The fate of suspended sheriff Ross Mirkarimi will likely be finalized today after the Board of Supervisors meets to discuss the Ethics Commission recommendation that he be permanently removed from office. As discussed about a thousand times before this year, nine of the elevent-member Board will have to vote in favor of his dismissal, and local pundits have surmised that the challenge of getting three Supervisors to have Mirkarimi's back might be tough in an election year. But we actually have no idea what's going to happen, and thus SFist is sending correspondent Andrew Dalton into the field to live-blog today's drama, starting in a couple of hours.
As USF political scientist and local wonk Corey Cook tells the Washington Post, "I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up 7-to-4 to keep him or 11-0 to remove him. We don't know what to expect." This is in part due to the sensitivity of the issue of domestic violence. Mirkarimi's ardent progressive supporters have long been shouting from the rooftops that he's not an abuser and all he did was grab his wife's arm too hard and anyway it wasn't severe enough of an incident to warrant destroying a man's career. There's a rally today at noon for Mirkarimi supporters on the City Hall steps, and both former Sheriff Mike Hennessey and former mayor Art Agnos will be there.
On the other side of this, you have former girlfriends who stepped forward to say yes, Mirkarimi has a temper and they saw it too. (You also have an ex-girlfriend, noted writer Evelyn Nieves, who says this is all complete bullshit.) Plus you have the testimony of neighbor Ivory Madison, the one who shot the incriminating video in which Lopez is crying and showing her bruise in the hope of not losing her child in a custody battle something with which Mirkarimi allegedly threatened her if she left him. None of this, of course, seems on the surface to come from a particular political agenda, but the pro-Mirkarimi camp has said otherwise, saying that any talk of domestic violence or ill will toward Mirkarimi was pure politics, and coming from Mayor Lee, Willie Brown, and their pro-business agenda.
Suffice it to say, today should be interesting. The hearing starts at 2 p.m., and perhaps we will know something by 5 p.m. or so.
