Matt Gonzalez Profile in SF Chronicle
[Here’s another example of a) the Green Party’s maturation as a political vehicle, and in the kind of candidates it attracts (Tom Hutchings, down in Santa Barbara, is another), and b) the slow erosion of the Democratic Party’s lock on the progressive vote. -Thomas]
Matt Gonzalez would govern from the left
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 18, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
www.sfgate.com
Last in an occasional series of candidate profiles.
San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez launched his run for mayor on a no-
apologies progressive platform — arguing that fundamentally the city is not
centrist in political belief or lifestyle.
And he says he’s the best candidate to ensure that City Hall doesn’t stray
from that notion.
“Our ideas are better,” Gonzalez said in setting the stage for his
candidacy. “We don’t have to water them down.”
Those ideas include hiking the minimum wage in San Francisco to $8.50 an
hour, which would be the highest in the state; giving noncitizens the right
to vote in school board elections, and harnessing tidal energy.
They are ideas that lead representatives for downtown corporate business
interests to claim that Gonzalez is out of step with mainstream San
Francisco and is not what the city needs to recover from a deep economic
recession.
But Gonzalez — both as a mayoral candidate and a politician who three years
ago jumped parties from the Democrats to the Greens — represents a
challenge not only to centrist views held by corporate San Francisco but
also to the conventional thinking on the city’s political left.
Sure, he wants to raise the minimum wage. But he also says he wants to
shrink the size of city government and use a pay-as-you-go approach for
public works projects rather than resorting to debt financing — fiscal
notions that aren’t likely to be embraced by other leftist candidates and
their friends in the city’s powerful municipal employees unions.
[…]
