Everybody Hates Chris: The District 6 Election
It keeps the post office busy -- the District 6 election! This week's episode: Everybody Hates A Spending Cap.
A few days ago (before the Great Gavin Gel Goohaha), we were minding our own business, trying to find official word on whether Kimberly Guilfoyle had her baby yet, when we got a breathless email in the ol' inbox, in all caps, that said: "ROB BLACK TO MAKE ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT CHRIS DALY'S ILLEGAL CAMPAIGNING. Announcement at 2 p.m.!"
Well! Verrrrrry intriguing! Too bad we have a policy about not actually going to press conferences or doing anything that would make us seem like actual reporters (also: day job). So what was going on? We were dying to know -- dying! We looked at all our usual local politics sites -- nothing. We looked at Rob Black's site -- nothing.
Meanwhile, after we got home from work that day, we opened up our mailbox, hoping to find our Us Weekly, and instead, three separate "Chris Daly hates children and kicks puppies" type mailers fell out. (Why does it take so long for our Us Weekly to get to us?) We thought the District 6 campaign was supposed to stay entirely positive -- which is why we launched this column in the first place! Who wants to read boring posts about whether or not Chris Daly pushes little old ladies into traffic, or whether Rob Black gives Canadian quarters to the homeless?
What in the Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett is going on?
Thank goodness for Pat Murphy, who bravely goes where we decline to attend -- sounds like he was the only person at Rob Black's 2 p.m. press conference. Black, who used to be a city ethics attorney, said that his campaign had done some research, and it looked like Chris Daly had been sending out mailers to District 6 residents about District 6 issues on the city nickel this summer. Black thought this was a sneaky way for Daly to campaign for reelection without saying he was.
And also thank goodness for Steven T. Jones of the Guardian, who bravely investigates where we decline to do so as well! (Alix Rosenthal had no involvement in the writing of this paragraph.) Turns out that Daly had in fact CHECKED WITH THE CITY ATTORNEY [it's in all caps since the accusation before the jump was in all caps too] before sending anything out, and the City Attorney's Office had said HIS MAILING WAS OKAY. Doh! Daly had also previously checked with the Fair Political Practices Commission (whom Black had demanded investigate the situation), and they had given the mailers the green light as well. And the amount in question? $573.
Meanwhile, while this was all going on, Team Daly went all "best offense is a good defense" on Black, and demanded to know why all these weird negative flyers kept going out against Daly, many of which didn't have the name of the person sending them out. When Jones asked Black about this at the Guardian endorsement interviews, Black told the Guardian that he didn't know anything about these independent groups being formed on his behalf, and wanted it to stop. Black also told Beyond Chron, "If people are doing anonymous stuff under the guise of helping me, I don't want it. If they're violating the law, they should be prosecuted."
But does Black really not know anything about this? Isn't he getting the same amount of anonymous mail in his mailbox as we are? So: is Daly being unethical or is Black? Is anyone? On this issue, no matter how you come out on it, we gotta say Steven Jones's first blog post headline on this question ("Pot. Kettle. Black.") is awesome.
Well, the ethics commission has looked into it -- and has now announced that they're lifting the spending cap in the District 6 election because of the expenditures made by the anti-Daly independent groups. SFPOA: Oops! Especially because Daly's got $95,000 on hand to spend now on response pieces, whereas Black's only got about $52,000.
The Left in SF blog stopped by Daly HQ, and got some pictures of Candidate Daly doing some ceremonial envelope-licking for the new response mailers that are going out. (Chris -- where's the green beads? A green tie is not the same!) We hope his mailer has fun pictures of Jack Daly! We love pictures of little Jack.
Well, the gloves are now off, and your District 6 mailbox is going to be stuffed to the gills until election day. We're never going to get our Us Weekly now.