Mayor Gavin Newsom is encountering a lot of turbulence at the end of his first term as San Francisco’s 42nd mayor. Much of the criticism of the Mayor’s public and private life is coming from adversaries in an election year – there are 18 challengers who have filed papers with the Department of Elections. The most prominent is Tony Hall, the former supervisor and head of Treasure Island. Supervisor Chris Daly, the most vociferous of Newsom critics, is also reported to be prepared to run. Newsom, according to polls, remains popular with the overwhelming majority of the electorate.
    

 Northside San Francisco met the Mayor in his City Hall office for an informal conversation following a meeting with the San Francisco Neighborhood Newspaper Association. The topics discussed at that meeting ranged from the new city budget to whether alcohol should be permanently banned at outdoor events in North Beach.     

The Mayor has been described as a reluctant candidate, ambivalent in his aspirations. In this interview, there’s no evidence of that. On the contrary, Gavin Newsom is clearly running with fervor. He closed the interview with a spirited pitch to voters, explaining why he should keep his office at City Hall for another four years. He could also use a bookshelf for that office. The Mayor’s books are stacked everywhere.     

NORTHSIDE S.F.: We were just talking about the layoffs at The Chronicle (100 jobs are on the line, 80 of them from the newsroom.) What do you think about that? The paper’s hardly been a friend to you.
    

NEWSOM: It’s sad. Sad not only for the individuals there, but for The City’s culture. I mean, it’s The Chronicle. It’s an important newspaper. It’s important for the pride of our city that we have a successful newspaper that chronicles, literally and figuratively, what makes this a special place to live.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: How will your reelection differ from your first time out as a mayoral candidate?
    

NEWSOM: You’ve got to run on your record. You’ve got to make a case for what you’ve done. You can’t assert; you’ve got to prove. That’s a difficult thing for incumbents in San Francisco. There are high expectations; there were a lot of promises made in campaigns. It has not been a very favorable position to be in, incumbency, a first-term mayor offering himself up for a second term. It wasn’t for Art Agnos. It wasn’t for Frank Jordan, and it wasn’t for Willie Brown. He had a tough campaign, and a write-in candidate, there was a run-off, and his polls were down in the weeks before the election. I have no illusions that this is going to be an easy race. Those who think it hasn’t shaped up to be a race yet have to consider a couple of factors. One is we have public financing for this race. We haven’t had that in the past. Usually people jump in early not only to get their name out there, but to get their fundraising in order. Now it’s just free money. It’s waiting for a candidate to jump in, and they get a $450,000 check after raising $130,000 – on the spot. So you don’t need the time and energy to organize. Second, you have instant run-offs. It’s a very different campaign. It’s not west side versus the east side, get in the run-off, then run back to the center. It’s a different strategy, unique in this country, and frankly questionable because no one understands it necessarily. The proponents understand it intellectually. But the voters have to vote for the first, second, and third choice and no one knows what that means. All this is disconcerting from my perspective.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Do you have an idea how the race will shape up in terms of personalities?
    

NEWSOM: I think there will be someone to the extent that it will be based on ideology. There will be someone further to the right of me, and someone further to the left of me.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: And the board?
    

NEWSOM: There are probably six members of the board who think they should be mayor. Now, given the opportunity, they’d run – friends as well as foes. I’ve discovered in all that there are no friends in politics.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Was that a revelation to you?
    

NEWSOM: No.  It’s just reinforcing things … and that’s sad, but that’s the reality. Even the good ones, you know, they take advantage of that as well. That’s all right. There were some good ones, but there are degrees of friendship, but that’s the nature of politics. You don’t get into it understanding anything but that. That’s fundamental. Given the opportunity, even your friends will take advantage politically, and getting ahead. Don’t be upset by that. Just accept that.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Were you ambivalent at all about running again?
    

NEWSOM: There were moments when more attention was based on who I was dating, and whether or not I had hair gel, and not based on investments in anti-poverty programs or investments in housing. Then I started questioning what the purpose was, was that what people cared about, well then maybe it was not the profession I wanted to be in. Part of me is happy that was the case. If I am unbridled in my ambition then I’ve lost a little bit of my soul, a sense of who I am. So I am actually pleased with a little bit of ambivalence. It makes me more grounded. When everything culminated in a lot of public, in a public manner, when a lot of things were brought to light, it drew me back in a more focused way than I’ve ever been, and what’s at stake, and what a gift this is, and what a privilege it is, and to not take it for granted.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: What’s the best thing about being mayor?
    

NEWSOM: Oh, be able to wake up and be able to do something for someone, to return a call, and be able to help that person, to be able to pick up the paper, and to know you have the ability to influence. That’s fundamentally an incredible gift. To be able to represent a city that transcends, in terms of values, its borders, and to know that you’re part of shaping that, for better or worse. That’s an incredible honor.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: What’s the worst part?
    

NEWSOM: I think the most challenging part is the constancy, the inability to get off the treadmill that never stops, to pause, to reflect. I was with Supervisor Peskin today – I’m not talking out of school – he was in his shorts and his flip-flops. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘Well, I was thinking of driving up north. I may not do it today, maybe tomorrow’. It was such a subtle thing, but I sat there and said, ‘You mean you don’t have it on the schedule? You don’t have to be here or there at three o’clock, somewhere else at five?’ I said, ‘Are you going away for the weekend?’ He said, ‘Oh, no. I’ll be back June 30th.’ I thought, ‘Wow.’ But being a supervisor, as I was, is such a different job from being mayor.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Being a supervisor was supposed to be a part-time job.
    

