EXCELLENT!!!! Matt is Running for Mayor!!

I voted for Matt Gonzalez when he ran for DA and I voted for him for Supervisor. And I regret it.

As a long time San Francisco resident (I have lived here a lot longer than Matt Gonzalez), I was appalled when Matt Gonzalez endorsed Dick Hongisto for Assessor last year. I remember when Dick Hongisto stood in a gas station with his cop buddies and laughed as the SFPD beat protesters during the Castro Sweep in October 1989. I remember when Hongisto was appointed police chief and took charge of the beating of peaceful demonstrators. How he conducted street sweeps arresting nearly 1,000 of my fellow citizens in May, 1992. I remember when Hongisto had the Bay Times seized from newspaper racks and was forced from office. Yeah, and this is one of Matt Gonzalez's political pals. It's typical behavior from straight liberal politicians who always make excuses for selling out queers when it's politically expedient.

The only reason Gonzelez is president of the board of supervisors is his best ally on the board is Tony Hall. The right-wing, transphobic, racist who orchestrated a political lynching of Sophie Maxwell.

When a so-called liberal is in bed with bigots, why bother voting at all?

I should have voted for Juanita Owens. This time around, this queer voter is ONLY voting queer.

By that logic, being Green, I'd vote for Matt regardless of his friendship or endorsement of Dick Hongisto, just because he's Green.

I often fing that queers vote for any asshole who supports gay rights. My lesbian roommate is glad to support Gray just because he's been 'strong' on gay rights. Sure, who gives a fuck about everyone rotting in jail, or teachers, or the budget, or anything but gay rights? Go ahead, vote queer. Keep the duopoly going. Matt may not be perfect, but he stands up to the corporations and he switched out of the party of tweedle dum, which took nerve and conviction. He supported public power. He supported IRV. And now he's going after the Hotel Council for their ads against the homeless.

And no doubt you're also a Dean supporter . . . .

When I saw the headline on the Examiner, Friday morning, 8/8/03 at the newstand that Gonzalez was running for mayor, I said that should certainly elect Gavin Newsom.

See: http://www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=080803n_gonzalez

The citywide mayor's race is not the same as the district supervisor's race.

In addition, Gonzalez is now competing against 2 major candidates who have tenant support: Tom Ammiano and Angela Alioto. For a pro-tenant candidate to win, which Gonzalez is, he must have ALL of the tenant vote plus 10% of the property owner vote. Just to get to the runoff, he will have to have at least all of Tom Ammiano's votes.

My reason for not voting for Gonzalez for mayor is his support of any Democrat, whether it be Hongisto or Kucinich, as they are all no good, and they all support capitalism. If Bermudez is not running, then I will simply skip the people as I usually do and vote on the propositions. There are 14 propositions. See:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/election_index.asp?id=7029

I luvvvvvv Matt, but he needs to do something about that hair.

"My reason for not voting for Gonzalez for mayor is his support of any Democrat, whether it be Hongisto or Kucinich, as they are all no good, and they all support capitalism."

So then you're voting for no one? If you're excluding people who endorse capitalists then you can forget about voting in the US anymore.

I want a socialist too, but there isn't one on the ballot.

This doesn't split the left, and labor isn't the whole vote. THis unites the left.

There are lots of socialists who run for office in the US. I vote in every election on the propositions because those are always worth voting on. If I find a socialist candidate on the ballot I like, I vote for her or him.

The Green Party is a small business pro-capitalist party and thus by definition not the Left. The Left by definition is socialist.

Matt Gonzalez' whole show has been seen by many of us before. The Democractic Party played this game when capitalism could still deliver a few more crumbs to the workingclass and the capitalist class was willing to toss those crumbs. I had a better opinion of Gonzalez before his endorsement of Democrat Kucinich who is anti-abortion accoridng to his voting record, which is what counts, has come out for a strong military, and like the rest of the worthless US Congress, always votes for money for Israel. Since the Greens and Gonzalez insist on endorsing Democrats, I will not support Gonzalez or the rest of the Green Party.

Voting is not everything, or even a major thing. Elections only confirm the class struggle that has preceded them, if any. There has not been much class struggle in decades; there will not be much change with this mayor's race.

Not voting, and if, at 1:45 you're posting online, I'm assuming you aren't marching to end occupation, either, since the march started at noon.

Are you doing anything? How about selling socialist newspapers. Lots were out and doing that at the rally at 24th this morning.

