With David Campos's hit pieces on David Chiu landing in mailboxes – the first mail of the campaign – the race for California's Assembly District 17 seat has become almost as ugly as San Francisco housing is expensive. Since Chiu and Campos will undoubtedly be the top two finishers in the June 3 open primary, San Franciscans, and, in particular, Castro residents face another six months of negativity from a Campos campaign that feels much more focused on bringing Chiu down than on promoting Campos.
While coverage of the race has suggested that Chiu has been slow to push back, Campos deserves to be held accountable for the hypocrisy of his central campaign messages and for his weak record on the Board of Supervisors.
Let's start with Campos's central pitch to the LGBT community: this Assembly seat belongs to the LGBT community, and since I'm gay, you MUST vote for me.
This message is so transparently self-serving, and so contrary to his own paltry record supporting LGBT leaders and issues, that it's actually a little bit sad. As a gay man, I know LGBT voters are too smart to fall for it.
Where was Campos's LGBT litmus test in the 2011 mayoral race when he did not support former Supervisor Bevan Dufty in his effort to become the first gay mayor of San Francisco? Where was Campos's LGBT litmus test when he voted against the Ethics Commission appointment of Brett Andrews, the respected LGBT African American head of an HIV/AIDS services nonprofit?
Campos, unlike Chiu, hasn't even seen fit to support our great LGBT state Senator Mark Leno in a competitive race. That's right: Campos has never supported Leno, one of our community's greatest legislative champions, in a competitive race.
And no one is supposed to remember Campos's pivotal 2008 vote for a straight man (Aaron Peskin) over LGBT leader and current Supervisor Scott Wiener to chair the local Democratic Party. Indeed, in the Assembly campaign, Campos has repeatedly attacked Chiu for Chiu's appointment of Wiener to chair the Land Use Committee. So much for supporting LGBT leadership.
In another core message, Campos tries to channel Charles Dickens by repeatedly invoking The Tale of Two Cities. All San Franciscans know that inequality and the cost of housing is a huge challenge, but they also know that there truly is a "Tale of Two Missions" – the Mission that Campos has represented for almost six years is ground zero for growing inequality. At the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club debate, Campos even had the nerve to blame the issues in the Mission on Chiu. Since Campos has done nothing to manage the situation in his own district, why should voters think that he has much to offer the Assembly besides empty slogans?
Campos should also look in the proverbial mirror before he attacks Chiu on campaign financing and ethics. You would never know from his anti-development, anti-business rhetoric that nearly 40 percent of Campos's contributions in the first full filing period were from real estate and development interests. Campos's average donations were also half again as large as Chiu's – but Chiu had nearly three times as many individual donors. It is also Campos, not Chiu, who has received thousands in direct contributions from lobbyists.
Many of those lobbyist donors to Campos are from AT&T, which is no surprise since Campos provided the crucial vote to allow AT&T to plunk 762 huge utility boxes on our sidewalks. More than 2,000 neighbors have formally objected to these blight-causing facilities.
This pro-AT&T vote is part of a pattern of ignoring neighborhood voices. Campos also voted against protecting precious neighborhood open space on Corbett Avenue, instead asking that it be sold to developers.
Campos is also relying on the short memory of voters when he claims to support women. But who can forget his indefensible vote to keep Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi in office after he pleaded guilty to domestic violence? Less remembered but similarly telling was Campos's support of District 5 supervisorial candidate Julian Davis, who was known in progressive circles to have groped a number of women. It took an ill-advised cease and desist letter from Davis to one of those women for Campos to finally withdraw his endorsement.
Chiu's record stands in stark contrast to Campos's. Elected by his colleagues to three consecutive terms as board president, Chiu has passed three times as much legislation as Campos. Chiu has pushed to help families stay in San Francisco by guaranteeing a right to request flexible work schedules. And unlike Campos, Chiu supported the construction of thousands of affordable housing units like the ones in the Alice Griffith public housing project. And Chiu has delivered for San Francisco while changing the tone in City Hall and moving away from the dysfunctional politics of earlier years.
Absentee ballots landed in mailboxes this week. Voters can side with Campos supporters Peskin, Mirkarimi, and Chris Daly. Or voters can join the Alice club, Wiener, Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Prozan, former Treasurer Susan Leal, former Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club President Debra Walker, the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, and many other LGBT community leaders to vote for Chiu. His record of leadership at the Board of Supervisors and his ability to work with all San Franciscans make him the easy choice for state Assembly.
Bill Hemenger is a tech business guy working and living in San Francisco and invested in the community.