May 21, 2007
Ed Jew Update!
We considered calling this post "And then they came for Jew, and we said nothing," but decided that was in poor taste.
So what's been up with our favorite beleaguered conservative Sunset Supervisor? Well, as everyone knows by now, right as Ross Mirkarimi's Friday art party was starting, Ed Jew's City Hall office was raided by the FBI, based on charges that he'd accepted $40,000 in $100 bills from businessmen seeking to get permits from City Hall.
Supervisor Jew told the press that the businessmen came by, offered him the money, refused a receipt, and he went ahead and took it and put it in a safe, even though he thought the whole thing was weird. Jew also said thought it was a fight between two groups of merchants that he got in the middle of, and that he'd simply referred the businessmen to a political consultant. "I don't know if it violates the law," Jew said.
The next day, we learned that the feds had also searched Jew's Chinatown flower shop, his house in the Sunset, and a house in Burlingame where his family lives. Wait, why does a Supervisor for District 4 live in Burlingame? Neighbors report that no one's lived in Jew's stated SF residence since a burglary and shooting three years ago, but now they see Jew about once a month. Jew's spokesperson says Jew lives there, but that he simply doesn't get home until late at night. The spokesperson wouldn't answer questions about why Jew's wife and child live in Burlingame. (Update! Water service didn't start at the house until 2 months after he was supposed to be there for SF election residency requirements.)
Further complicating things, Jew is also now saying that he did accept the $40K on behalf of his consultant friend, and told the consultant to donate $20K of it to fix up a park on 28th and Lawton. However, Parks and Rec have no record of any such transaction. The consultant is not answering reporters' inquiries about anything.
After all this, Jew has hired a criminal defense lawyer, who's told him to zip it.
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Conservative? HA! Leftie liberal. Maybe not progressive, but def not conservative. Hard core leftie.
Sorry, I should've given a link for that description of Ed Jew's politics! Here you go:
Ed Jew's a former Republican who opposes affirmative action, and is consistently referred to as a conservative on issues facing the City.
The Chinese do business in mysterious ways, so I don't know what to think about all this...
It's definitely a set-up: how else would the FBI know what serial numbers to look for?
But in general, Ed Jew's OK, but his hires are godawful: Meskunas, Lee, Comstock.
They need to go, and go fast! Get some decent help in your office, Ed!
And what's with that lawyer of his? Some wannabe actor who is really in love with himself?!
> We considered calling this post "And
> then they came for Jew, and we said
> nothing," but decided that was in poor taste.
Ummm. Yeah. That is in *very* poor taste.
And not at all clever.
Holy smoking gun, Batman:
Moreover, water usage figures for the property since then are at odds with what would be expected if Jew had been using the home -- in the 2400 block of 28th Avenue -- as his permanent residence.Weren't there questions about Jew's residency during last year's campaign? How the hell did none of the other candidates dig this up??? If this had surfaced in say, October, Jaynry Mak would be supervisor.
Errr, (Not SFist)Jeremy... Ron Dudum would be the Supervisor, no? Not Mak...
And what is the attribution for the quotation re water, please?
So who will Newsom appoint?
To answer your question Mark, Newsom's gonna appoint Doug Chan. There's a Doug Chan booster on SFWall.net and Dailykos.com, goes by the handle RandySF, he/she ought to be thrilled.
CRS, recall the post-election analyses of D-4 votes -- Jew got the second-place votes from both Mak and Doug Chan supporters. If the residence issue had been exposed before the absentee ballots went out, it probably would have been Jaynry winning overall.
I read the Not-Jeremy's quotation re water on SFGate in staff article running 5/22.
At this point we should probably be speaking in the conditional:
"Who would Newsom appoint?"
rather than "...who will..."
Because Ed Jew hasn't even been accused of anything, and as someone observed: Sandoval is walking around out there in D11 with great bags of cash with $$ on their sides.
But if there *were* to be a mayoral appointment, I'd say Doug Chan or Phil Ting (who would have to resign as Assesssor, so that probably wouldn't happen).
So Doug Chan.
Thanks AG for the reminder, how did Dudum get to the finals with Jew? Oh never mind. I don;t want to know at this point.
Anyway, Not-Jeremy asked:
> Weren't there questions about
> Jew's residency during last year's
> campaign? How the hell did none
> of the other candidates dig this up???
Well, I tell ya, there have been umpteen candidates running for district supe who don't live in the district in which they are running. I was really pissed off at one of them in the last election, and wanted this person exposed. I asked a private investigator acquaintance what it would take and he told me that no one really cares that much.
He had been hired the previous election to prove a candidate lived elsewhere, and got photos of him in a robe and slippers picking up a newspaper off his out-of-district stoop. He also went through records and had the candidate's billing address as that out-of-district address.
He got paid for his work, but no one cared enough to pick it up and use it.
So when I asked, he said it isn't worth it. No one cares. And it *really* doesn't matter when that candidate isn't the perceived frontrunner.
It is premature (but fun) to discuss replacements, so, without prejudice, there are four options:
Doug Chan - politically most aligned with Newsom, liked by his supporters, but got hosed in the recent election. Could he be re-elected?
