The Revolution is Canceled

He hasn't completely found himself yet, however. "Sure, a leap still has to be made," he says. "I've shown that I have an understanding of how government works. Now I need to show that I can govern." He pauses for a moment, watching the tourists float by the window. His eyes wander to the signs on the street with his name on them. "I mean, who am I?" he asks. "Who the fuck am I?" He points to a sign in an insurance office across the street. "My name is in the window of Jack Lee Fong Insurance. Is that amazing or what?"

The Professional

Long before Peskin ever considered running for supervisor, the Telegraph Hill Dwellers organized a big dinner to discuss district elections. They invited Frank Gallagher, then a political columnist for the San Francisco Independent, to talk about how this new electoral process would play out.

Gallagher is a garrulous City Hall insider who doesn't mind getting in someone's face once in a while, just for kicks. As Gallagher describes it, he began telling the group about how incumbents would move to different districts so they wouldn't have to run against one another. Even new candidates would move around to get the best shot at winning a seat on the board, he said.

"As a matter of fact, we have a carpetbagger right here in the audience," he said, motioning to a young blond woman sitting in the front row. "Meagan Levitan just moved here a few months ago so she could run in this district rather than facing Gavin Newsom in the Marina."

"It's a lie!" the woman said loudly, surprising those sitting next to her. "That's not true!"

After the meeting, witnesses said Levitan was still teary-eyed.

Despite Meagan Levitan's protests, what Gallagher had said was true. She had bought a condominium in the Marina, believing it was in District 3. When she discovered it wasn't, she says she rented an apartment a few blocks over, so she could run in the North Beach district where she felt she had a better chance of winning.

Over a cappuccino at Cafe Roma, Levitan says she has wanted to be a San Francisco supervisor since she was 6 years old. She is dressed casual chic in a white sleeveless blouse and black knickers. With her blond coloring and aquiline nose, she bears a striking resemblance to Ellen DeGeneres.

Where Peskin brims with names and political scuttlebutt, Levitan is cool and even-keeled. She grew up chumming around with the political side of San Francisco's old-money crowd; her best friend is Nancy Pelosi, daughter of the city's congresswoman. A young Dianne Feinstein would sometimes visit her parents' house in Laurel Heights when she was little, and Levitan followed in the former mayor's footsteps, attending Sacred Heart High School, then Stanford, where she studied art history. After college she spent six months in Florence, "where I learned a lot about myself."

Where Levitan comes from, you don't mention names.

You don't begin running for office in July, as Peskin has, either. After working in various capacities under three mayors, Art Agnos, Frank Jordan, and Willie Brown, she says she has learned enough to know that real politicians don't kick off their campaigns until after Labor Day.

And in this statement, she defines the race: Peskin is an activist, Levitan is a politician. While Peskin, still fresh off the Ammiano mayoral campaign, has sprinted out of the gate, Levitan has chosen to pace herself and remain above the fray.

Levitan doesn't need to start too early. She already has a natural advantage over Peskin: She gets along better with the money crowd. She looks like them, and unlike her competitor, she has never offended any of them.

"Aaron Peskin may be president of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, but that doesn't mean he's carrying his neighborhood," says David Lee, director of the nonprofit Chinese American Voters Education Committee. "There are a lot of property owners on the hill, and the last thing they want around is a guy like Peskin who's going to make a fuss if they want to build a third-story addition on their house."

Levitan and I take a walk though the neighborhood to deliver signs to a few supporters on Telegraph Hill. As we huff and puff up the hills, she explains what she means by the slogan on her campaign sign, "A Different Kind of Supervisor." It refers to her independence, she says. All her competitors are either in the Brown camp or the Ammiano camp. She doesn't want any part of either one.

But everybody's got to serve somebody, and though she hates to admit it, Levitan has made her allegiances too. In 1998, a full year before anyone else had jumped in the race, she voted to endorse Mayor Willie Brown for re-election along with the rest of the herd on the Democratic County Central Committee. She says she is not proud of this fact, but what's done is done.