The Daly Deal

How the sordid extraction of $50 million from Rincon Hill developers helps Chris Daly, city bureaucrats, and Gavin Newsom -- and hurts everyone else in San Francisco

A A A Comments By Matt Smith Wednesday, Aug 31 2005

...continued from page 4

In the best of all cases -- the buildings get built, the bonds are repaid, Daly enjoys a political future greased with slush-fund cash -- this deal creates a horrible template for all future city real estate development. From now on, it'll be seen as a political feeding trough for politicians.

Given Daly's tawdry history of exploiting government charity dollars to advance his political goals, it's not likely any of the social problems included in this deal's "community destabilization" theoretical underpinning will be addressed in any real way.

Anthony Pidgeon

Chris Daly.

AP Wide World Photos

Gavin Newsom.

More About

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Weekly Newsletter: Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.

But Daly will forge ahead in politics armed with an astounding financial arsenal.

"I think it has a corrosive effect in the long term. It's the perpetuation of machine politics that haven't delivered any solutions for San Francisco," Gordon says. "San Francisco is the bluest [i.e., most Democratic] spot in the country, and we don't have any solutions for housing, homelessness, preserving culture. We don't have a solution to the gang violence. If what people want is more of the same, then Chris is more than happy to serve it up."

And if the deal goes bad, Mayor Newsom can rightly claim that it all happened behind his back -- and go on striving for higher office.

So I suppose I misspoke earlier. In the sense that politicians will benefit and the general populace of San Francisco will suffer, no matter how things turn out, the grand Rincon Hill slush-fund deal isn't extraordinary after all.

Check out this week's featured ad for News