Not quite sure who you're referring to as the "establishment," but in
SF I'd say it's still the Democratic Party mainstream -- Nancy Pelosi,
Diane Feinstein, John Burton, Willie Brown, Carole Migden, Mark Leno,
Kamala Harris if she gets in, etc. Between them, that bunch wields a
lot of clout even if the upstart left controls the Board of Supervisors.
This establishment *likes* city-wide elections precisely *because* it
takes more money to win those elections. With their wealthy donors,
business protection money, incumbent salaries and machine resources,
these moderate statists know they can outspend the leftist candidates
to win citywide races, whereas in smaller jurisdiction their money
advantage won't help them as much.
It seems to me that smaller districts are generally harder for
political machines or authoritarian institutions to control, because
mass manipulation will be harder to practice when politics is on a more
human scale and a larger percentage of people find out what's going on
directly rather than second-hand.
Yours in liberty,
<<< Starchild >>>
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Hash: SHA1I guess Charles's claim that Gavin does not support district elections
jumped out at me because I hadn't heard it before. (By the way, I
couldn't find anything about that at Gavin's website, and I wonder
whether the mayor has much influence over whether there will be
district
elections anyway.)I don't know whether Gavin has spoken out against district elections
himself. The Establishment, however, doesn't like them, because it
takes
more money to run a city-wide campaign. One "compromise" proposal
floated
by a few sources (can't remember who right now) would be to have five
at-large supervisors and six district supervisors, or some other
combination. I actually think that might not be a bad idea, combining
local representation with some city-wide tempering.~Chris
- --
"Hollywood's often tried to mix/Show business with politics/From Helen
Gahagan/To... Ronald Reagan?" - Tom Lehrer, "George Murphy", 1965
Freelance text nerd: <URL: http://crism.maden.org/ >
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