Dumping on Daly

Downtown's biggest effort to kill the progressive cause may not succeed

By Savannah Blackwell

November 6, 2006

It really hit me just how desperate the downtown forces are to knock Chris Daly off the Board of Supervisors when I dropped in on Daly's headquarters in the Mission last night and data wizard Marc Solomon handed me an anti-Daly door hanger featuring photos of a bottle of urine and what appears to be human feces: "The number 1 reason to dump Chris Daly…IS number one…(and number two…)."

Wow. How much lower can they go? Considering that the fat cats' most publicized gripe against Daly is his "lack of civility," isn't this door hanger just a little ironic?

The good news is that the Daly06 campaign has surged in energy since two weeks ago when Matier & Ross wrote up a Binder poll predicting a victory for downtown's candidate, Rob Black, by six to 10 percentage points. Bill Barnes, who helped Daly secure victory in 2002, arrived on the scene as well as Nicole Derse, who played a key role in sending Ross Mirkarimi to the District Five Board of Supervisors seat in 2004 as well as the Democratic County Central Committee's Laura Spanjian, Mirkarimi aide Boris Delepine and other highly capable activists. Board president Aaron Peskin came down to rally the troops and did what he could in other ways to help the cause. Even former Mayor Willie Brown's political advisor, Jack Davis, turned up to work the phones for Daly for a couple hours.

Here are some promising statistics: Daly's campaign has managed to get more than 1,000 D6 residents who otherwise probably would not have voted to cast ballots to keep their pro-tenant representative in office and prevent Mayor Gavin Newsom from securing enough allies on the board to sustain his vetoes of legislation no doubt critical to those of us who are not in the upper echelons of the middle class and are struggling to remain residents of the city. A conservative analysis of canvas data suggests a substantial turnout of Daly's identified supporters. If all the undecided absentee voters cast ballots for Black, and all the identified Black supporters vote for Black and all the identified Daly supporters vote for Daly, Daly will take a slim majority of the absentee ballots.

Given that Black has no real volunteer foot soldiers, it's likely Daly will command today's GOTV efforts and hang on to his seat. And whatever you think of Daly's political style, that is very, very good news for progressives.

If Daly succeeds, he will have fended off what is likely to go down as the most expensive supervisorial race in San Francisco history. Voters in D6 know what I'm talking about. Their mailboxes have been deluged with anti-Daly propaganda - sometimes as many as 3 pieces on one day. A conservative estimate puts the amount of soft money directed against Daly at roughly $250,000. That does not include whatever Black's main campaign committee ends up shelling out. Note that Black's backers have been forced to pay people $15 an hour to create the illusion that he has volunteer support. If you visit the mission and see people of color holding Black signs, know that they likely have been paid to do so. This link to a photo on Sfist.com drives home the point.

Let us hope that downtown's cynical effort fail. I am wearing my green "Go Daly" Mardi Gras beads and crossing my fingers. I hope you are, too. Better yet, go down to Daly's headquarters on 16th Street near the intersection with Mission and join the effort. See you there.

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