, a loss would be devastating, a fact that shows on their faces. A project area committee controlled by Antoinetta's faction would surely cancel the management standards plan, eliminating Henry's livelihood and squashing John Elberling's efforts to improve the quality of life in slum hotels.
For Antoinetta, a loss would bankrupt her dreams, halt her climb from the depths of failure, keep her from becoming the queen of Sixth Street.
The Victory
Finally, at midnight, city vote-counters look up from their tables, one by one. Antoinetta has made it onto the project area committee as one of four representatives elected in the hotel tenant category, but just barely. She registers fourth place. Her allies Jeff Roth and Eric McDougall are also voted in, gaining Residential Owner-Occupant slots. Jacqueline Benjamin, the Sharon Hotel resident whom Antoinetta had recruited, far outpolls the other hotel tenant candidates, garnering 215 votes. (Antoinetta pulled just 145.)
But Henry Perez's slate has polled nearly as well as Antoinetta's. Given the ambiguity of the myriad Sixth Street alliances, it's hard to tell who will have the advantage when the committee begins meeting next month. For all intents and purposes, the committee is split between the two slates.
So the wars will continue, and the word on the street remains conspiratorial. Jeff Roth's faction will reportedly try to get Michael Kaplan ousted from his job as South of Market project manager for the redevelopment agency. Antoinetta III will clamor for the cancellation of the Management Livability Standards. John Elberling, who has also been elected to the committee, will be able to push for increased low-income housing. Nothing whatsoever is settled.
The Tone of Things to Come
In Southern California, divided project area committees produced gerrymandered planning maps, pitcher-throwing tirades, and endlessly postponed neighborhood improvement. In cases where committees became consumed with personal quarrels, their yelling has made them useless. Government officials came to regard them as irrelevant brawling societies, and went ahead with redevelopment plans without their input.
Sixth Street below Market can scarcely afford this kind of chaos, if it is to become anything but the slum it has been. By any reasonable judgment, Sixth Street's smelly, decrepit, cramped hotels are an affront to human dignity. Its pawnshops, liquor stores, and cocktail lounges are monuments to the hopelessness that can trap almost anyone who has fallen on truly hard times.
Inside the bars, ancient people sit in the dark for hours at a time.
In front of the liquor stores, hotel residents holler in defiance of some vague imperative between tilts from a brown paper bag.
Outside the pawnshops, youngsters in droopy clothes nod at passers-by, hoping for a sale.
Because of special taxing powers bestowed by state law, San Francisco has tens of millions of dollars to spend to make this piece of skid row less of a dead end.
But that same state law has given Sixth Street a project area committee whose members have sweeping governmental powers -- and are absolutely consumed by petty personal vendettas.
Post election, Antoinetta III is hoping for the best.
"Hopefully all this slate identification will fade with time and we can all get together," she said. "We have a chance to get together and forget about all that and get together and get some things done. This is going to be kind of new for me, but hopefully we'll be able to accomplish something, and develop some ideas of our own that make sense."
Antoinetta's statements represent a dramatic change of tone from her vitriolic election crusade. But the change is not altogether surprising. It's the sort of measured, constructive tone one would hope for from a newly-elected public official. It is a tone almost befitting royalty.
