It's hard to be nostalgic when you can't remember anything. And a handful of San Francisco's top political consultants are now pondering if it's possible for President Barack Obama to have delivered a "memorable" address when they had trouble recalling its specific lines even 15 minutes after he uttered it. Oh, they'll remember this day -- the unbridled joy of shedding George W. Bush once and for all, the hat Aretha Franklin borrowed from the Statue of Liberty, the perfection of a wheelchair-bou
A ballot measure that would create a Municipal Utility District has so many legal flaws, it's all but DOA. In fact, passing the measure might delay the advent of public power here for years.
San Francisco likely won't be outsourcing any jobs in the near futureThe issue of contracting out city services to private firms has long been the third-rail of San Francisco politics. Even though outsourcing would save taxpayers a lot of money, the city's supervisors almost never approve a department's request to outsource civil service jobs. Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, a rare fiscal conservative on the board, says he can remember his colleagues voting to privatize only one job since 2001 (a pos
Being emotionally charged up can certainly affect how demonstratively one waves his or her placard in a street protest, but it's of less use in the voting booth. No matter how emphatically you punch your ballot, it still only counts for one vote. This appears to be the crux of Equality California's decision not to push for same-sex marriage on the 2010 ballot -- activists didn't think they had as good a shot of winning now as in 2012, and they're astute enough to realize that moral victories are
The big political news of the day is that President Bill Clinton will officially endorse Mayor Gavin Newsom's campaign for governor of this state. You don't have to be a conspiracist to see the politics in these politics: Newsom was an unabashed Hillary Clinton loyalist and Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown didn't exactly tee it off during their 1992 competition in the Democratic Presidential Primary (see above -- and wince). But, still, this is President Clinton here -- it's a big deal. We called a
Can some manner of Miracle Max save the extended parking meter enforcement plan? In retrospect, the Municipal Transportation Agency's proposal to extend parking meter hours to 9 p.m. or midnight through swaths of the city and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays could have been more badly timed. This, however, would likely have required a Zodiac-type killer making threats regarding the extension of parking meter hours before the MTA blithely announced its plan. Here are the facts as they stand: Wha
It's unlikely anyone has ever publicly announced he's taking a job so he can spend less time with his family. But countless folks turning in their resignation letters have chalked up the decision to jump ship to a desire to spend more time with the fam. Gavin Newsom joined that lengthy list today. And with his dead gubernatorial dreams still warm, the politicos on SF Weekly's speed dial speculated about what comes next for Newsom, San Francisco, and the governor's race. One of the "wild
So long, Mr. Ryan...With today's announcement of the departure of Kevin Ryan, the head of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, Gavin Newsom passed an important pinnacle. His right-hand men and women have now quit more times than Brett Favre. It took a while, but Newsom caught up. On a serious note, Ryan's departure comes one day after that of spokesman Nathan Ballard, and on the heels of a number of key members of Team Newsom bidding adieu. Whether or not this is business as usual or the p
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