Little Progress on Interim Mayor Question
Supervisors' discussions involve many calls for transparency, but little of it
Last week, a trio of progressive San Francisco supervisors submitted a motion to finally address, on Tuesday, the 800-pound gorilla that had loomed for months in the board chamber: the issue of nominating an interim mayor to replace Lieutenant Governor-elect Gavin Newsom in January.
The motion, put forward by Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos and Chris Daly, roiled City Hall for a week, sparking speculation that the board’s left wing might have the six votes needed to lock in Campos as Newsom’s successor as early as Tuesday.
It was, in the end, much ado about nothing.
On Tuesday, the progressives, who could not secure six votes, decided to put off the nominations, with Avalos declaring: ”I have a concern about avoiding a Shakespearean tragedy here at the board of supervisors. I don’t want to have a Julius Caesar, I don’t want to have a Macbeth, I don’t want to have a Hamlet.”
Avalos said that, to promote transparent government, he was instead submitting an amended motion that called for public comment on the process of selecting the interim mayor.
As if on cue, organized labor showed up in numbers, with SEIU stalwarts like Brenda Barros, Alysabeth Alexander and Gabriel Haaland lining up to call on their allies on the current board to take up the task rather than leaving it for the incoming, distinctly more conservative board to be seated in January.
“The new board won’t even have had office hours,” said Haaland, the influential SEIU political director, after a long line of union members spoke. “That the group of people who walks in and votes on the next mayor have not even had any contact from the public, to me that’s just stunning.”
Over the past week, the progressive bloc has been balancing two political acts: pressuring board President David Chiu — whom the progressives have threatened to ostracize but whose vote they need to install Campos — while decrying a lack of transparency.
Daly took the step of publishing a blog post on the website fogcityjournal.com last Friday to accuse Chiu of “delaying” the process of nominating an interim mayor so that he would automatically become acting mayor himself in January.
“In the progressive political camp we like folks that stick with the program,” Daly said by telephone after his post was published. “David Chiu, very quietly, is working on his own behalf, and ultimately there is going to be a collision.”
Daly added that he was concerned the whole process was being conducted “behind closed doors.”
Daly took up the issue again on Tuesday, as he stood behind his desk, wearing a pink lapel pin that said: “Let the Sun Shine In.” (Shortly after 7 p.m., one member of the public regaled the supervisors with his rendition of the Hair musical number of the same name.)
“I’m as guilty as anyone,” Daly said. “But conversations about the mayoral transition have been happening behind closed doors for the better part of this past year. In the last two weeks, these conversations have been heightened and reached a frenzy.”
In a long speech, Daly also called on history to argue that the mayor should not be viewed as a "caretaker." Several names, such as former Mayor Art Agnos or Public Utilities Commission General Manager Ed Harrington, have been suggested as contenders who would serve but agree to not run for election in 2011.
In the five times that an interim mayor has been appointed in city history, Daly said, "only one time did the board of supervisors appoint what some would call a 'caretaker mayor.'"
In the end, the board meeting continued well into the evening without any discernible progress, and the supervisors decided to resume discussion next week.
Before the meeting began, one progressive supervisor, who did not want to be named because of the ongoing discussions, predicted: “It’s going to just be a circus, pure theater.”
So it was.
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