NEWSOM: In many respects it is what you make it – a part-time job if you want it to be, a full-time job if you want it to be, a life-consuming job, if you want it to be. This job, you don’t get the choices – as it should be. But the most challenging part is when you want to take a deep breath, when you know that you need to in order to be effective, you can’t.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: You said you were chatting amiably with Aaron Peskin. He has said some pretty vitriolic things about you, hasn’t he?    

NEWSOM: Yeah, he does, publicly. I’ve never responded in kind. I never do that publicly. I don’t take politics personally. I deal with it. I have a much better working relationship with the board than people would believe. When you agree on so many things, the things you disagree on get magnified. The reality is that we agree on so much. We’ve been able to push 98 percent of the things I wanted. Those areas where we disagree, be it the Community Justice Court, and I disagree with just a few supervisors. And with wif-fi, maybe half the board. And those areas like Care Not Cash, sometimes we win and sometimes we lose, but I don’t give up.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Speaking of wi-fi, I hear from people all over town, “Where’s our wi-fi?” Where is our wi-fi?
    

NEWSOM: It’s sitting there at the board. It’s been delayed for months for no real reason. At the end of the day, they could have a special hearing for one hour, and it could be here today. Granted, it’s uncharted water, for sure. We put together a deal. It’s sound public policy. It’s hardly perfect. But the arguments against The City doing it as municipal wi-fi are growing. It’s a dangerous game. It costs a lot of money. We’d be competing with multinational companies. Doing it ourselves is simply wrong. If it gets kicked down the road long enough, then Google and Earthlink will eventually walk away. There are principal concerns – but there’s a lot of politics.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: The word “politics” seems to grate on you a bit.
    

NEWSOM: There’s some politics in a good sense that is expected, and there’s politics in the raw sense that is not in my DNA; it’s not my strength. Some people might say, “He’s too hands-off,” and that means I’m not directing the outcome on certain things. I chose not to do that. I decided I’m going to hire the professionals and let them make decisions. There are some exceptions.  The response to the issue of drinking [in North Beach at outdoor events] to my staff was overwhelming.  I felt compelled to respond to that in order to find some common ground. Particularly in the area of planning – people used to criticize Willie Brown for making deals here in this office. Now the deals are being done in many different offices down the hall – arguably it’s more acute …

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: You mean at the supervisors’ …
    

NEWSOM: A little bit of that. That’s the kind of politics that is too transactional. It’s the politics that people are accustomed to – and it’s the politics that people criticize. And it’s the politics that people accept, but I’m of the opinion we should demand more and expect more, and not accept it because that’s the way things have been. I try to remove a little bit of the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.”

  

NORTHSIDE S.F.: The new budget is out and you’ll have to make cuts that are not welcome.    

NEWSOM: Eighth year in a row we have a projected budget deficit. I’ll have to make some cuts where I don’t want to make cuts, and at the same time I’ll make an investment. For example, there’s a remarkable investment from money we brought down from the state in universal health care. … I’m really proud of a few things. We are keeping a scorecard. It’s very transparent. Successes and failures. We call it an Accountability Matrix, and I put it online. Everything I said I was going to do when I ran is online, and everything I said I’d do as mayor. This is a status report that grades us on our performance – available at sfgov.com. We analyze everything we ever said, including the bad ideas. We say, “Bad idea. What were we thinking?” Rather than playing “gotcha,” we hold ourselves to a higher level of accountability. Everything is open to scrutiny, but we try to do it in a way for people that’s easy to navigate. People can look for themselves and make their own judgment.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: What have you been gaining by traveling to other cities? Things like 311?
    

NEWSOM: Yes, and the Community Court is from Manhattan, the wi-fi system idea is from Philadelphia, and in the Clean Green strategies, it’s Chicago, and crime cameras, that’s Chicago, too. And the efforts to expand for homelessness and creating jobs and transitional opportunities through the Clean Cities Initiative, and in Harlem, Communities for Opportunity comes from the Children’s Zone. We want to make history, and at the same time, we don’t want to invent the wheel all the time. We can find out what other cities are doing not only across the country, but around the world, and adopt some of their strategies.

    

NORTHSIDE S.F.: What does Nancy Pelosi’s position (as Speaker of the House) mean for San Francisco?
    

NEWSOM:This is why I’m optimistic. The future is very bright if we can harness the opportunity to connect with Nancy as Speaker of the House, and all of our Congressional delegation all in leadership positions as well as our senior Senators now, and the partnerships we have in the state. Mark Leno is head of appropriations, Don Perata is the leader of the Senate, the governor has a chief-of-staff who’s from the San Francisco Bay Area. This is an incredible time. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take it to a whole new level with the next mayor who can build a foundation. We could squander this chance. We could miss this opportunity. The argument for continuity has never been stronger, and it just happens to be that I’m in the middle of it as mayor, but I can make a sound argument. All of these individuals I’ve mentioned are all strong supporters, are friends personally, and [are] professionally aligned. With motivation, with the experience of the last three years, the ability to acknowledge we have made mistakes. To improve on areas, to clean our streets – they’re not clean, to deal with repaving them – they’re not repaved. Focus on the panhandle issue and the poverty issue we have not solved, deal with public transportation in a much more comprehensive manner than we have, and address the issues of crime and violence – all areas where I’ve got to improve – I’ve got to be a better mayor in the second term. But I don’t need to learn on the job now; I’ve learned an enormous amount already. I’m going to continue to keep an open mind, I’ve always been a dutiful student of this, but at the same time, we can hit the ground running. We don’t need a year or two to gear up for the second term. On the day after, if we win, we can begin the second term with renewed vigor, and that’s my hope.

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PLEASE JOIN
Pamela S. Busch and Suzy Jones
CAV Wine Bar & Kitchen will host a private reception for Mayor Newsom on Monday, June 18, 5:30-7 p.m., 1666 Market St. (near Gough). For information, contact Suzy Jones at 415-922-3605 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it