As Adachi Enters Race, Pension Reform Takes Center Stage
Just four days after Ed Lee announced his candidacy, another surprising twist
San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi declared himself a candidate for mayor on Friday, instantly redrawing the battle lines in the race around his controversial effort to overhaul the city’s pension system.
Adachi’s last-minute announcement, made less than an hour before the filing deadline for candidates, jolted San Francisco’s political circles just four days after interim Mayor Ed Lee’s decision to run for re-election upended what had been a low-wattage race.
If Lee’s candidacy injected polarizing personalities into the fray — he has been trailed incessantly by questions about his ties to former Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. and Rose Pak, the powerful Chinatown consultant — then Adachi’s candidacy swept onto center stage the hottest political issue in town: pension reform.
“We have a huge fiscal crisis on our hands. Unless we take action, it’s going to get worse,” Adachi told reporters at City Hall just before 5 p.m. Friday. “The reforms that I have championed are reforms that are absolutely needed — along with action.”
For two consecutive years, Adachi has pushed for ballot initiatives to pare back public employee pension benefits, a crusade that has made him a loathed figure among labor unions and an outcast among the overwhelming majority of political leaders in the city.
At a mayoral forum Thursday night, all eight candidates onstage voiced their support for Lee’s pension proposal over Adachi’s.
The public defender said Friday it was this week's debates that prompted him to make an 11th-hour entrance.
“It wasn’t until I really listened to what the candidates were saying that I realized that the candidates either don’t get it or they don’t want to get it,” Adachi said. “I want to make sure there’s a voice in there that’s talking about the fiscal reality of the city.”
When reporters reminded Adachi that he — like Lee earlier this week — entered the race after denying for months that he harbored any mayoral ambitions, Adachi shrugged.
"Maybe something's in the water," he said.
Even more so than Joanna Rees, the venture capitalist and political newcomer, and the relatively conservative Tony Hall, Adachi will represent the first truly viable outsider candidate.
In recent days candidates — most of whom are City Hall veterans — have questioned Lee's character to set themselves apart from the popular mayor, but, until Adachi, few contrasts in policy positions have emerged.
At the same time, Chris Lee, a San Francisco political consultant (no relation to the mayor), said Adachi could have furthered his pension reform campaign without inserting himself into the race.
“This is a bad way to get people talking about pensions,” he said. “It’s not about pensions and it’s all about Jeff. If he really cared about the issue, he’d be talking about the issue.”
When Lee unveiled his pension deal in May, he slammed Adachi for carrying forward with his solo effort and failing to compromise with labor.
“Our consensus approach here is the right thing to do,” Lee said, flanked by union leaders. “I leave Mr. Adachi to his viewpoint, but I’m sure that he has to recognize that this is the official city family and he doesn’t represent that.”
On Friday, Lee welcomed Adachi to the race.
“We look forward to hearing his ideas on creating jobs, keeping our streets safe and working together to get things done for San Francisco,” said Tony Winnicker, Lee’s campaign spokesman.
But labor leaders reacted with cynicism, accusing Adachi of using the pension reform issue over the past year as a “Trojan horse” for his mayoral ambitions.
Nathan Ballard, a Democratic strategist who is the spokesman for labor unions on pension reform issues, said Proposition B raised Adachi’s profile enough to make him a “viable candidate” for mayor, but also made him “a lightning rod for the animosity of labor unions.”
He painted Adachi as an extremist. “Many unions are feeling so betrayed that he is in the pocket of right-wing businessmen,” Ballard said.
Gary P. Delagnes, the head of the powerful police officers’ union, said he would refrain from attacking Adachi.
“I’m certainly not going to waste a dollar attacking the guy,” said Delagnes. “He’ll implode anyhow. He’s full of himself, an egomaniac.”
Adachi said he intended to abide by a $1.475 million spending cap that most other candidates have said they will honor voluntarily, but said he would not accept public financing. Lee is the only other major candidate who has declined public financing.
“How can we afford to spend millions of dollars at a time when our city faces hundreds of millions of dollars in deficits?” Adachi said.
When asked if he was prepared to tussle with labor — and other mayoral candidates — a year after the bruising battle over Prop. B, Adachi smiled, lifted both hands and gave the lapels on his pinstriped suit a nonchalant tug.
