December 15, 2006
Can Someone Explain The Significance Of This To Us?
Breaking news on a Friday afternoon -- Gavin Newsom's chief of staff Steve Kawa has resigned. Stated reason: "I want to spend more time with my amazing family."
Okay, an announcement made at 3:42 p.m. on a Friday, the spending more time with my family excuse -- obviously this is really big news! Problem is.... we have absolutely no idea what the significance of this is to the Newsom administration. Is this good for Newsom? Bad for Newsom? Can someone please help a political junkie out and tell us what the heck's going on?
Here's the info we have: Kawa is openly gay and has two children with his partner. He and his partner were married by Gavin Newsom in 2004. Kawa was also Willie Brown's chief of staff when Willie was Da Mayor. And he has a good grasp on city finances.
Kawa will be replaced by Phil Ginsburg, who is currently in charge of human resources for the mayor's office. We don't know anything about Ginsburg either, except that based on the copy of the resume that the San Francisco Sentinel published, he likes to run marathons and speaks conversational Spanish.
Can someone please explain to us what's going on?? We'll love you forever.
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Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Newsom's team may not agree with us every time we attack the mayor, but they do agree that he is vulnerable on a couple of angles:
1) He appears to be focused on his next job, rather than being Mayor of SF. He is frequently on the road chasing photo-ops and fundraising. Half his money comes from Southern California and 25% from outside California.
2) San Franciscans are beginning to see Newsom as disengaged and ineffective. Issues like MUNI service and the homicide rate have gotten worse EVERY YEAR under Newsom. Meanwhile, the Mayor vetoes/opposes efforts by the Board of Supervisors (prop A, footpatrols, ellis act disclosure) without proposing ideas of his own. More and more, people see Newsom as "governing by press release"
If this move were truly a "staff guy wants life change" then said staff guy would have waited until after the election. This is CLEARLY a strategic move by Newsom. Expect to see more shake up in the coming weeks as Newsom tries to show that he is willing to act like a Mayor, atleast during an election year.
Rock on
SFPP
PS.... see you at Newsom's town hall on Jan 13...right?
rita,
Watch your ass if you have a City job. Ginsburg is a union buster from the firm of Carroll, Burdick and McDonough. He rep'd Wells Fargo in a discrimination case in which they paid out 13 mil. He has ties to the Presidio Trust and Hilary Gitelman. As head of Human Resources, he created a template for destruction of the seniority system in his handling of the Nuru/SLUG case. I'll have a piece on him up later today.
this Lefty's usually right,
h.
M&R report that Kawa was known to disagree with mayoral spokesperson Peter Ragone. Ragone is the Karl Rove of the Newsom administration!