Gonzalez Endorses Tony Kelly for D10 Supervisor

Written by Luke Thomas. Posted in News, Politics

Published on July 23, 2010 with 18 Comments

Candidate for District 10 Supervisor Tony Kelly. Photo by Luke Thomas.

By Luke Thomas

July 23, 2010

Former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez today endorsed community activist Tony Kelly in the race for District 10 Supervisor.

In a statement released to Fog City Journal, Gonzalez said, “I am endorsing Tony Kelly because I believe he is an authentic neighborhood leader who has been working on substantive issues in District 10 for more than the last decade. Although his base is Potrero Hill where he’s led the Potrero Boosters, Kelly has worked on environmental justice issues in Bayview Hunters Point and open space and neighborhood-services concerns in Visitacion Valley, among other issues. District-wide, he’s worked on a wide range of complicated development and land-use matters (particularly through his work on the Eastern Neighborhoods Area Plan), so I’ve no doubt Kelly would join the Board of Supervisors informed and with the right priorities.

“Although we do not agree on all issues, I believe Tony Kelly is a progressive who would exercise his duties and powers with the utmost respect for critics and allies alike. His allegiances would always be to his district first, rather than to any of the lobbyists who routinely make the rounds at city hall for commercial interests.

“The other candidates in District 10 that I like are Nyese Joshua and DeWitt Lacy. Lacy is a progressive lawyer who has genuine compassion for the needs of District 10. Joshua has recently entered the race from the ranks of the Bayview activists who have been combating the Lennar development plan. All three would make fine supervisors.

“However, I give the edge to Tony Kelly who not only shares a focus on the issues the others are working on, but because I believe he has greater political maturity and a longer history of working on district-wide issues.”

Responding to Gonzalez’ endorsement, Kelly told FCJ: “I’m really honored to have Matt Gonzalez’s endorsement of my campaign for District 10 Supervisor. Matt knows as well as anyone what district elections are all about, and he knows as well as anyone what it takes to be an effective leader at City Hall. I’m proud of his endorsement, as a measure of what I’ve accomplished in the neighborhoods, and what I will do in the future.”

In addition to Gonzalez’ endorsement, Kelly has been endorsed by Planning Commission President Ron Miguel, Planning Commission Vice President Christina Olague, BART Board Director Tom Radulovich, Arts Commissioner Sherri Young, Library Commission President Jewelle Gomez, environment and community activists Marie Harrison and Espanola Jackson, Potrero Hill Neighborhood House Executive Director Edward Hatter, transgender activist Jazzie Collins, Karen Pierce of Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates, Potrero Hill Association of Merchants and Businesses President Keith Goldstein, and individual members of the Potrero Hill Parents Association and Dogpatch Neighborhood Association.

Luke Thomas

Luke Thomas

Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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  • http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/author/hbrown/ Harold Brown

    Yeah,

    Kelly is the best. Although a bit more explosive, he reminds me of Meko in 6. They’ve both done their time in the field and I certainly prefer them to the opportunistic carpetbaggers brought in by both Downtown and the Progressive machines in 6 and 10.

    h.

  • http://generic1.tumblr.com/ generic

    How to put this…

    Remember how everyone calls D8 “the gay seat”?
    Remember how everyone calls D10 “the black seat”?

    Those aren’t, like, electoral cliches. They exist for a reason. It would have killed Gonzo to endorse an African-American?

  • http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/author/luke/ Luke Thomas

    Until the colour of a man’s skin
    is of no more significance
    than the colour of his eyes…

    Everywhere there is war.

    (Bob Marley).

  • http://generic1.tumblr.com/ generic

    Identity politics isn’t just about race. Sometimes it’s class. Sometimes it’s gender. Sometimes it’s a weird confluence of several elements.

    I’d like to buy the world a Coke, but there are factions and they demand representation. I’m sure there’s a smart, straight black guy in D8 who would make a competent supervisor, but he’s never going to get elected in this universe.

    Matt should have put his weight behind a candidate who could plausibly win D10. Otherwise he’s reduced his endorsement to electoral fingerpainting.

    But this is the kind of thing he does.

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

    D10 and D8 are probably going to be the most interesting bellweather races. They could well demonstrate what faint hope remains for this city to survive as a sustainable, compassionate, human value oriented community. Matt’s endorsement should carry a lot of weight.
    James Keys in D6 could resolve the ‘colored question’ – straight or not, frankly m’dear I don’t give a damn. Mandelman in D8 seems significantly preferable to any of the other professional ‘wannabe’ political operatives.
    Just my 2c

  • http://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?trk=hb_tab_pro Ann Garrison

    What do the Potrero Boosters do?

  • Grimmey

    To: Ann Garrison — Potrero Boosters are San Francisco’s oldest neighborhood group and have been instrumental in planning issues throughout the Southeast portion of the City. Tony Kelly was President for quite a few years and was always on the side of the neighborhood and its citizens. Boosters now has its first woman President, as Kelly did not stand for re-election because of his campaign for supervisor Here’s the website; check it out. Kelly would be a good supervisor. http://www.potreroboosters.org/

  • http://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?trk=hb_tab_pro Ann Garrison

    Friends tell me that Tony Kelly’s a good progressive candidate, but note also that Nyese Joshua, 31-year resident of Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP), has entered the D10 race. Nyese’s picture has appeared in FCJ, protesting CA State Senate Bill 792, Mark Leno’s bill facilitating the surrender of 23 acres of Candlestick Point State Park to the Lennar Corporation, but I can’t readily find the FCJ archive. (Luke?)

