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At 9:30 a.m., the Registrar of Voters-approved ballot boxes are already a half hour late. The delay -- which is cleared up by 9:45 -- heightens the already tense atmosphere in this high-stakes battle.
Across the street from the Delta, at the South of Market Merchants and Residents Association, Henry Perez's helpers fold flyers for their slate. Henry is in a bad mood, his constant smile strained by what he fears may be impending doom. He's heard about Antoinetta's sophisticated political organizing, and word has come back that Jerry Clark, the M&M bartender, has dozens of friends in the retirement homes that ring the neighborhood's perimeter.
But Roth and Antoinetta aren't much more confident than Perez. Antoinetta doesn't have many personal friends on the strip, despite her work at the Baldwin, and Roth's enemies have painted him in their flyers as a self-serving yuppie.
In their desperation to win, both sides execute strategies designed to exploit their strengths.
Henry's clinic has been sending tuberculosis-test patients across the street to vote. "I was in for my TB test and they sent me over here," said one sporting, middle-aged man as he pushed through the Delta's glass doors.
Back at the Sunnyside, meanwhile, Jeremy Graham, the Housing Clinic caseworker, is working the street like a man born for politics.
Holding a sheaf of Positive Futures Coalition flyers in one hand and gesturing dramatically with the other, Jeremy runs from one passer-by to another, urging each to vote for Antoinetta's slate.
The fact that many Sixth Street residents, especially those loitering on the street at midday, are mentally disabled, alcoholic, drug addicted, or all three, complicates Jeremy's work.
"I swear, I'm trying to quit, man," said one twentysomething tattooed man with long, blond hair, pushing away Jeremy's flyer.
"I've got one right here," a rummy, older man responds, pulling a folded blue Positive Futures Coalition flyer from his pocket, drawing it to his mouth and kissing it once, twice, three times. "I love it. I love it. I'm always going to keep it. Always."
As things continue in this vein, the skin on Antoinetta's face tightens.
Someone has posted an anonymous hate letter around the neighborhood calling her a "two-face, two-life prick," and Antoinetta isn't sure what sort of effect it will have. Will voters realize such a letter could only come from the forces of evil? Or will they take it at face value and vote against Antoinetta III? Only time, and the final ballot count, will tell.
Late in the day, three busloads of Filipino retirees on their way to Reno cast even more uncertainty on the result. Their drivers have turned back because of mechanical difficulties and let them off at the Delta -- also home to the Philippines senior center. They all stream into the polling place and vote -- for whom, nobody knows. As residents of area retirement homes, they are beholden to neither side of the Sixth Street wars. Each camp fears its enemies may have gotten to the retirees.
By evening the turnout proves to have been fantastic. Nearly 600 people -- a mob in the world of project area committee elections -- have turned out to vote. When polls close, the results are completely in doubt.
For each side, a loss would be devastating, a fact that shows on their faces. A project area committee controlled by Antoinetta's faction would surely cancel the management standards plan, eliminating Henry's livelihood and squashing John Elberling's efforts to improve the quality of life in slum hotels.
For Antoinetta, a loss would bankrupt her dreams, halt her climb from the depths of failure, keep her from becoming the queen of Sixth Street.
The Victory
Finally, at midnight, city vote-counters look up from their tables, one by one. Antoinetta has made it onto the project area committee as one of four representatives elected in the hotel tenant category, but just barely. She registers fourth place. Her allies Jeff Roth and Eric McDougall are also voted in, gaining Residential Owner-Occupant slots. Jacqueline Benjamin, the Sharon Hotel resident whom Antoinetta had recruited, far outpolls the other hotel tenant candidates, garnering 215 votes. (Antoinetta pulled just 145.)
But Henry Perez's slate has polled nearly as well as Antoinetta's. Given the ambiguity of the myriad Sixth Street alliances, it's hard to tell who will have the advantage when the committee begins meeting next month. For all intents and purposes, the committee is split between the two slates.
So the wars will continue, and the word on the street remains conspiratorial. Jeff Roth's faction will reportedly try to get Michael Kaplan ousted from his job as South of Market project manager for the redevelopment agency. Antoinetta III will clamor for the cancellation of the Management Livability Standards. John Elberling, who has also been elected to the committee, will be able to push for increased low-income housing. Nothing whatsoever is settled.
The Tone of Things to Come
In Southern California, divided project area committees produced gerrymandered planning maps, pitcher-throwing tirades, and endlessly postponed neighborhood improvement. In cases where committees became consumed with personal quarrels, their yelling has made them useless. Government officials came to regard them as irrelevant brawling societies, and went ahead with redevelopment plans without their input.
Sixth Street below Market can scarcely afford this kind of chaos, if it is to become anything but the slum it has been. By any reasonable judgment, Sixth Street's smelly, decrepit, cramped hotels are an affront to human dignity. Its pawnshops, liquor stores, and cocktail lounges are monuments to the hopelessness that can trap almost anyone who has fallen on truly hard times.
Inside the bars, ancient people sit in the dark for hours at a time.
In front of the liquor stores, hotel residents holler in defiance of some vague imperative between tilts from a brown paper bag.