“If I was worried about being personally attacked,” he said, “I would stay at home.”
Related
Kim
Jeff Adachi is trying to save San Francisco from bankruptcy.
see: city family vallejo
The Commish
This is great news for those who value the fiscal health of our city. Pensions are sucking the general fund dry.
I wish the press would quit using Nathan Ballard for quotes. Every quote is some cynical, snarky, unpersuasive talking point.
RB Orbust
Finally- someone who will tell the truth about the fiscal state of the City- a City that can't even fix potholes.
What a great development.
Jim Corrigan
"Finally, I can vote for a candidate without holding my nose.
Adachi is the candidate for all those who have watched the machine deliver
outrageous salaries, benefits and exorbitant pensions to police and fire who are calling the shots at City Hall.
Eisenhower should have warned us of the politico/public safety union, complex in San Francisco instead of the military/industrial one nationwide.
Run Jeff Run!"
Jamie Whitaker
Always good to have some additional vote options with candidates who are not beholden to San Francisco's selfish-interests cabals.
h. brown
Gerry,
Adachi NEVER said he wouldn't run. What he said consistently was that he'd get his Pension Reform measure cleared for the ballot and then consider running. No reporter in the City has been closer to this story than myself and that's what he really said.
The guy can sure keep his cards close to his vest. I had coffee with he and Gonzalez at 9am and he didn't mention he was entering and I didn't think it made sense to ask - assuming that ship had sailed.
Other issues? How about Police Reform? Jeff's the only one holding their feet to the fire and they hate him for it. If he's able to get crooked cops off the street from his position as Public Defender imagine what he can do as Mayor.
Finally, a knight on a white stallion.
Go Giants!
h.
John Smith
"That's a highly Machiavellian view," Adachi replied. Asked if he was considering running for mayor, he simply said: "No."-SF Chronicle Feb 22, 2011
Not so Machiavellian now is it. Adachi's is a liar and his campaign was caught committing voter fraud. See it for yourself here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=93123
The Commish
You keep posting this over and over. Get over it. Thinking that there was some wide-ranging conspiracy based on the comments of a couple signature gatherers -- or that Adachi could police dozens of signature gatherers -- is paranoid to the extreme. The ballot language was included on the petition for anyone to read before signing.
Eric Brooks
Adachi Is The Scott Walker Of San Francisco
Every indication shows that Adachi has sold out to pursue high cynical power politics using the leverage of the global corporate assault on social spending, wages, health care, benefits, and education, to enrich the elite power structure.
There is an all out war of the rich against the rest of us, and Adachi has joined the dark side of that war gambling to become wealthy and protected himself.
Anyone who is uncertain of this, should get a copy of Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ and read it. Every word of it.
See: http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
Some Key Indications Of Adachi Corruption
That Adachi worked with the utterly corrupt Joe Nation to craft ‘pension reform’ shows clearly that Adachi is now an enemy of progressives.
Joe Nation is bought and paid for by PG&E and tried to falsely paint Mark Leno as sympathetic to child molesters in his attempt to win an election against Leno; essentially in a blatant bid to become PG&E’s proxie in the California legislature?
Supporting Adachi when he is keeping such company is absurd.
Adachi’s Purposeful Prop B Maneuver To Flip Control Of City Hall To Downtown
If progressives foolishly get behind Adachi, it will continue to deepen the terrible and growing divide between labor and progressives in this town when we should be working together to unite behind people like Avalos and Baum.
This is exactly what Adachi’s prop B accomplished last November. That ballot measure was a brilliant divide and conquer maneuver by our enemies. Prop B was thrown into the election -on purpose- to completely drain labor away from getting into the trenches and fighting to help win elections for allies like Mandelman, Kelly, and Walker.
Instead, all of labor’s precious foot soldiers were forced to fight prop B and the result was that we -lost- the progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors; and then in very well planned short order, we lost control of City Hall itself to the Downtown machine.
This is serious business, it was not by any stretch of the imagination an accident, and it means that Adachi is now our enemy.
Charles Jencks
Reading to much J. R. R. Tolkien?
h. brown
eric,
Some think Jeff was on the Grassy Knoll in '63 too.
Giants up 3-0 in 6th.
h.
The Commish
@Eric
No doubt you are passionate about your issues. But encouraging people to read a book you like doesn't seem like a winning campaign strategy.