    Nyese, Mesha Monge Irizarry, and I were on KPOO’s “Connect the Dots” a few months back about Lennar and BVHP, and I urged her, at the time, to enter the D10 race.

    Her rhetorical skills are enough to make me holler “Hallelujah!” as though I were in a Black Baptist Church. You can hear Nyese, and Mark Leno, in this KPFA Morning Show segment about S.B. 792: http://goo.gl/kOVT.

    (And I hope I’m not the only person who is exasperated to the max that KPFA cannot get it together to post public affairs archives to the Web with tags. I downloaded, edited, and posted this one to Current TV myself, to support my friends in BVHP, but as KPFA’s negligible Web presence becomes ever more so, I fear the station will soon be a quaint anachronism, as will any media now failing to understand the Web. KPOO, another invaluable community resource, unfortunately, has the same problem and I haven’t had time to do create a Web archive of the KPOO hour that Nyese, Mesha, and I got together for.)

  • http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/author/luke/ Luke Thomas

    @Ann, here’s the link to the story about the park giveaway:

    http://tinyurl.com/22o9fo6

  • http://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?trk=hb_tab_pro Ann Garrison

    Thanks, Luke. Here’s a link to Nyese on the Youtube re P.O.W.E.R. and the attempt to stop Lennar at Candlestick Point:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUSASaI6ak

    D6 and D10 are probably the most important districts to win re land use because that’s where development is proposed and other Supes are likely to support the vote of the Supe in that district. If Sophie Maxwell had not been one of the Supervisors most supportive of Lennar’s designs on BVHP, they probably wouldn’t have advanced to this stage.

    SF Bay View Editor Mary Ratcliff told me that Tony Kelly, like Nyese Joshua, spoke eloquently against the Lennar/BVHP/Candlestick EIR last week.

    I have been sympathetic to Kristine Ennea’s D10 candidacy as well, but haven’t yet heard what she said at last week’s Board showdown about the EIR. I believe she thinks Lennar is unstoppable and that there’s nothing to do but negotiate the details.

    There’s no American corporation more worthy of a divestment campaign than Lennar but San Francisco is investing instead.

  • brookse32

    Both Ennea and another lame District 10 candidate, Eric Smith, got in the pro-Lennar line and then spouted such equivocal gobbledy-gook nonsense when they spoke, that is was impossible to tell what position they were taking on the matter. Smith especially was new-speak personified. Pure cynical political sidestepping from both of them.

    But the line they stood in tells it all. They are ready to kiss the Labor Council’s ass; and if people get poisoned and die? Well.. That’s politics…

  • Javalos

    @Luke: Marley War song from album Rastaman Vibration quoted Haile Selassie’ 1963 speech to the UN.

  • Javalos

    Unfortunately, disparities that are based on skin color remain all too real. So race does matter. While I feel Tony would make a great Supervisor and I am considering him for an endorsement, having an African American representative of D10 weighs heavy in my decision.

  • http://www.sfbayview.com sfbayview

    Thanks, John. That’s how Willie Ratcliff feels, too, much as we appreciate Tony’s support on the shipyard. We’re working with Nyese Joshua, who just jumped into the D10 race but has been working in the trenches for years, is trusted, eloquent and very popular at the grassroots and better “qualified” than Sophie academically, having graduated from Lowell and SF State.
    Mary Ratcliff
    SF Bay View

  • Raven1

    Curious why no one has mentioned Diane Westly Smith. She is also a long-time BVHP resident and activist, seems very home-grown and credentialed in terms of grassroots experience. She was the first to declare her candidacy for D10. Is she a credible candidate?

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

    Raven1.
    I would suggest you check with any of the long time BVHP community activists for their opinions. I would just state that she is a Bayview Realtor who seems to look favorably on the LENNAR REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT in the SE Sector.
    The BOS recently sanctioned the ‘landbanking’ operation this company has been pursuing for years. According to many reports LENNAR is not a financially stable or reliable company, they have declared bankruptcy at a number of their ‘projects’, including the Mare Island Naval Shipyard redevelopment in Vallejo. Their is much speculation that this action may have played a significant role in forcing the city of Vallejo into bankruptcy.
    According to most recent reports LENNAR is totally incapable of proceeding with this ‘Redevelopment’. They now have to begin the process of trying to convince investors to sink billions of dollars into the project, a daunting task considering their track record. It could be years, if ever, before they can accomplish much more than continuing to move around piles of dirt and releasing more of the toxins buried there into the environment.
    If you have any interest in learning more about this situation, and those supporting it, a good place to start would be a series of articles by Sarah Phelan in the SF Bay Guardian.

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

    A big concern here is that if you check out his campaign site, all his support seems to come from Potrero Hill, no one from BVHP. Also he does not address the elephants in the room, Lennar’s Urban Renewal and Luxury condos in Candlestick Point Park.

  • brookse32

    Tony Kelly spoke out eloquently and forcefully against Lennar. He is on our side on that issue and this is one of the main reasons that the SF Green Party endorsed him as our top pick in District 10.