Jaynry Mak - May have done better as AG said given Ed's status, but recall she had ethics questions of her own (may have won were it not for that early hit). Would enrage Newsom supporters if he put her on the BoS, but has electoral advantages (to Newsom).
Ron Dudum - A close second to Jew, there's a fairness aspect here since he did garner a lot of the district votes. Doesn't get along with a lot of Newsom's people, though.
Politician To Be Named Later - Find the right mix of politics, ethnicity, re-electability. Whoever this is, Dudum, Chan, Mak may all give it another shot. Especially Dudum. So no guarantee even for Ting.
Anyone know anything about businessman Robert Chan's "Bridgeway Consulting"? The Chron noted that it was Bridge Consulting today, though yesterday it was Bridgeway. Further, how hard is it to figure out that you aren't suppose to accept 40k in cash? I have that problem all the time. Oh wait, no I don't because I have never ever even seen 40k in cash, let alone on my tax forms. Maybe this is the tip of the iceberg?
Hey David Latterman, I know the law doesn't provide for this if Jew were to step down, but just out of curiosity, if you ran the numbers for the District 4 election throwing out Jew's first place votes, who wins?
Is it Dudum, or did Jew's votes mostly go to other Asian-American candidates?
I nearly spit out my coffee when I read the first line of this story.
omg. that was wicked but terribly funny.
Are people serving in government oblivious? Where is the discretion that people in public office must exercise to avoid the apperance of impropriety? Where is the basic common sense to not accept cash money related to a desire to influence government? To conform to the expectations of candidacy? All the way from Paul Wolfowicz to Ed Jew there is an arrogance that the rules can be bent, or do not apply to them. Paul's leaving the WB soon, so too must Ed must depart the BOS.
Campers,
Ed's not going anywhere. The congressman from Louisiana the FBI caught with a hundred grand in his freezer was just re-elected. I recall a client of Willie Brown delivering a big paper bag full of money to him in a restaurant. Brown laughted, emptied the bad and spread the cash around the table to the delight of diners.
Even if he's indicted, a Republican judge will toss out the conviction.
Parrots vs Peskin at 2pm (item 20)
h.
I don't have the software to fully pull this off, but the first choice w/o Jew are (my RCV data - a wee off from the official DOE data):
Ferguson - 1403
Chan - 3176
Zheng - 223
Mak - 4460
Dudum - 5037
Taking a huge assumption liberty, adding Jew's second choice votes to this yields:
Ferguson - 1631
Chan - 4750
Zheng - 429
Mak - 5983
Dudum - 5559
With Jew's votes mainly splitting twixt Mak and and Chan. Jew's 2nd choice went over 60% Asian, omitting null second choice votes. From there, as everyone else drops off, Mak receives more second choice votes than Dudum. So, Mak would have started off ahead and kept the lead over Dudum, and then won.
Again, I don't have the official DOE software, so it's my own look. Generally, from what we've seen in SF elections and RCV, the Asian synergy vote is ~66%. Seems the case here.
Wow!
I wonder if Lillian Sing and Amos Brown are pissed about this.
They undertook a charade of living in the districts they ran for in '04.
They coulda gotten defeated without the hassle.
These issues of residency, amongst others, were brought to the attention of local journalist during the campaign. The fact is, NONE of them followed up. Ron Dudum was the first choice for more voters than was Ed Jew. Ranked Choice Voting Reordered the finishing results. Ed Jew finished 2nd before he picked up the eliminated candidates votes, and even then it took 4 rounds to officially beat Dudum!
Here's a quick and dirty RCV pseudo-analysis of what would happen if Ed Jew had been disqualified. From the election results we see this count after Pass 2 of RCV:
Jew: 6455
Dudum: 6305
Mak: 5851
source: www.sfgov.org/site/election_index.asp?id=48099
From David Latterman's analysis on pages 6 and 7:
www.sfusualsuspects.com/Fall%20Line%20Analytics%20-%20Supervisorial%202006.pdf
Ed Jew's second choices:
Dudum: 522
Mak: 1523
Ed Jew's third choices:
Dudum: 404
Mak: 955
Add that all up, and the winner is (if my morning math is correct):
Dudum: 7231 or 46.4%
Mak: 8329 or 53.5%
Doug Chan would have gained about 500 votes on Mak from Jew's 2nd and 3rd choices, but it wouldn't have been nearly enough to make up for his pitiful showing. Latterman's analysis shows a clear asian identity vote in District 4. It's been less than seven months since the election. If Jew resigns, Gavin should respect the will of the voters and appoint Mak.
Jeremy did it a bit differently than me, where I dropped Jew altogether from the race, but either way it points to the same result.
'Will of the voters' won't work, though, since this is such a hypothetical exercise. In reality, the 'will' would point to Dudum, since he was such a close second in the very real and recent 2006 race. After all, Mak actually was a distant third.
Oops, I should've refreshed before I posted that.
Re applejuice: I wouldn't say that Ranked Choice Voting "reordered" the results so much as it expressed who the voters supported. In a close, multi-candidate race like this, 2nd and 3rd choices are just as relevant as 1st choices.
