Watching City Hall #235, NOVEMBER 16, 2003“Go ahead and call the cops, they won’t help.”
(Agent provocateur at Gonzalez Mission Headquarters)
Then, the little pricks ran right head-on into Len Pettigrew and their tones changed instantly. … Damn, this campaign has everything! … Let me run down all the things that have happened her within the past 24 hours (Matt Central) & then I’ll tell you how Pettigrew (he ran against Newsom in District #2 last year) … tell you how Len faced down the punks.
“I’m a Democrat who is comfortable wearing green”
Former Mayor Art Agnos likes Gonzalez. … … Ya know, I want to say something here and I don’t know quite how. … … Art liked Matt’s politics and got to know him. … Now, you have to remember that Matt is a guy who helps other people. … I mean, really helps them. … And Art? … He’s the same.
So, they got to be friends and Art’s been a mentor to the young Board President since. And, … by happenstance, Matt’s been mentoring Art. … It’s kind of neat really. … I mean, Art gives Matt a couple of quality suits to wear when Matt is making $38,500 a year and running against Newsom who spends more than that a year on his wardrobe. … Matt looks better (won’t it be nice to have a mayor who doesn’t preen and strut?) … Matt looks better and suddenly, here’s Art with an audience again & he’s looking good! He’s young and strong and articulate. … There is life after HUD.
Joe O’Donoghue & Calvin Welch
This was yesterday, Saturday the 15th (25 days til 0) … yesterday and I got up from my futon behind my desk at the Propoganda (I prefer that spelling) … at the Propoganda Ministry & began the day, the most interesting people began to filter in. … … Let me backtrack here and tell you my connection to this Gonzalez campaign. …
I am the campaign historian. … This is not unusual. … Kennedy had Teddy White. Johnson had Tom Johnson. … Now, while I couldn’t carry those boys’ jocks, I’m the best around these parts when it comes to knowing Matt’s world. Matt’s my friend & I want to write a novel about the 4 years I’ve been covering the Board of Supervisors and Matt in particular. I want to close it down with the race for mayor in 2003. … It works. … The British used to put a historian on every ship that was going to be out more than a month or so. The people sponsoring the voyages wanted them recorded so’s they’d become part of history. Yep, they’d put on a trip writer before a doctor. … So, I told Matt I wanted to have the best vantage point for finishing my work. I told him I wanted to live in the middle of the campaign headquarters for the last month of the campaign. Here I sit. Thanks Matt.
Bulletin!
“If anyone is confused!” Spake Chance Martin, “I’ve had two cab drivers (both APA’s) who were from two different cab companies, who told me that they had been told that if they didn’t vote in the general election, they couldn’t vote in the runoff.” … Chance said the drivers seemed surprised when informed that they, indeed, could vote on December 9th! … (For Gonzalez, if you please.)
Where the hell was I? … Yeah, (people coming in left and right – no pun) to offer support for the campaign. … Let’s go through the stack of papers I have on my desk here and see what jumps out. … Ahhh, there’s this one.
Helena Handbasket eavesdrops on Willie
Now, not everyone who contributes to this column wants their name used. Hell, some of them work for Willie Brown every day. … Some (more than ‘some’ really) … some, work for Newsom for green money. … But, anyway … one of them (Helena) was having breakfast at Dotties’ Diner on Jones between Geary & O’Farrell the other morning (day after Gonzo finished second in the race) … having breakfast & in troops Willie Brown, two bodyguards (dump em Willie, no one cares about you anymore) … here’s Willie with a couple of bodyguards and a middle aged blonde with big boobs. … Sorry about the ‘boobs’ part all you feminists but that’s the way the info came through. … Overheard conversation concerning the Gonzalez second place finish in the mayor’s race:
Willie: (Settling in with blonde) “Imagine the ego of this guy!” (can you believe Willie would criticize a healthy libido?) “Imagine the ego of this guy. He sleeps on the floor and thinks he can be mayor!”
Booby blonde: “He doesn’t even own a car!”
Willie: “He sold it so he could say he doesn’t own a car!” (actually, he gave it to a friend cause he couldn’t afford it)
Willie: “You know, he won’t even wear a 3 piece suit.”
Willie: “The greens are gonna come here from all over the country and sleep on the couches and … (laughter)” …
Folks, you know me. … I’m not one to cause any trouble and I would never lie to you. … OK, I’d lie to you in a second and I love to cause trouble. … But, as God is my witness, the above conversation was reported to me by one of my very best friends who just happened to be at Dottie’s the other morning. … The thing he got from it was the tone. … Yeah, the ‘tone’. … He said that it was obvious that Willie was being loud purposefully. He was campaigning. … His bodyguards seemed uncomfortable. That’s what my friend said. … Shit, that kind of worries me. (I’m sharp you know … not a dummy like you and, … I read between the lines) … Is Willie losing it? … worse than usual?