Yes the Greens are capitalist, they're watered-down Democrats with no coporate donations. But the revolution is not here today, and pretty soon someone will be in the office of mayor. I'm not voting for Matt just to keep Newsom out. I'm voting for Matt because he showed the courage to leave the Democrats and to take on the corporate power in SF.

Right now the system uses voting to put people in office. I support Revolution. I support soldiers shooting their officers. I support the FMLN. I support the Greens. I support Socialists and Communists and all workers parties. I support voting until the system collapses, which it soon will. The recall is an indication that things are headed towards chaos in general. And it's only the begining.

But for now, there is Matt.

Even Chris Daly is glad to see Matt in the race.

More on Matt:

Since being elected, Gonzalez has been a solid progressive vote. He has supported transgender health benefits for city employees, the acceptance of matricula consular ID cards for immigrant workers, expanded whistleblower protections for city employees, and he was a cosponsor of the successful municipal solar bond. He is working on the creation of a local Community Land Trust, establishing a local minimum wage, creating early voting in each of the supervisorial districts, and on strengthening the Office of Citizen's Complaints which investigates complaints against Police Officers. He is also working on Saturday closure of JFK Dr. in Golden Gate Park.

He has been involved in successful ballot measures changing how Planning Commissions are appointed, creating an Elections Commission, reforming the Ethics Commission, and adopting Instant Run-off Voting for all municipal elections.

On January 8, 2003, after seven rounds of voting, Gonzalez was elected President of the Board of Supervisors by his colleagues.

http://www.mattgonzalez.com/

Chris Daly promotes the South Vietnamese fascist flag and refused to apologize or retract his vote for this resolution passed by unanimously by the Board of Supervisors, including Matt Gonzalez. It is well-known that most of the Vietnamese community here are the murderous anti-communist CIA puppets and their descendants and thus there was no excuse for any member of the Board who claims to be for peace to vote for this flag. Gonzalez at least voted against overriding the veto of this fascist resolution.

I have been marching for peace, labor, civil rights and many other causes right here in my hometown for over 50 years since the day I was born, when it was very unpopular to do so in the fascist Fifties and since then. I do not have the energy to attend every march, and it is time the young people take over. There are thousands of things one can do for political change and you can be sure I do many of them. I do vote in every single election on every single proposition.

I am extremely familiar with San Francisco politics and thus I know for sure this little drama with Gonzalez running for mayor is going to be a reality adjustment for Gonzalez and friends . Gonzalez will need every single tenant vote to enter the runoff.

Gonzalez must take the votes of Tom Ammiano and Angela Alioto, both of whom have deep and wide roots in San Francisco.

Tom Ammiano would be the first openly gay mayor of San Francisco. That is a very big issue in gay mecca which San Francisco is and the gay community is a large, poweful voting constituency. Ammiano won the mayor’s race of December 1999 with 60% of the vote, but Willie Brown committed election fraud, sitting in office with 40% of the vote plus election fraud and now only 20% support. Ammiano had all of the tenant vote, which is 50% of the vote in a high voter turnout election, which the San Francisco mayor’s race is, plus 10% of the property owner vote with excellent property owner endorsements. Ammiano is 60 years old with deep and wide roots in San Francisco politics and it is his generation, the generation over 40, that constitute the overwhelming majority of voters in San Francisco, as well as most other places in the US. The politics of gay liberation are extremely important to those who can easily remember the era before the legalization of homosexuality, which in California was in 1975. That era is easily remembered by all of the voters over age 40.

For more on Willie Brown's election fraud, read all 150 pages of the website http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium

Angela Alioto would easily have won the mayor’s race of 1995 if Willie Brown had not stepped into that race instead of simply retiring from politics after being termed-out of the Assembly, where he became rich promoting landlords. Since 1995, she has been busy as a plaintiff’s attorney winning discrimination cases on behalf of African-Americans of San Francisco and that will certainly guarantee her strong, unshakable support in the black community, a community that is staunchly Democrat. The black vote in San Francisco is not large but if they vote as a bloc or if most vote in one bloc, it is a decisive vote. Alioto also has a firm base among the labor unions and among the property owners. She has also supported the tenants on all issues, including opposing Props N and R in the last election, which is to say, she knows how to campaign. Angela Alioto’s roots in San Francisco are deep and wide as she comes from an Italian-American political family. As most people know, her father was mayor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when San Francisco was still thought of as an Italian-American city, and as far as the Class A European restaurants in San Francisco, it is still an Italian-American city. Some of us would also add our fabulous world class San Francisco Opera to the description of San Francisco being an Italian-American city.