I have to respectfully disagree with you there, David. I think the strongest expression of the will of the voters in this election was the Asian identity vote. Look at the fact that Mak and Chan split Jew's 2nd choice votes fairly evenly, despite the fact that they are on opposite sides of the progressive-moderate spectrum.
Another interesting bit for David's analysis is the the total number of voters’ ballots the candidates were on:
Jew: 10452
Mak: 10200
Chan: 9683
Dudum: 8866
District 4 wanted an Asian Supervisor. And I think appointing Dudum (the white guy) wouldn't sit too well with a lot of people.
I have to respectfully disagree with you there, David. I think the strongest expression of the will of the voters in this election was the Asian identity vote. Look at the fact that Mak and Chan split Jew's 2nd choice votes fairly evenly, despite the fact that they are on opposite sides of the progressive-moderate spectrum.
Another interesting bit for David's analysis is the the total number of voters’ ballots the candidates were on:
Jew: 10452
Mak: 10200
Chan: 9683
Dudum: 8866
District 4 wanted an Asian Supervisor. And I think appointing Dudum (the white guy) wouldn't sit too well with a lot of people.
First,
"Friday was the first time in city history that ranked-choice voting reordered the finishes for candidates for supervisor."
See SFgate- 11/11/06 article by Charlie Goodyear
Secdond,
Dudum isn't White.
I have little doubt, if it comes to it, Newsom will appoint an Asian. But one can't dismiss Dudum fairly simply because he's the wrong race. Politically, he's more aligned with D4 than Mak (generally). And I stress again, RCV machinations aside, Dudum basically tied for first in first choice votes. Dudum did get a lot of the non-Asian vote, but plenty of Asians put him down first. Were there no RCV, we wouldn't even be discussing Mak or Chan. Give people choices and of course they'll make them. But then again, had there been a traditional runoff, Jew or Mak would have beaten Dudum like Ma did in 2002.
So as a rhetorical question, which is more important, matching the district's politics or its race (if they don't coincide)?
Also keep in mind that there's a good chance you'll see more Asian Supes in the future, perhaps Mar (1) and Chiu (3), so there's less pressure for the identity appointment in 4.
Having said all that, I would think Chan or Ting would be the replacement frontrunners, not the outsider Dudum. But, to be honest, we have to add, '...despite Dudum's close second place showing.'
PS - applejuice, that was written before the final count. Jew did come in first when it was all done.
CRS writes, "The Chinese do business in mysterious ways, so I don't know what to think about all this..."
What does that mean? Please expound all the assumptions you rely upon to create this wonderful blanket statement.
Further, by "Chinese," do you mean Ed Jew?
>> CRS writes, "The Chinese do business
>> in mysterious ways, so I don't know
>> what to think about all this..."
> What does that mean? Please expound
> all the assumptions you rely upon to
> create this wonderful blanket statement.
It was only one statement, not "all the assumptions."
And I simply meant that doing business with cash is not that uncommon, so we should reserve judgment in this case. We should not immediately judge Supe Jew solely on the basis of the money.
And by "Chinese" I meant the people Jew was holding the money for: the principals in the transaction. Not necessarily Jew himself, because according to the account, he was not involved in the actual business end of any of this.
Good points. Politics being what it is, I assume appointing either Dudum or Mak would cause a ruckus, but luckily we all know that Gavin wouldn't consider either of them. Would Gavin have the balls to appoint Chan after his embarrassing showing in the election? It seems like that might bring some unwanted attention to the fact that all of Gavin's allies (Elsbernd, Alioto-Pier, and then Chan) got their start on the Board the same way Gavin did: as appointees, not elected officials.
And would Phil Ting want to move from the Assessor's office to the Board of Supervisors?
Didn't Jew want to stop utility rate hikes? I thought he was sincere on that, but apparently he doesn't even use SF utilities.
all this talk about who got the ed jew votes in irv is fine and all but it's just intellectual wanking. none of it is relevant. if mr. jew is out of office, Mayor Newsom will appoint whoever benefits HIM the most. The rest of this stuff is cute but irrelevant.
But if we can't engage in intellectual wanking in blog comments, where can we?
Meanwhile, over at the Examiner, Josh Sabatini nails the residency issue:
www.examiner.com/a-741228%7ESupe_targeted_in_raid_retains_veteran_lawyer.html
"Under the City Charter, a candidate must have resided in the district for no less than 30 days before the candidate files the declaration of candidacy for a seat on the Board of Supervisors.
"The previous resident at the address listed by Jew closed a water account with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on March 8, 2006, and no water account was logged with the SFPUC for that address until Jew opened a water account on Sept. 11, 2006, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, exactly one month after filing his candidacy papers."
Can't wait to hear this November's election results if our voting machines are not certified by the state and votes have to be hand-tallied. Spend, spend, spend, spend....
Does Supervisor Jew use water? Maybe he commutes to the peninusla to use their water?
Yes, Yes, .... chinese do do biz in mysterious ways in china. I can't understand a word of it. Us american do do things in strange way as well...lol