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Et Tu, Mom?

A new theme is already beginning to take shape this young campaign season: politicians betraying their heirs

A A A Comments By Matt Smith Wednesday, Jun 20 2001

"I'm not backing off the word constrained, I'm just not applying it to Carol because I haven't followed what she's done," he said, changing the subject. "We can't allow George Bush to monopolize the national and state debate on environmentalism and energy and things that effect our lives. I think I'm a good debater, and I can call attention to things that are important in this political system."

Britt may be an excellent debater, for all I know. But in this case he appears to be mostly a place-filler for Tom Ammiano's politically correct "progressive" machine.

Fred Harper

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"It all kind of clicked for me," Ammiano explains.

There's a narrative that describes San Francisco politics as a battle between two dynasties. The one led by Tom Ammiano and the rest of the "progressive" supervisors elected last fall are insurgent, while the old California Democratic Party machine led by Willie Brown and John Burton is in decline, this narrative version says.

But the fact is that San Francisco may very well be headed for a new type of politics, where a candidate's place in the political universe has nothing to do with whether or not she's friendly with Willie Brown. In this post-Willie era, a Kimiko Burton-Cruz just may lose the race for public defender, despite her famous name and the money it brings. Mark Leno, a smart, conscientious lawmaker who anywhere else in the world would be considered a progressive, won't be threatened by the narrow list of Provincial political sensibilities that have been lately used as a leftist litmus test here.

Perhaps next Father's Day, when Leno is the Democratic candidate for Assembly and Jeff Adachi is our public defender, the politics of parental betrayal will be all but forgotten. Jeff Brown and Carol Migden may remain ensconced in a political post somewhere, but they will have lost just the same.

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