Today’s last hand-off
Another friend said a buddy of his works for the cops in some way or another and was at a gathering of people who were supposed to distribute literature for Newsom. … They waited at the appointed spot for an hour and the POA didn’t show up. The friend noted to his friends (yes, it’s OK to have a friend who consorts with the beast – Hell, Frank Gallagher is a friend of mine – brutal job on Willie’s show the other night Frank, but thanks for the opposition) … the friend sat chilling (literally, it was in the avenues and was freezing) … anyway, they gazed up and down the street for the help that never came and his friend’s companion noted: “Just like cops. They never come when you call them.”
Where was I?
So, yesterday began with Matt’s usual Saturday massing of the troops (headed for districts 11 & 1 - I think) … 300 people gathered at the Mission Headquarters listening to Agnos & Joe O’Donoghue and Calvin Welch & Chris Daly & Walter Wong and Robert Haaland. … More too. … Try Bruce Brugmann. … Matt was opening his Chinatown office at Grant & Sacramento. … In the subways and over the phones, Newsom was headed into the world of puke politics.
Items
There have been people in the subways with signs saying Gonzalez will destroy rent control. … For God’s sake, the man is a tenant and a number one protector of rent control. … Oh yeah, the Jack Davis plan for Gavin’s bloated juggernaut is in play. … Word has it that campaign spokesman John Shanley will soon be fired due to his relationship with Eileen Left. … We have people streaming in daily and calling to alert us to an absolutely sinister phone campaign that includes questions like:
1. “Would you vote for Matt if you knew he had pornographic pictures on his bedroom wall?” Geez, what a crock! … First, it ain’t true and second, why is Gavin so interested in what’s in Matt’s bedroom? … Matt’s crib is essentially an art gallery. You should be so lucky as to live in such an environment. What’s on Gavin’s walls? … Probably pictures of Reagan & Nixon & Bush & Schwarzenegger. … Hey Gavin, Rotten.com has pictures of Arnold’s schlong from 9 different angles. Check it out!!
2. Then, there’s the push poll they have going to home owners. It asks whom you’re going to vote for and then if you say Matt, it says: “Did you know that he doesn’t own his own home or even have a car? Did you know that he has things in his closet he won’t talk about?” … Oooooh, no bullshit dear reader. It just reeks of Jack Davis. Why in the hell are they so obsessed with Matt’s closets? … Thanks for the free ink, Jack!
3. Provocateurs … this is how I opened the column. These people are dangerous and the cops walked away and left them standing at the front door of Matt’ headquarters. “We have better things to do.” … That’s what the cop who responded to our call said (took em 20 minutes to respond) … These guys who came into the headquarters and went through the office and kitchen, shuffling through papers and scaring the hell out of the women. … They’re what scares me most. … They’d been to Matt’s Horseshoe Café office and witnesses said they’d had the same guys in there and they had perfect Irish accents. … It freaked them that when they finally got the guys into the street, the guys dropped the accents and challenged them to call the cops. … Hey, Alex … you listening?
Bottom lining it?
I was confused. I went to someone who knew what the hell they were talking about. … I went to Eileen Left. … She was trying on various exotic costumes she’d won in a lottery of some sort. … She simply snorted when I’d gone through the lists of dirty tricks the Newsom campaign had unleashed over the previous days.
h.: “So, baby … what’s it mean?”
Eileen: “You’re all such babies! … Listen, there was a book in the late 90’s called ‘Going Negative’ or something like that. … Pick it up on Amazon.com under public policy or whatever. It holds that negative campaigning can be very effective. … The best negative campaigns are when you hit your opponent with something they have no time to disprove … but, the whole point of negative campaigning is that statistics show that when a campaign goes negative, less people show up to vote and the advantage of a low turnout always goes toward the conservative side. … The lowest turnout occurs when one side is able to get the other side to go negative too. … A double negative campaign would have a lower turnout which would favor Newsom. … Expect them to keep going down, down, down. … Now, leave me alone. … Emilio is here for my massage.”
h.: “Anything else?”
Eileen: “Well, Mark Leno & Susan Leal endorsed Newsom today. They’re the rich gay vote. That kind of separates them from the rest of the gay community when it comes down political action. They’re phonies. … Ask Leal if she’s still a born again progressive. … Mark? … Oh, leave Mark alone. He’s just so yummy. … Any chance he’s bi?’
That’s enough for today folks. You can only stand so much caustic shit at the tip of your fingertips and they get sore. … Watch out for your phone. … Open your mail carefully … and, you and your neighbor hunker down and put yourself in what Ad lady Cathy VanNoland calls the “double-check” … you make a deal with one fellow voter to invoke the buddy system on December 9th and made certain the other one gets to the polls. … This one is too hot to miss.
Write me before I write you:
