Watching City Hall #214 Solo bird, baby bird, a poisoned dog, ‘wag the dog’ & Melman By all rights, the baby pigeon should be dead by now. … It showed up out by the trash cans a week ago, fallen from some nest in a niche in one of the high apartment house walls that frame the gangway. A couple of weeks ago, ‘Buddy’, my big Tom cat would have had the little guy for breakfast but Buddy went to live with Boneyard over at Rick Hansen’s. Only little ‘Sister’ remains of the 3 dozen or so ‘Donner Pass’ cats we rescued last year from the old horse corral in back. She doesn’t go out much, preferring to luxuriate in her new ‘only’ cat status. … She did bring me a little mouse for breakfast yesterday (she’s grateful for the 20 lb. Bags of Purina chow) … brought me the mouse while momma pigeon stealthily snuck in to feed her grounded baby not 50 feet away. … I cross my fingers and hope the pigeons make it. … This morning when I hosed the area, there were two young male birds cuddled up against the little fella in a corner of a ground level window sill. They didn’t move when I worked just a couple of feet from them. I have a soft spot for pigeons. They live to be 45 and have extended families. They mate for life which is more than I was ever able to pull off. … And, of course, they are the very symbol of peace. Time grows short I don’t expect to miss this place. Ania’s building overlooking Leavenworth, that is. Two more weeks and I’m out of here. I have a series of couches lined up to get me through to election time. A couple of house sitting gigs. Daniel and Becky will store my things. I still need a place to set up my computer to do the columns. … Two weeks. … Two weeks. A tale of two campaign centers On Saturday I went jogging with my buddy, Adriel Hampton of the Examiner. He’s their Political Editor. … (That’s Frank Gallagher’s old job. When the Ex cut back, Frank went independent and rented an office in Florence Fang’s Warfield building a couple of floors below Warren Hinckle’s digs – more on Hinckle later.) … Aside from being the best writer covering the local political scene, Adriel is a ‘foodie’ too and he pumps iron and runs to keep from becoming an Abram’s tank. … Me? I run because a moving target is harder to hit. Adriel picked me up a bit before 10am and I loaded a really nice chair into the back of his Subaru station wagon. I scored the chair a year or so ago from the trash of a vacant apartment I was cleaning. A straight, high backed woven cane or bamboo or something. … Anyway, I was at Matt Gonzalez’s opening of his campaign office (635 Haight) a couple of weeks ago and noticed they were not only short on chairs, but had no chair that I thought fit Matt. … You know what I’m saying? The doesn’t really care much for creature comforts and he works so hard for the public that it makes you want to do something for him. … He won’t take things worth money, so we all exchange books and other used things. Agnos gives him suits. I give him old chairs. It’s an odd group. People you wouldn’t think would even be on speaking terms end up being friends. From Tony Hall and Joe O’Donoghue and Frank Gallagher and Adriel Hampton and Mike Farrah to Matt Gonzalez and Marc Solomon and Chris Daly. Trust me folks, lots of the people you see duking it out in the chambers of the Board of Supervisors really do have respect and affection for one another and have been known to tip a glass or two when da sun goes down. That’s a healthy thing and only those rigid in beliefs and between their ears refuse friendly relations after the battle. I recall writing a particularly foul and obscene column centered upon Frank Gallagher’s positions on an issue or two. His response was to invite me to take care of he and wife Noel Wilson’s lovely Berkeley bungalow and their two hounds for a couple of weeks while they visited back east. I called the man everything but dirt and he gives me the keys to his house. The keys to his car. The keys to his liquor cabinet (biggest leap of faith) and the password to his computer hook-up. Go figure. Gonzo’s headquarters Matt’s campaign headquarters looks like Matt. Handsome, but funky. All kinds of original art all over the walls. Creaky wooden floors and the heavy smell of the best coffees in the air (hell, it is a coffeehouse after all – The Horseshoe Café) … The Lower Haight location reinforces the candidate’s core identity. Matt’s not just a top notch defense attorney and legislator, he’s a musician and a passionate supporter of the arts. Adriel went to work covering the early Saturday training session and I took a tall black coffee outside and sneaked in a double shot of bourbon. I sat on one of the rustic wire chairs at a table in