Ross Mirkarimi has dodged a bullet this week, since legendary Retired Navy Cmdr. Zoe Dunning (pictured), anti-DADT Activist, and Green Bay Packers Fan who won a seat on the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee (DCC), pulled her resolution to start a recall effort to remove the Sheriff from his position.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, Dunning simply said that the “timing” wasn’t there to push a recall effort forward, but that the “political will” still exists to have a recall effort. (One sticking point might be its cost of about $4 million.) At first, the resolution was part of the DCC’s October meeting agenda, but it was continued to tonight’s meeting; then Zoe took it off the table.
This blogger’s educated guess at the reason just may be Ross Mirkarimi himself. According to sources, the Sheriff has been “talking to everyone, ” and by that, I don’t mean just the Commonweath Club, but he’s not missed a beat in shoring up support for the maintenance of his current position. So either Ross, or one of his supporters, existing or new (yes, you read that correctly) talked to Zoe.
But with that, it doesn’t mean Ross’ is out of the woods, and he knows this. In fact, he’s a bigger target than ever. But he also is being given a green light by more and more of San Francisco politicos to make some of the reforms he long sought to do before the domestic violence accusations and the whole mess with Mayor Ed Lee started and seemed to dominate San Francisco’s political news in 2012.
One of those politcos that Ross can thank for now is former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Out of nothing more than sheer respect, the former California Speaker and former Mayor still has juice, and has reportedly told Mayor Lee to not think that now-outgoing San Francisco Supervisor Christine Olague’s loss would translate into support for the ouster of Ross. The reason has to do more with the complexities of Rank Choice Voting and tech investor Ron Conway making London Breed the ‘cool choice’, which put Ms. Breed in as the next San Francisco District Five Supervisor over the incumbent, than anything else.
Ron Conway’s The New SF Power Player
And how about SV Angel’s Ron Conway’s emergence as a political power he player in San Francisco? He successfully led a fight to change the city’s business tax system via Prop E’s passage. Impressive, though his power has its limits, and one of them is The San Francisco Super Bowl Bid Effort. San Francisco Mayor Lee kicked off the SF Bid for Super Bowl 50, pitting it against Miami for the 50th Anniversary Game – it’s a contest Miami wants with its death as the back payment.
Some of the same players I worked against when I headed the Oakland Super Bowl Bid against Miami are still there, and they play for keeps. As a result, the NFL’s winds are already blowing in favor of Miami and not San Francisco, and for a host of reasons that come down to NFL Politics and San Francisco arrogance. SF has already made a ton of bid mistakes and is set to continue that pattern even as the May deadline approaches, but that’s another story for another blog post.