San Fransisco Socialists Contest Local Elections

By Fred Sanderson

This year's election  represented the first time in twenty years that members of the City's legislative chamber, the Board of Supervisors, were elected by district. Up for election also were four members each of the School Board and the Community College Board. Members of Socialist Alternative stood as candidates for all of these offices as part of the Progressive Left Slate. For the fourth year in a row, the Progressive Left showed a steady growth in the quantity and quality of their share of the San Francisco electorate. Some of our candidates achieved over 20% of the vote citywide.

Like everywhere else in the United States, San Francisco held elections for President on November 7, 2000. In February, Socialist Alternative recognized that Ralph Nader's independent campaign for President was the electoral expression of the new movement inaugurated in Seattle against the WTO, and represented the same thing on a national level that the Progressive Left was trying to achieve in San Francisco. The Progressive Left decided to make the campaign for Nader for President a key axis of their campaign to expose the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party to as many voters in as clear a manner as possible.

Working Class Program for District Supervisors
Lucrecia Bermúdez, a member of the Immigrants Rights Movement, and Carlos Petroni, editor of Justice were selected to represent the Progressive Left Slate as candidates for Supervisor. Lucrecia lives in District 9, a working class and Latino neighborhood hit hard by gentrification in recent years. Lucrecia's main opponent was Tom Ammiano, President of the Board of Supervisors and the left face of the local political machine. Carlos lives in District 11, a working class neighborhood where immigrants and their immediate descendants make up more than half of the population. Carlos faced Reverend Amos Brown, the most reactionary incumbent supervisor.

Carlos and Lucrecia stood on a platform calling for the creation of elected neighborhood councils in both districts with full power over zoning, budget and economic development policy. In District 9, this was promoted as a way to develop a real slow growth plan that answered the concerns of the majority of the people who were being displaced. In District 11, it was presented as a way to organize this diverse neighborhood which had been mostly ignored by City Hall in getting its fair share of City services.

Both candidates repeatedly raised the issue of taxing downtown businesses to pay for services in the working class sectors of San Francisco. They also called for tax devolution, as a way to guarantee that 80% of all taxes collected from working class neighborhoods would come back to those neighborhoods in the form of services. 20% of the taxes collected in more affluent neighborhoods would also go to the poorer parts of town. Oversight of these funds would be the province of the elected neighborhood councils.

The Progressive Left candidates also called for withdrawing all City funds from the Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank to create the Municipal Bank of San Francisco. Then, the $11 billion of the City's general fund and pension plans could be invested in a massive program of affordable and low income housing, healthcare, transportation, and education for all San Franciscans.

Police brutality is epidemic in San Francisco's working class neighborhoods, as it is in the rest of the US. The Progressive Left candidates proposed an elected civilian police review board with full power to hire, fire, investigate and prosecute corrupt and violent cops.

Since districts 9 and 11 are mostly immigrant neighborhoods, the right of non-citizen residents of San Francisco to vote and stand in local elections has been a key issue for the Progressive Left. These workers are a critical segment of the economy, and pay more taxes on balance than US citizens. The Progressive Left candidates also promoted the Papers for All campaign, calling for full amnesty for undocumented workers living in the US.

Working Class Program for Public Education
The Progressive Left ran four candidates for local education offices, the School Board and the Community College Board. They were Maria Dolores Rinaldi, a university professor, for School Board and Chris Finn, Erin Brown and Abel Mouton, members of Socialist Alternative, for Community College Board.

As did the candidates for district supervisor, these candidates also stressed the importance of empowering affected constituencies to make their own decisions. The election of representatives to these offices by citywide vote is the least democratic way they could possibly be chosen. Running a citywide campaign costs thousands of dollars.

Most working class parents and students have neither the time nor the money to run such a campaign. Therefore, they must rely on representatives close to higher-ups in the Democratic Party that can obtain the funding necessary to post signs and send mailers all over the city. This process effectively turns the administration of San Francisco's educational institutions into apprenticeships for functionaries of the Democratic Party.