front of the café and watched the early Haight traffic while I eavesdropped on Richard Marquez and Randy Knox who were plotting a little stategy for Gonzalez. Someone tied a little dog (“I picked her up by the side of the road in Mexico – she was starving.”) … tied the little dog to the table and went inside to learn more about overthrowing the government from guest speaker, Chris Daly. I patted the dog on the head and she smelled my cats on my shoes. I walked halfway up the block and sat in front of a closed head shop to smoke a bowl of energetic Shiva Shanti weed. A Willie Brown for Mayor sign stared at me from a top floor window across the streeet. A world away Gavin Newsom’s office looked like Gavin Newsom. Well appointed and boring. … I edged over to McCoppin Square across the street to smoke some pot and question the gardener on duty about a dog who was poisoned here several weeks ago. … The gardener wouldn’t talk. A reader had written to say her dog had survived being poisoned and she thought it was Park & Rec people putting out the bait. I doubt that but one of Newsom’s field crew said later in the bar across the street (Dragon Lounge – 24th & Taraval – Used to be ‘Fahey’s’?) … guy said that when the leash people got pissed at the off-leash people in Portland, they started putting poison bait in the bushes off the paths where dogs weren’t supposed to go. … They killed 8 of them. … They killed 8 of them. … Warren Hinckle was sitting there listening when the kid told the story about the dog poisonings. His dog, ‘Melman’ sat transfixed also listening. Melman’s ‘mom’, Linda Caruso (Warren’s honey) was incredulous. The dog in McCoppin Square lived. But, is there an escalation out there? I recalled Jill Wynn’s friend, Margaret Brodkin of Coleman Advocates diplomatically describe her position on canines: “Fuck dogs!!” … Yeah, there are people out there like that. Barbarians in positions of power. Natural Areas Program people want to restrict movement of people & their dogs to 10% or so of the parks. The feral cats that live there are scheduled to be liquidated. … Did I mention Eileen showed up at the park? It was like some kind of weird spy thing. I told her where I was going and asked her to go in advance and check the cop station (Taraval Station is on 24th, a half block up from Gavin’s Sunset Headquarters) … I wanted to see if she could get a copy of the police report on the poisoning incident. … There was nothing there. Mutual recriminations. Staring daggers at one another in the neighborhood park like free range ranchers and dirt farmers. … Lordy, lordy, lordy … can’t we at least leave the animals out of it? … But, Eileen had plenty of other news. Eileen Left Eileen looked really great. I’m so used to seeing her bleary eyed and disheveled. Late night and early morning. (Isn’t that when your fantasies come out?) … It was foggy and her face had a healthy color from the strain of cornering her muscular Suzuki along Highway 1 all the way from Guerneville to the coast, then on down to Gavin Newsom’s new headquarters. … She was in all black leather and stretched her long legs as she did a few exercises on the top of the bench. She grabbed my weed and took a couple of long tokes. … Eileen: “You’re all fucked!” h.: (shrugging) “I knew that before you arrived.” Eileen: “No, honest. … In that bar across the street sit Warren Hinckle his very self, Samson Wong, John Shanley … and, you might notice Gavin Newsom sitting alone in the car outside.” h.: (I looked. It was true. … I’d been watching Gavin for a bit and wondered if he’d noticed Eileen.) … “And, they’re going to like … kick my ass?” Eileen: (looking coldly at me) … “Killings too good for your kind. “ … (lights a cigarette and unzips her jacket – she’s wearing a tanktop and for some reason your attention is drawn to her navel – it is 50 degrees and she is still sweating from the road – she digs out a folded piece of paper and opens it) … “Here’s reality: Newsom: 28% Ammiano: 17% Gonzalez: 16% Alioto: 13% Leal: 6% Misc: 8% Undecided: 12% …” (She takes out a marker and starts crossing off numbers) “Matt pulled 10 points off Newsom and most of the rest from Alioto. (she chews the end of the marker – don’t forget, she does have a Phd in Statistics from Stanford) … Funny, but Angela’s lost points, but she’s actually stronger. … All she’s gotta do is beat Matt and the Latinos and artsy-fartsy types Gonzo’s bringing in will put her over the top.” More Eileen: (I taped the conversation in case the Newsom people subpoena all my records) “I don’t think she can beat Matt. … His only weakness is poverty and, like you said, ‘St. Francis was a beggar on the streets’ … I’m a cynic, but this boy of