As I've said, there is no disputing the differences between Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzalez.
Newsom is backed by the full bore and weight of the Democratic establishment, from Northern California to Washington, and by most big business in San Francisco. But he's got a lot of other support from a wide variety of groups across the political spectrum, and across the city. He is pretty much a standard-issue, midliberal Democrat.
Paolo Vescia
Matt Gonzalez.
Paolo Vescia
Gavin Newsom.
Related Content
More About
Matt Gonzalez is a far-left Democrat turned Green who draws support from a disparate pastiche of groups and people, from the wacky, leftist outsiderdom of Carlos Petroni and Lucrecia Bermudez through the center of San Francisco's large progressive population to the weird inside politics of Joe O'Donoghue and Walter Wong.
But I hope you've gotten my point without my having to point it up: Both of these talented, ambitious young men say they are committed to streamlining a city government that is wild with corruption, waste, inefficiency, and arrogance. Both say they want to change a system of caring for the homeless that is not, as currently constituted, helping them. Both say they want to build more housing. Each says he will really do what he proposes, and his opponent will not.
And either would be a vast improvement over Willie Brown, or any other mayor San Francisco has had for a long time.
Had anyone but Matt Gonzalez made the runoff, I'd be recommending a vote for Gavin Newsom. Had Angela Alioto gotten to the runoff, I'd be screaming: "VOTE FOR GAVIN NEWSOM!"
But Gonzalez did make the runoff, and I'm recommending a vote for him because he's a smart, decent guy who seems to have a quality that is rare in public life: imagination.
A few years ago, Stanford law grad and public defender Matt Gonzalez imagined himself into a substantive candidate for district attorney. He subsequently ran for supervisor and won, after having imagined himself into the Green Party. He then imagined himself into the presidency of the Board of Supervisors, even though he was the lone Green on an otherwise Democratic board. And out of nowhere, Matt Gonzalez imagined himself a viable candidate for mayor, and made it so.
The ability to imagine a future that others cannot see – and to work the real-life details necessary for that future to become a reality – is one of the primary traits of leadership. Unless my people-reader has lost its bearings, Matt Gonzalez has the imagination gene in spades, and therefore the slightly better claim this time around to the mayorship, and the chance to prove that he will do what he's claimed he would do to improve San Francisco.
But I'm not losing a second of sleep contemplating the possibility of Gavin Newsom as mayor, and neither should you.
