The fifteen-year Sheriff’s Department veteran, native San Franciscan and father of five (including triplets), was joined by his family and friends, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, former State Senator Quentin Kopp, former Supervisor Bevan Dufty, former Department of Emergency Management Director Vicki Hennessy, the White Crane Lion Dancers – and as many as 200 placard-wielding supporters under an unusually sodden June sky.
RP: “I think what is so bad, the left movement has been dominated by Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin and we’re all lefties but we’re not their kind of lefties. They are bent on destruction against everything. Their type of left progressiveness is over I think.”
My contract as director was not renewed when I refused to sign the sweetheart contracts for the development of Treasure Island that were being illegally pushed by Gavin Newsom to placate his political donors. It was a sad day for San Francisco because it thwarted the only realistic plan for the future of Treasure Island that I had been working on with the Navy. What they are doing there right now is a travesty. There are at least a billion dollars in pre-development costs that will never be financed in this environment by any bank. They want to build skyscrapers on landfills on a seismic fault. They want to plant organic gardens on toxic soil. To put people’s lives in such danger, and mislead the public is so wrong. But anyway, I have made my case over and over, and the decision-making process regarding Treasure Island appears to be closed as the current Board of Supervisors and the interim mayor are all for it.
Tourk needed to raise $2.4 million from private donors by July 7 to fund the cost of adding Saturday, November 5, 2011 as an alternate day for voters to cast their ballots. As of Friday, the Saturday voting fund had a zero balance.
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.
Tony Hall is the target of Melissa Griffin and Beth Spotswood’s latest episode of Necessary Conversation, poking a little fun at the former District 7 Supervisor and mayoral candidate, best known for his stand against corruption on Treasure Island, successfully defending himself against trumped-up allegations of money laundering, and for his silky-smooth, swooner voice.
But judging strictly by the applause-meter, the clear winner was David Onek, a criminal justice expert and former San Francisco Police Commissioner who is the founding executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice. Onek is running as a reformer and an “outsider,” yet he’s no stranger to the halls of power. His father was once senior counsel to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and his father-in-law is Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts and the 1988 Democratic nominee for president. He served in Mayor Newsom’s Office of Criminal Justice before being appointed by Newsom to the Police Commission. Still, his message that only an outsider can reform the criminal justice system, seemed to resonate with the audience.
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