It's time for your requisite Ross Mirkarimi update for the week: The embattled sheriff, who has been suspended without pay since this past winter and who faces the permanent loss of the job if he can not get the votes of three members of the Board of Supervisors against his dismissal, has launched a media campaign to try to get more support for his cause.
His supporters have put together a sheet of talking points (see them below) that they've been passing around to supporters and supportive members of the media. (We imagine that Rose Pak and Willie Brown did the something similar for Ed Lee during his campaign.) The Examiner's Melissa Griffin takes a look at the flier and concludes that the "Mirkaloonies" are particularly concerned with winning the support of either Eric Mar or David Campos, and making sure that people know that Ross got more first-choice votes than Ed Lee in last November's election some 86,000 anyway, because turnout for that particular election was extraordinarily low. It is assumed that Mirkarimi has the votes of fellow progressive John Avalos, and interim Supervisor Christina Olague, who serves in his former district. The third vote (because there will need to be nine of eleven supervisors voting to remove him) could come from Campos or Mar, though both are facing reelection and may not want to be associated with this mess.
Also, his legal team on Monday petitioned the Ethics Commission to delay the vote by the Board of Supervisors until after this November's election, because as we discussed the other week, people's feelings about domestic abuse and Mirkarimi himself could end up being used against incumbent Supervisors who are hoping to be re-elected. This also comes in reaction to a poll in late August that showed that 61 percent of San Franciscans agree with the Ethics Commission that Mirkarimi should be removed from office.
As you well know, he pleaded guilty in March to a misdemeanor count of false imprisonment when he faced the possibility of a domestic abuse trial stemming from an incident on New Year's Eve in which he grabbed and bruised the arm of his wife during an argument. Supporters have, in general, liked to downplay the incident as a simple misdemeanor, a "private matter," and certainly not worthy of killing the man's career over.
[Examiner]
