Elaine Santore
Photos by Luke Thomas
By Elaine Santore
June 2, 2008
Campaign Mailers Kill Trees and Your Spirit
Good news: tomorrow you can finally toss out all of those annoying, somewhat misleading and totally polluting campaign mailers. Everyone I know complains about being overwhelmed by mailers in the weeks leading up to the election. Why don’t these people just send emails?
Speaking of somewhat misleading campaign mailers, Supervisor Chris Daly got himself into an apparent pickle over a mailer for the Change Slate card that features the San Francisco Bay Guardian logo. State Senator Carole Migden’s name is also on the slate card, which is awkward because she wasn’t endorsed by the SFBG. Oops!
According to SFBG Executive Editor Tim Redmond:
“I’ve gotten calls all afternoon about it. Voters are confused; they have a mailer saying we’ve endorsed Leno, and one that appears to say we’ve endorsed Migden. The language on the Migden card is written carefully, and if you read all the fine print, you can figure out that it never actually says the Guardian is backing Migden. But very few people read or get the fine points; they see a slate card with a Guardian logo and a picture of Migden, and they think we endorsed her.”
Similar confusion occurred at FCJ HQ last week when a mailer arrived from the Affordable Housing Alliance PAC with a picture of Migden next to a logo for No on F/Yes on G. This suggests that Migden has endorsed Proposition G and is against Proposition F, which is not true.
Affordable Housing Alliance slate card mailer.
Redmond continues: “Whatever you think of our endorsements, this is misleading. It’s a trick on the voters, using our name, and I don’t appreciate it.”
Very true. Thankfully, nobody’s ever asked for the CrackBerry Chronicles’ endorsement because it’s completely useless. But CrackBerry’s endorsement is for sale if you’re, like, really desperate.
Redmond: “I called Sup. Chris Daly, who was behind the card, tonight and told him how unhappy I was, and he said he didn’t care. ‘I’m unhappy, too,’ he said. ‘You endorsed Mark Leno, who is not a progressive.'”
Of course Chris doesn’t care, Tim. LOL.
Non-Endorsement: The End of Leno vs. Migden 2008
Tomorrow will also mark the official end of the Mark Leno vs. Carole Migden Civil War of 2008. But, looking back, was all the fighting worth it? Everybody was so focused on Leno/Migden that Joe Nation was able to swoop into the race and steal everybody’s thunder.
State Senator Carole Migden, Joe Nation, and Assemblyman
Mark Leno at a Hastings School of Law candidates debate, March 18.
Nevermind Migden’s ethics violations or Leno’s alleged faux-progressivism, Nation could take the whole primary as a single-issue (climate change!) candidate. The humanity.
Joe Nation and State Senator Carole Migden.
Nation is running for D3 State Senate because…?
Non-Endorsement of Other People Running for Things: Gerardo Sandoval
Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval is running for Judge. He is not a Republican. Just saying.
Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval.
Actual Non-endorsements: No on Proposition 98
Board President Aaron Peskin on Proposition 98: “Proposition 98 is the most insidious thing that has probably been on the California ballot in my lifetime, because it basically gets rid of local government’s ability to do good and govern. And so and for SF its all the more important because of rent control, but it doesn’t even begin or end with that value we hold sacred in San Francisco and Berkeley and Santa Monica relative to rent control. It’s really about the future of the state of California. It’s about who gets to live in the state of California whether or not California becomes a state of only the very rich and the very poor.”
Board President Aaron Peskin (far left) and State Senator Carole Migden
at a Prop 99 fundraiser on April 16.
Assemblyman Mark Leno on Prop 98: “The Jarvis Intitative gathered the signatures [for Proposition 98]. But it’s funded by the same fellow [Sam Zell] who owns the Chicago Tribune, the LA times, dozens of mobile home parks which are impacted by rent control. He will personally benefit $15 million.”
Agar Jaicks and Assemblyman Mark Leno.
Equity International chairman Sam Zell.
Yes/No on F, Yes/No on G
A lot has been written on Propositions F and G on Fog City Journal, by Chris Daly, Tim Paulson, Patrick Monette-Shaw, and Luke Thomas.
Board of Education member Jane Kim, Supervisor Chris Daly,
POWER’s Alicia Schwartz, and Rafael Mandelman.
“Vote early and often.”
The Hunger Site
June 3, 2008 at 11:15 am
Shona, the problem with your logic is that many of the very Change Slate candidates you want to get elected were not told about the Daly deceit and have denounced his tactics.
When I received the mailer I first thought it was a Republican dirty trick (because Republicans have long used this kind of fraudulent slate mailer to promote bad propositions). My next step was to question why DCCC candidates whom I know and respect would be a party to such a blatant lie, but I was relieved to find out it was done without their knowledge. Thus Chris Daly has not only lied to the public, he has also lied to the very DCCC candidates he seeks to support.
At some point these tactics will back fire on Daly. One other point: the Daly mailer is a total lie because it pretends the slate card itself came from the Bay Guardian, rather than Chris Daly. On the other hand, the Affordable Housing Alliance people actually listed their name, and only their name, in the return address of their mailer.
June 3, 2008 at 7:13 am
Hey, Shona, you’re right! Putting SFBG’s name on your mailer (so most people think that’s who is sending it) is a great idea! I mean, so what, that it’s fraudulent, if the endorsements are the right ones, what’s a little lie? If Chris Daly says those are the folks to vote for, he should be able to do anything he wants to get them elected right? Who expects him to tell the truth anyway?
June 3, 2008 at 12:35 am
With all due respect, I believe California is already comprised of the very rich and the very poor!
At least from my vantage point – as a medical cannabis patient advocate – we keep the poor so poor in, perhaps, this country, not just this state so that disabled people are living from check to check, hungry most of the time.
Due to that I agree – I don’t care what some guy from the Guardian gripes about. I care that patients are inspired by the change slate from Supervisors Daly and Peskin.
June 2, 2008 at 8:47 pm
If you need to find your polling place go to the S.F. Elections Dept. polling place look-up at: http://gispubweb.sfgov.org/website/pollingplace/
June 2, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I must open me a print shop, and mass mailer company. I love getting election mailers, it’s th only mail I get that isn’t a bill, and I get to use my shredder.
June 2, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Not only is Gerardo Sandoval not a Republican, thank God, he’s unqualified to be a judge according to the State Bar Association.
June 2, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Last fall the Prop A Campaign hung a flyer on my door directing me to the wrong polling place, which meant I didn’t vote. Could have voted provisionally there, but I was so ticked off I tried to find my actual assigned polling place, which is up and down many steep hills from my home, in a dark, difficult place to find on 26th Street.
Hanging flyers on doors seems not only a great way to waste paper, but also a typical campaign diversion tactic—-by directing voters to the wrong polling places.
And, no disabled person could possibly make it from my home to my polling place—-or even the one the Prop A campaign directed me to—without a great deal of assistance.
This time I voted absentee, a long time ago, but I used to be able to vote within a block or two of my own home, amidst neighbors I recognized. What is this, Ohio?