New SF mayor faces challenges
December 10, 2003God bless the Internet–I’m able to follow the mayoral run-off elections back in San Francisco. And Gavin Newsom won that runoff last night. But it wasn’t what I’d call an impressive win–he outspent his opponent about 10-to-1 and yet got a rather slim 52.6% victory.
He’s got a lot of tough challenges ahead. When I was working in SF, the thing that always got me was how such a beautiful city could have such ugly neighborhoods. Places like the Tenderloin, where drugs and prostitution are the order of the day on every street corner.
And of course there’s the twin problems of homelessness and panhandling that have been growing noticeably worse in recent years. From when I moved to SF in 1996 to when I left a couple months ago, there is definitely a lot more people you see begging everywhere. Not just in the tourist areas, which is bad enough because the tourists take that memory back with them and tell their friends about all the agressive panhandling.
Gotta wish Newsom good luck. He may have been churned out from the same political machinery that created the awful Willie Brown, but he’d better figure out a new path. Because Willie’s path caused these problems, it’s going to require new ideas and leadership to get SF out of these problems.
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