Saturday Voting Initiative Dead? Herrera Downplays Connection to Consultant and Contributor

A voting initiative sponsored by GroundFloor Public Affairs founder Alex Tourk appears to have failed due to a lack of funding. Image courtesy WhyTuesdaySF.org.

By Chris Roberts and Luke Thomas

June 18, 2011, 1:19 pm

For a few months at least, Saturdays in San Francisco weren’t just for bike rides, Farmers Markets and sleeping off hangovers. Saturdays – or at least one Saturday – was supposed to be for voting, too.

It was the will of the electorate last fall that San Franciscans be permitted to cast their ballots on the Saturday before the traditional Election Day during the upcoming November 2011 election. But without the will of private donors – who must contribute $2.4 million before a July 7 deadline – the city’s experiment with multi-day voting will be over before it ever began.

The WhyTuesdaySF initiative was the brainchild of political consultant Alex Tourk, who successfully tapped private venture capital from Silicon Valley angel investor Ronald C. Conway, tech maven David Jeske, Morgan Stanley partner Robert Lesko and other wealthy interests (some of whom, like Lesko, were from out of state) to fund the campaign to place Proposition I on the November 2010 ballot.

Despite being drowned out by the hubbub of pension reform and hotly contested supervisorial races, voters overwhelmingly approved the WhyTuesdaySF initiative by almost 20 percentage points.

Consultant and WhyTuesdaySF campaign manager Alex Tourk. Photo by Luke Thomas

Angel investor Ron Conway. Photo courtesy WikiPedia.org.

The ballot measure created a one-year pilot program, in which private donors would be called upon to fund the cost of opening polls for a second day. Cash from these donors would go into a Saturday voting fund, which had a zero balance as of Friday, June 17, according to John Arntz, director of the Department of Elections.

If the full amount of $2.4 million is not received in full by July 7, “the ordinance expires,” Arntz said.

While local politicians veered clear of Proposition I – no San Francisco elected officials were sponsors, and only Doo Sup Park, the long shot Republican challenger to California Senator Leland Yee, signed his name to the opposition – the measure did have some blue-ribbon support from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, local pro-development think-tank SPUR, and Conway, the man behind many a successful dot-com enterprise.

Conway also financed another Tourk project: City Attorney Dennis Herrera, from whose campaign for San Francisco mayor Tourk resigned in May after it was alleged Tourk illegally lobbied Herrera while also serving as his campaign manager.

Conway donated $25,000 to the WhyTuesdaySF initiative in January 2010, records show. Conway’s family also donated $2,000 to Herrera’s mayoral campaign in the fall and will be allowed to donate as much or more in calendar year 2011.  Conway also contributed $20,000 to Californians for Progress in May 2010, a Herrera third-party independent expenditure campaign connected to a state ballot initiative.

Tourk did not respond to several emails and telephone messages seeking comment about the status of the Saturday election and its funding. The only public listing for Conway was a fax machine connected to his Pacific Heights home address. A fax sent Friday – seriously, we sent a fax – did not receive a reply.

Though no political watchers would go on record, the link between donor, candidate and consultant has led some to question whether Tourk’s Saturday voting initiative was created to help Herrera in his quest to become mayor, a notion flatly dismissed by the Herrera campaign.

“Is it easier to get people to the polls on a Saturday than a Tuesday? We don’t believe there’s a significant difference,” said Jill Nelson, a consultant with Whitehurst/Mosher campaigns and spokesperson for the Herrera campaign, stating there was “no connection” between Tourk’s WhyTuesdaySF imitative and the Herrera campaign for mayor.

San Franciscans already have the option to vote early. Polls are open at City Hall for weeks leading up to the Tuesday Election Day and, as Nelson noted, “a high number of San Francisco voters already vote absentee,” filling out their ballots at home.

Would Conway or other Herrera donors have supported Saturday voting had Tourk not resigned from Herrera’s campaign and lost some significant consulting contracts over an alleged ethics snafu?

That’s all speculation, for now. What is fact is that without a last-minute shower of cash — $2.4 million is a lot of money even for rich people, we hear – Tourk’s Saturday voting initiative is dead.

“Maybe they’ll have some nonprofit contribute [the whole $2.4 million] – I don’t know,” Arntz said. “It seems like it’d be a challenge to raise that much money that quickly… [Saturday voting] seems unlikely.”

Chris Roberts

Just trying to make a little trouble.

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