San Francisco has 225,000 to 300,000 voters out of an adult population of 600,000. Most of those voters are white non-Hispanic Democrats over age 40. This City votes 70-80% Democrat for President, Governor and US Senator. To win the mayor’s race of San Francisco, one must have deep and wide roots in San Francisco. The reason Gavin Newsom is a serious candidate, in spite of his young age, is because he too has deep and wide roots in San Francisco.

When the Gonzalez campaign gets done walking and phoning all 600 plus precincts of San Francisco, as it must if it is to have a chance of winning, it will learn all of the above and come to the realization that this is just a trial run. Be sure to keep your list of supporters for the 2007 mayor’s race when you might have a chance.

how can you not like Willie Brown? he gave the giants a new baseball stadium! he brought Bart to the airport!
he built a new plaza! what's not to like about Willie?

How can you say that the mayor must have deep wide roots in the city, then turn around and say Tom woud have won? I agree that he would have and should have won, that there was fraud, but I wouldn't agree that Tom had deep wide roots in the city. He had a hugely excited left and gay communty willing to work their asses off.

I appreciate that you have experience in the city and have marched, but you speak as though your voice is the only one and you know all. Yes, brass check is great and it's vitally important to have that info. Yes you have a lot of experience and knowledge to convey. But I always feel like you're talking down to people on here. Everyone has opinions and none of us really knows exactly what will happen.

Matt could divide but he could also pull a LOT of people out who get excited about a more left candidate entering the race, in the same way that many of us were originally excited about Tom, but are now disillusioned with his move to the center.

All elections should shift reality for people running in them. And if this is a trial run, so be it. If Matt can pull people out to vote, he helps everyone. If people who were going to vote for Tom or Angela vote for Matt, they'll make their decision in the runoff.

To me, as it is, without Matt, Newsom is the mayor, and that's it. I don't see a huge and energized mobilization for Tom, or anything near what it will take to defeat Newsom. And having both Angela and Tom does the same thing that you're saying Matt will do - take votes from the other. So it was a defeat going in. The powers that be have crushed IRV and have essentially already 'installed' Newsom. Matt is a wildcard at this point.

Although i won't be participating in this election (haven't thought about voting since the ballots were found floating in the bay), as a native I keep tabs on what's up in the hometown. Matt Gonzalez is a person I would definitely consider, but has something gone out of Tom Ammiano? After all, he placed second as a write in, and IMHO, if not for those "mysterious floating ballots", I feel he would have given Willie the boot. If I was in San Francisco today (I moved to Philadelphia last year), my support would probably go to Tom. Has Tom changed any of his stances on issues in the past year or so?

Tom Ammiano has shown, through his terms on the Board of Education and as a Supervisor (including Board president) that he is a rock-solid progressive who can bring ALL kinds of people together, which is what the mayor needs to do. Matt is great, but he's young and inexperienced -- the only election he won is supervisor in District 5, which is a pretty liberal district. He lost his only citywide race (for DA), whereas Tom won the entire city when he became a supervisor (this was before we had district elections).

An example of Tom's skills and his ability to reach to progressives and beyond (which Matt has not shown himself able to do yet): Tom has always been incredibly pro-tenant. Through his amazing mediator skills, he managed to get tenant and landlord reps to sit down and negotiate a compromise on "pass-throughs" -- if this compromise hadn't been worked out, the issue would have gone to the courts and the courts have been ruling grossly in landlords' favor for 10 years now. The mayor has to be able to bring people together like this.

Tom is a passionate progressive who has been the voice of the little guy for years now. Has he lost his oomph? Hell no. It's just that he paved the way for other Lefties, like Matt Gonzalez and Chris Daly, to get on the Board, so he no longer has to be the lone, loud voice of the Left.

I worry that Matt entering the race is destructive. Tom's campaign has been strong and growing for months. For example, to get Tom's name on the ballot, volunteers collected more signatures than any other volunteer campaign in SF history (more than 10,000 names)! It's really not clear what Matt referred to when he said that the other progressive candididates don't have much of a campaign. In fact, Tom's people have been out on the streets for several months gathering signatures, contributions, and educating voters about the issues.

