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Diaz: When more equals less

S.F. MAYOR'S RACE

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By John Diaz Published 4:00 am, Sunday, August 21, 2011

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The campaign for mayor of San Francisco is

beginning to resemble a bicycle race. Mayor

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Ed Lee, who surged to the front the instant

he announced his candidacy, is taking the
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drafting off each other, keeping their heads

down and hoping the Lee phenomenon will

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lose steam by Nov. 8.

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San Francisco has 11 candidates for mayor who have at least a conceivable chance of
winning. In an ordinary year, the field would start thinning by now. Candidates languishing
in the pack - whose ideas or personas proved bland or unappealing on a citywide stage -

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would drop out. But this is no ordinary year.

This election presents the first real test of San Francisco's experiment with partial public

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financing and ranked-choice voting in a mayoral campaign. Those systems were in effect in
2007, but the absence of any credible challenge to incumbent Gavin Newsom deferred the
verdict until now.
The effects of these so-called reforms have begun to unfold. One obvious upshot: Once in
the race, candidates who have qualified for public financing have a huge incentive to stay in
the race - even if only going through the motions - so they don't have to repay the public
funds they drew. The nine who have qualified for public financing could receive up to
$900,000 each in city matching funds. Lee and Public Defender Jeff Adachi have declined
public financing.
So it was no surprise to see all 11 candidates on the stage Tuesday night for a 90-minute
debate at UCSF's Mission Bay campus. Neither the format nor the time frame allowed much
opportunity to compare the candidates' views on critical issues. When it came time for
candidates to question each other - usually an ideal chance to draw distinctions - some went
warm and fuzzy. Bevan Dufty and Michela Alioto-Pier exchanged softball questions with
each other, as did Leland Yee and Dennis Herrera. John Avalos gave Public Defender Adachi
a chance to expound on the causes of crime. These team-ups were the equivalent of drafting
in a bicycle race. The only pointed questions - from Adachi and David Chiu - were aimed at
front-runner Lee.
It was mostly a night for suppressing yawns.
Is San Francisco getting its money's worth out of public financing? The early evidence is that
it is not.
It's instructive to revisit the rationale behind San Francisco's partial-public campaign
financing:
-- Create opportunities for newcomers. All but one of the mayoral candidates
receiving public financing are politicians who have been elected to office - and the exception,
venture capitalist Joanna Rees, is someone who clearly could run for office without
taxpayers' help. "Public financing, all by itself, isn't a panacea that will allow Buster in BART
to stop playing guitar and run for mayor," said Alex Clemens, a political consultant and
lobbyist not affiliated with any of the candidates in this race. Or as political consultant Jim
Ross put it, "This system encourages ambitious politicians to run ... because you're getting
up to $900,000 to advertise your brand and drive up your name ID ... for a future race for
state Assembly or whatever."
-- Give the candidates more time to discuss issues. Tuesday's debate was a prime
example of how more can be less. Each candidate had, at most, six or seven minutes to talk

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about the issues. Most candidates were allowed to walk out of the hall without having to say
a word about pressing issues such as pension reform or homelessness.

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-- Reduce overall spending. With the public subsidies, this election has become an

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absolute windfall for the town's political consultants. Also, the system does nothing to chill
"independent" advertising by special interests, which is where the big money flows - and
nastiness reigns - in San Francisco politics.

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shoes and water

The effect of the other major reform experiment - ranked-choice voting - remains to be

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seen. Consultants working for several campaigns agreed with the bicycle-race analogy: Don't
be too bold or daring, especially in the early going, don't take chances. Court those secondand third-place votes.

As for the notion that ranked-choice voting somehow promotes positive, issue-oriented
campaigns, the attacks on Lee have the familiar ring of the "Anybody but Don" Perata
strategy that worked so successfully for Jean Quan, with the assist of other underdogs, in
Oakland last year.
San Francisco Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who opposed the public financing and rankedchoice voting experiments, has begun drafting ballot measures to repeal them in June 2012.
Taxpayers may well have second thoughts about public financing if it turns out they were
contributing $900,000 to a campaign that ends up with 5 percent or less of the vote.
Ranked-choice voting could be similarly doomed if the election is close, with the winner
finishing with 20 percent or less of the original vote - and a computer methodically sorting
out the field in a process that leaves many voters angry and disenfranchised, and the new
mayor without any semblance of a mandate.
"We'll see how it all rolls out," Elsbernd said. "My suspicion is there's going to be a lot of
frustration, especially with public financing."

New rules of the road

This year's mayoral race is the first test of these new rules. Here's how they work:

Public financing
Candidates qualify for matching funds by raising $25,000 from 250 donors. Qualified
candidates (who must agree to an overall $1.45 million spending limit) get an initial payment
of $50,000 in public funds. They can then begin drawing matching funds up to a maximum
of $900,000, based on the level of contributions they receive from city residents.

Ranked-choice voting
Voters rank their top three choices in order of preference.
If a candidate wins a majority, he or she is declared the winner.
If no candidate wins a majority, the candidate who received the fewest first-place votes is
eliminated - and votes for the second choice of the eliminated candidate's voters (at least for
those who named a second choice) are counted in the next round.
The process continues, eliminating the lowest-scoring candidate each round, until a
candidate reaches a majority. The "instant runoff" for San Francisco's District 10
supervisor's race, which had 21 candidates, went 19 rounds.
John Diaz is The Chronicle's editorial page editor. E-mail him at jdiaz@sfchronicle.com.

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