Adachi for Mayor if you care about fiscal reform.
Baum and Avalos for Mayor if you are for a candidate who will be eliminated in round 1 or 2 of RCV.
Eric Brooks
Is that all you have to offer this discussion 'Commish'?
It isn't simply a book that I 'like', it is a book that is profoundly relevant to this discussion, and this mayoral race.
Books are a perfectly legitimate and powerful method of educating key voters.
I guess in this day and age many people have forgotten that.
The Commish
@Eric
It's not much of a discussion when you are just posting the same long message (with a link to that book) on this board, the Bay Guardian board, and the FCJ board.
I'm sure it's an interesting book. But it's not too realistic to encourage people to go read a book so they will come around to your views.
h. brown
Chron game plan becoming clear,
Rachel Gordon led the charge at Jeff's press conference when he filed his papers. The strategy is to try and distract from Ed Lee's biggest flaw (lying to the City) by insinuating that Jeff's no better. Hey, this old ghetto boy has a master's in special ed. and I recognize the move well. It's called, 'blame-shift'.
The Gordon question (patterned from: "Do you still beat your wife?"
"Jeff, you've also been saying like Mayor Lee has that you have no plans, no intention to run. Now you're saying because of the pension reform, but - that's two office holders in one week who've changed their minds. I mean, talk about integrity, is that an issue that people should be concerned about?"
Problem is, she's lying. Luke Thomas and I pushed Adachi and Gonzalez hard to run against Lee since Ed was appointed and all we ever got out of Jeff was: "I'm focusing on getting this Pension Reform effort on the ballot and I'll consider other things after that." That's a paraphrase but pretty dead-on.
When I pressed Rachel to show proof via an audio or video tape she could not produce either.
Hey, Lee's been saddled with so many bad deals that his handlers have decided to pretend that they are strong points.
So, he brags about the Twitter deal which gives yet another tax break to billionaires who'll leave the City for cheaper rent as soon as the opportunity presents itself. And, hey, let's completely remove the payroll tax from all businesses. That will only cost the General Fund 4 billion over the next decade.
The choice of Greg Suhr for Police Chief is something to be proud of?
C'mon, this guy has been in on every cover-up of cop corruption for the last couple of decades. He was part of the Alex Fagan Sr. command staff that was arrested for obstruction of justice for ... well, obstructing justice in the Alex Fagan Jr. case in which the Chief's homophobic son beat a gay waiter just getting off work and robbed him of his take-home dinner (recall, 'Fajitagate'?). Suhr and Greg Corrales and a host of crooked cops kept the two cop thugs for hours pumping them full of water to try and insure they'd pass a drunk test (they failed). They gave the punks fresh clothes and destroyed the clothes they were wearing which were evidence.
The America's Cup deal with Ellison is something to be proud of?
Hey, no other venue in the 150 year history of this rich man's event has ever given the sponsors part of their valuable shoreline just to hold the race there. But, SF is giving some 5 billion dollars in Bay front for 66 years. And, have you read the papers lately? It isn't enough for Ellison. He's already suing us for more. That's what he does.
You know what Ed Lee's biggest success is?
Getting Rachel Gordon to lie for him and smear Jeff Adachi. In the couple of decades I've been reading this fine reporter it's the first time I've seen her sink so low.
Anyway, Giants won.
h.
Kim
See Vallejo CA.
The voters with little money took on the unions to end binding arbitration which favors the union. The people of Vallejo finally had enough and ended that advantage. The newspaper pushed hard for the unions, the union thugs paint balled houses with signs on them to end arbitration. Expect the chronicle to do the same.
John Smith
If Ed Lee's biggest flaw is lying to the City, then what is Adachi's considering that Adachi also lied to the city about running for Mayor(repeatedly saying he was not going to) and his campaign lied to voters to get his measure qualified for the ballot?
H don't thrown stones when you live in a glass house . . .
h. brown
John,
The biggest liar is you. You don't even tell the truth about your name. So, how is Pocahontas today?
Giants won!
h.
Kim
Even FDR said the public service unions would be a disaster for America. He looked into the crystal ball and saw Vallejo CA.
the cheap seats
A few months ago, I commented that Adachi had something up his sleeve, otherwise he wouldn't have been doing what he'd been doing.
I told you so.