yours seems like ‘destiny’s child’. I don’t think anyone can beat him now unless they cheat, but … that’s what they’re doing.” h.: “Tell me how they’re cheating.” Eileen: “This other is more interesting. … Guerneville is more in the know about this race than San Francisco. You won’t believe what they’re saying.” h.: “Yeah. (she’s sitting with her legs stretched, rotating her neck to work out the tension – I got up and went behind her to massage her neck and shoulders – the lesbian gardener shut off her weedwhacker and decided to have lunch on the bench behind us) … Amaze me.” Eileen: “Well, first thing is, Shanley is going to release the poll I just read you but with doctored results designed to keep Matt and Angela apart.” (John Shanley is Newsom’s spin doctor – I mean, press spokesman) … h.: “What if we challenge them?” Eileen: “Forget it. … Remember, the people backing Newsom are top Republicans who have fixed elections all over the world. … Elections involving millions and millions of votes. … A poll is, after all, only a mini election. … They were giving the results of Gavin’s poll in Guerneville a week before it was taken … and, they were dead-on.” h.: “So, they’ll show us documentation?” Eileen: “If you’re dumb enough to spend energy, they’ll do what Ed Harrington calls: ‘Show you numbers til the cows come home.’” h.: “What do we do?” Eileen: “That’s the interesting thing. … Some of the people in Guerneville claim they have access to ES&S software that can completely shut Newsom out of the runoff. … It can be Ammiano vs. Gonzalez or Ammiano vs Alioto.” h.: “You’re serious? … Why do we even have elections?” Eileen: (Pulls her coat back over her shoulders and zips up) … “Tell Warren I said ‘hi’. … We have elections, so that consultants can rip off oil barons. … Everyone knows that. … Thing is, you have to get Matt or Tom or Tony or Chris to call for a hearing to look at the ES&S software. They took a year and a half and over a million bucks and failed to come up with a program I could have done in 2 weeks for IRV.” h.: “Those guys don’t really listen to me. … I’m an amusement. … You think they’re going to listen to me, quoting you, when you don’t even exist?” Eileen: (smiles broadly and tweeks my cheek) … “We’ll see who’s right January 8th. … And, I want Kim Bassinger to play me in the movie. … Just tell them this: 1. The software is already cut that makes Newsom the winner. 2. He can’t win without cheating and he knows it. 3. It’s possible to vet the machines during the election. 4. You need a hearing to school all of the other candidates. 5. Let Charles Kalish run two teams – one, doing exit-polls … the other doing checks on the Eagle Machines and ballot distribution. … Simple … ‘make it so, number 1’” … (She sauntered down the hill to her bike in front of the cop house - in a few seconds she was roaring up 24th, toward the park.) I can’t do that – or, can I? I checked Eileen’s numbers against what Shanley gave us later in the bar. She was exactly right. Later, I confirmed the ruse through living and breathing sources, mostly in the media. Everyone said about the same thing. Expect nothing but ‘push’ polls from Newsom here on in and maybe not many of those. If you want a chance to win, ignore the polls and concentrate on the voting machines. That’s their ace in the hole. The machines can be rigged and they’ve done it before. Some top journalists are convinced the voting machine scandal is going to make Watergate look like a firecracker compared to a hydrogen bomb. … They are stealing democracy here. … They should hung for treason. … Times have changed. … Dick Nixon sent a few thugs in to steal a few records (the Alioto office break-in was equivalent – Newsom’s ‘dirty tricks’ operatives?) … Nixon stole a few files … to get an edge … to help him in a, more-or-less (if you leave out Chicago) … to help him in a more-or-less fair count. … Now, they simply rig the computer programs. … But, that can be stopped. … We do have enough computer wonks in the Left to catch them in the act. … If we present them at a Board hearing, it may scare the ‘fixers’ off. They have bigger fish to fry. … They’ve made congressmen, senators and a President just in the last 5 years. … You think they’ll risk exposure to make Gavin Newsom Mayor of San Francisco? … I doubt it. … And, that’s all Ammiano and Alioto and Gonzalez and the rest want … a fair fight. There are computer chips out there right now that can make a mockery of the millions who have died fighting for democracy. Democracy is our freedom to choose. … Steal my money. … Steal my car. … Steal my woman. … But … LEAVE MY VOTE ALONE!! Tomorrow: Angela’s house & Bob Pritikin’s party … Unreachable at: