Migden to run for D10 Supe

Written by Luke Thomas. Posted in News, Politics

• Matt Stewart

  I’ll admit that I’m a hypocrite for my disdain of carpetbagging while at the same time would be happy to see her elected. Is she well-versed in the issues that District 10 faces? That said, I would still prefer that a progressive minority with deep roots in the district gets elected.

• jabber_jabber

  “Is she well-versed in the issues that District 10 faces?”

  Yes I’m sure she is against the war in Iraq and opposes prop 8.

  The of course letter writer would like a minority progressive be elected, a qualification for office is a persons skin color for SF “progressives”.

  I once was stupid enough to believe liberals when they said they wanted a society free of racism.

• Matt Stewart

  By the way, I’ll add that when I mention minority representation, I’m not just talking about blacks. I’m including the growing southeast Asian population.

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/patmonkrn/ Patrick Monk

  “Jabber-wocky” – a poem of nonsense verse.

• milkcluber

  Let’s see, Carole Migden and D10? Oh, right, she did include D10 as one site for a Board meeting outside City Hall when the Supes used to do that. And then she insisted that metal detectors be set at the doorways before D10 residents could enter the room — and only in D10. Wonder if she’ll insist on metal detectors at her campaign appearances now?

• marc

  Representatives in government should look like their constituents. When that doesn’t happen, something is wrong.

  How many D10 residents look like Carole Migden?

  Migden brings much baggage to the table. One key determinant in this race is whether Camp Migden makes peace with Team Leno.

  D10 is configured so that the white Potrerans determine the appropriate supervisor for Bayview and Hunters’ Point. The question is whether the white Potrerans will conjure up a candidate capable of countering Migden’s advantages?

  In world where everyone is blind, the one eyed woman is queen.

  -marc

• mwbsf

  Migden, the gift that just keeps on giving a/k/a zombie politico – but what do I know I’m just a one-eyed queen.

• Tehama Amahet

  marc highlights one of the many problems with district elections; that is, they often split and separate minority voters.

  For example, blacks in Bayview/Hunters Point and blacks in the Fillmore/Western Addition cannot join forces together and vote for the same black candidate. Likewise, district elections cut off Asian voters in Chinatown from those in the Richmond and Sunset districts. They could, however, all rally behind a black or an Asian candidate if he or she was running at-large.

  I realize district elections are here to stay, but we can’t lose sight of their short-comings. We do have one African-American and two Chinese-American supervisors, so there’s hope.

  Should we increase the amount of time a candidate has to live in a district before they can run for supervisor? What is it now?

  I think even supervisorial aides (not clerical, but those immediate assistants) that work for a given district supervisor should be from that district.

• marc

  If you want to get down to the problem of representation, San Francisco’s African American population was decimated during the era of at-large supervisor elections.

  Constitutional questions abound when it comes time to determine lengths of residency etc.

  Any time you have a representative democracy, the translation from constituent into representative is going to be a lossy one, that is, one person cannot possibly represent the diversity of a district, and district elected supervisors often leave communities unrepresented.

  We had a more ethnically “representative” Board back in the at large days, but their policies reduced diversity in San Francisco, especially amongst the African American communities.

  Representative democracy is not the only model of democracy. I’d prefer that we investigaste sub-government, district and neighborhood councils that can disintermediate politics and bring average folks together. Once we get face-to-face, and the moneyed interests are overwhelmed in numbers, it turns out that we all have much more in common than divides us.

  And that is most threatening to those who benefit from the imperfections in representative democracy.

  -marc

• Matt Stewart

  By far the best way to have an ethnic and gender diverse representative democracy is to use Choice Voting (a.k.a. single transferable voting) in elections. It recently was voted in for Minneapolis (along with IRV) and almost passed in Cincinnati.

  http://www.fairvote.org/?page=407

• jabber_jabber

  A rep should like the people they represent?

  Lets hope that Alan Keyes moves to dist 10 then.

• ricksf1

  Name the Mayor who stood by while the African American population in SF was reduced from 18.8% all the way down to 5.6% of the population …….