And it's true, Matt entering the race is scary because he and Tom have practically the same voter base -- progressives -- but now half of us will vote for each of them. When that happens, Angela or Susan Leal could make it into the runoff against Newsom, and I don't think either of them can beat Newsom. Thus, fuck, we're screwed, because Newsom has a way better chance of winning now that Matt is running. Even Mayor Willie Brown, a pal of Newsom's, was quoted on SF Gate saying, "You have to wonder if Newsom paid Matt's filing fee" when he entered the race.

Angela, Susan, and Gavin have expressed joy that Matt entered the race. This is because they know that Tom has been the strongest opponent to Newsom, and now Tom's campaign could be weakened as some people switch their support to Matt.

I have to wonder why Matt didn't just throw his valuable support and resources into making Tom's campaign even stronger, if his concern is just that no other progressive campaign was issuing enough of a threat to Newsom. What's his agenda? In other circumstances I'd support Matt, but his last-minute entrance and the great risk of splitting us Lefties makes me think he's prioritizing some personal agenda rather than the good of San Francisco.

Matt's a good activist and I've supported him, but he should wait until he actually has some experience (he's serving his first term!). Also, I'd rather have a mayor who actually wants to be mayor (like Tom) than somebody who enters at the last minute with the only reason given being he doesn't think other people are doing well enough.

Newsom's been losing support, Tom's been gaining. Tom can win this thing, but maybe not with his support base split between him and Matt. Matt should withdraw, support Tom, and run next time.

after Toms ordering of the arrest of gay shame we cannot tell how much support he really has in the gay community. that situation up set some of his supporters. how many who knows, will they remember on voting day? who knows? we shall see....

http://www.sfbg.com/36/32/news_clearchannelracks.html

Good-bye, news racks
Despite concerns, supervisors approve Clear Channel deal
by Tali Woodward
San Francisco Bay Guardian
May 08, 2002

Over the objections of protesters, the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors voted May 6 to approve a deal that will give one of the
nation's largest and most criticized media conglomerates control over
the distribution of newspapers in the city for the next 20 years. Even
some of the supervisors who voted for the deal expressed reservations
and said they were acting under legal pressure.

The legislative package will ban freestanding news racks in parts of the
city, allowing Clear Channel Communications to replace them with
larger, centralized racks called pedmounts.

Critics of the deal fear the new distribution system will constrict the
free flow of information and hasten media consolidation. They also worry
about the implications of working with Clear Channel, a massive media
company and the country's largest owner of radio stations. Clear
Channel, which already controls roughly half of San Francisco's
billboards, will be allowed to mount 18-by-18-foot advertisements on the
downtown pedmounts.

The supervisors approved the original ordinance restricting news racks
in 1998 and the Clear Channel contract in 1999. But the entire deal was
stalled by a lawsuit filed by nine newspaper companies (including the
Bay Guardian). The newspaper publishers recently agreed to settle that
lawsuit if some changes were made to the ordinance and related
guidelines – prompting the judge to ask for city approval by May 30.

The city also made significant changes to the contract with Clear
Channel – a contract the publishers were not party to.

The supervisors have twice delayed a vote on the matter in order to
explore legal options. And after the board met in a closed-door
conference with city lawyers May 6, Sup. Chris Daly asked his
colleagues to delay voting another two weeks.

Sup. Matt Gonzalez agreed with Daly, reiterating his suggestion that the
board let the matter go to trial. If the ordinance was found
unconstitutional, the city would no longer have to honor the contract,
he said – and if the law was upheld, it would be "in a stronger position
if there [were] future lawsuits."

But deputy city attorney Wayne Snodgrass insisted that a delay wouldn't
do any good. "Neither one week nor two weeks would be enough for the
fundamental issues to be discussed and settled," he said.

Sup. Tom Ammiano, who had opposed the initial ordinance, agreed with
the assertion of the City Attorney's Office that the board should go
along with the deal. "If it was about my personal feeling about
pedmounts, it would be a lot easier," Ammiano said. "But I really don't
feel we have a way out."

In the end, only Sups. Gonzalez and Gerardo Sandoval joined Daly in
voting against the deal.

Matt Gonzalez is a person I would definitely NOT going to vote for . He doesn't have the courage to admits that he's chicken sh*t . Going for the Resolution as a Chair of the Board and then turn his own vote again his own people who voted for him to represented them the next day because of those viet's Communist bastards . Matt should be ashame of himself and shouldn't be consider this Mayor in SF .

If you really loved Matt then you would most definitely love that head of hair.