The Progressive Left programs for School and College Board called for these boards to be replaced with boards elected by and from the students, faculty, staff, and (in the case of the School Board) parents being served by these institutions. The Progressive Left candidates also pointed out the necessity for teachers to receive a wage that guaranteed they could get housing in San Francisco's skyrocketing rental market. The Progressive Left candidates for College Board also called for student workers at the City College of San Francisco to make a living wage of $14.50 an hour plus benefits, and to be employed in the fields they are studying. The candidates also called for an aggressive community outreach program in San Francisco's working class neighborhoods to recruit students to a curriculum developed in collaboration with those communities.

On the Campaign Trail
The Progressive Left identified four neighborhoods and two campuses as their priorities. Answering Ammiano from the left and spoiling Amos Brown's re-election bid were tasks demanding the majority of their resources. In District 9, the Progressive Left's objective was to increase the vote that Lucrecia had received in her campaign for mayor in 1999. The District 11 campaign was aimed at building a presence for the future. It was decided that the campaign for Community College Board would focus its attention on creating a student organization to continue to fight for its program after the election.

Socialist Alternative posted more than two thousand signs for Lucrecia and Carlos which prominently displayed their support for Ralph Nader for President. The campaign organized three caravans, with a flatbed truck and a number of other cars and decorated with streamers, balloons, and signs promoting their candidates and Ralph Nader. They drove through Districts 9 and 11 blasting popular Latino dance music and broadcasting speeches wherever crowds would gather.

The newly formed City College Socialist Alternative Club organized a public meeting on the Nader campaign and invited the Progressive Left candidates to speak. Over 60 people came to hear Carlos Petroni, Lucrecia Bermúdez, Chris Finn and Erin Brown discuss the concrete necessity of breaking with the Democrats and the opportunities that the Progressive Left for Nader campaign represented.

Socialist Alternative also took responsibility for organizing extensive door-to-door work in Districts 9 and 11. Between September 1st and November 7th, they distributed more than 60,000 pieces of literature promoting the Progressive Left candidates and Ralph Nader for President, visiting nearly every house in Districts 9 and 11 in the process.

The League of Women Voters and a group of corporations including Wells Fargo and Pacific Gas and Electric organized community forums in every district for district supervisors. Other forums were organized by independent community organizations. The Progressive Left candidates participated in over forty forums and endorsement meetings of labor and community groups. It is estimated that they spoke to a total crowd of 2,500 people. At the larger gatherings, Socialist Alternative mobilized between 25-40 members and sympathizers to support their candidates.

The Results
Lucrecia Bermúdez received more votes (1,500) than she received for mayor in 1999. Tom Ammiano's votes decreased in the district indicating that his shift to the right has not gone unobserved. It is also clear from the votes received by Lucrecia and the two other Latina candidates in District 9 that Ammiano's mandate does not include the support of the Latino majority of the neighborhood. Viva Ammiano, Not! Carlos received 3% of the vote in District 11,  the same percentage he received in a previous citywide bid.

Rinaldi's campaign for School Board not only retained her 17,000 supporters from 1998, but went nearly 10,000 votes beyond that objective for 26,421 votes total.

Erin Brown, in her first campaign for public office, received over 29,000 votes, five thousand more than Nader. Abel Mouton and Chris Finn got 18,000 and 13,000 votes respectively. The City College Socialist Alternative Club now has regular meetings and a number of members and supporters. The hours spent distributing fliers and organizing nine public meetings, which more than 180 people attended, has created a visible profile for Socialist Alternative on CCSF's main campus.

Ten new members were recruited to the San Francisco Socialist Alternative Branch during the electoral campaign. With all of the forums, tabling, door-to-door work and Nader events, the branch sold 1,200 copies of the October/ November issue of Justice.

The Progressive Left's working class and socialist candidates, along with their platform were covered in 14 articles in mainstream newspapers. They also appeared on twelve television stories, including five on the Spanish stations and one on MTV.

These results show that the support for socialist candidates and their working class program is growing in San Francisco.

Local candidates in San Francisco; left to right: Chris Finn, Carlos Petroni, Lucrecia Bermúdez, Maria Rinaldi, Erin Brown, Abel Mouton