At SF Weekly, we take our obligations to the community seriously. In the spirit of providing news-you-can-use, this column begins a series aimed at drawing San Francisco voter attention away from the pump-you-up theatrics of the recall and back to the mayor's race, where it belongs. I'll spend quality time with mayoral candidates, pushing beyond the recall hype to examine issues San Francisco voters care about.
We'll begin with a figure of statewide political stature. As the Green Party president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Matt Gonzalez is California's highest-ranking politician affiliated with a political party other than the big two. His candidacy has been billed as a progressive-left insurgency, filling a space many radical San Francisco voters believe has been vacated by Supervisor Tom Ammiano, whom they see as having moved toward the center.
More to the point, Gonzalez called me last week after reading a column in which I said he'd make a lousy mayor. Wishing to get back on his good side I invited him to join me for a movie and drinks. He graciously accepted. (I swear I didn't know G-man was the subject of this week's cover story until after my deadline. Swear.)
After catching the movie Pumping Iron -- a documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger's use of psychological warfare in winning the 1975 Mr. Olympia title -- at the Roxie Cinema, Gonzalez, his campaign treasurer, Randy Knox, and I looked for a place to drink and chat, on the record. In keeping with the surreal 2003 campaign season mood, we jaywalked across Valencia Street directly in front of a stopped police car. The officer in the passenger seat suggested we might have taken the crosswalk. Gonzalez said, "Yeah, whatever," and the officer, bald as a kitchen floor, stepped out of the car with his ticket book, rose to his full 4-foot-11-inch height, and said he'd write us all $110 tickets.
Gonzalez, a former public defender apparently accustomed to jiving cops, said, "Whatever, man. If you want to write a ticket, just write it. But I don't want to hear your lecture."
I froze with bemusement. Gonzalez stood with his shoulders thrown back in the classic "fuck this fuckin' shit" stance. Knox, a local attorney, was forced to do the work of three men in sucking up to the cop. We were eventually sent on our way sans citations. We found a lonely bar, Knox bought a round of beers, I replaced the batteries in my tape recorder, and we had a debate on issues important to San Franciscans until nearly 2 a.m., an edited version of which follows.
SF Weekly: This thing's voice activated. Oh, there you go. Did you like the movie?
Matt Gonzalez: Yeah.
SFW: Really? You liked it?
MG: I actually enjoyed it. I expected it would show a side of Arnold that would reveal him for who he really is and all that. I had that anticipation based on what was said to me about the film. This kind of psychological stuff he engages in and all that, and I didn't think that was so prevalent. I thought he was likable. What did you think of it?
SFW: He actually seemed less fucked up than most really, really top-level athletes.
MG: I was interested in how the judging in that competition was so subjective. It's not how fast you're going to reach the finish line. It's not how strong you are. It's really subjective rather in terms of aesthetic ... in terms of somebody's appearance. I think that can be true of politics. I think this governor's race has underscored that. The clichés you hear, the appeal to the public, the winning over of public confidence with something that's done in a subjective way.
I think that there's certainly a corollary to the type of marketing that's been presented to San Francisco voters. I think that at election time it's effective to promise a lot. To speak in clichés, and to, you know, get your package together. Newsom, when I first got into the debate, I went to about three forums with him, and he gave the same speech every time, either at the beginning or the end. He wanted to be a unifier. He didn't want to be a mayor for the left or the right. He wanted to be a mayor for everyone.
SFW: Can we correspond the characters we saw in the movie with people in the mayor's race?
MG: ... I'm not sure I could be projecting myself into the world of bodybuilders competing with Arnold.
SFW: What about another role. Say you're the director, or producer, of this film?
MG: Let me just say this. I don't think I get psyched out.
(Editor's note: In the film Pumping Iron, bodybuilding champion Arnold Schwarzenegger uses a friendly-seeming breakfast with the family of challenger Louis Ferrigno to smilingly taunt his opponent, leaving him a psychological wreck.)
MG: If I lose the race, it's because I'm going to get beat, it's not going to be because I thought someone was stronger than me, or something like that. But I'd been told about that part of the film, so I was waiting to see the level of psychological manipulation there was. But the truth is I thought it was fairly tame. I thought it was playful.
SFW: I think he was nervous as hell. Not overtly. But scared shitless just like any champion is before a competition.
MG: I don't know about that. He sat down to have breakfast with a guy, his father, his mother. Somebody else could have just as easily been drawn into, "Jeez, I've won five times, maybe this youngster, maybe it's the beginning of his career," or, "Gee they're really nice people." But to a certain extent, it's about the safety mechanism of resisting that and saying, "You know what, I've already decided I won this."
SFW: Now, can we bring that back to ...
MG: Bodybuilding?
SFW: Or politics?
SFW and MG: [inaudible arguing]
MG: Look, let me put it this way. I'm in the race. I'm not scared of my opponent. I've got a plan. We're working. Tell me something: Deep down, who are you rooting for? Deep down?
SFW: [inaudible mumbling]
Randy Knox: [jokingly] Look, man, you outed him on the fucking tape. That's wrong, man.
MG: Hey, man, I'm having a beer with a guy who said I'd make a lousy mayor, in print, and published it.
SFW: [nervous laughter]
MG: [laughter]
RK: [laughter]
MG: That hurt my feelings, man. That's something I'd expect Newsom to say.
RK: Give him a makeover and some decent shoes, and he could be the counterculture Newsom.
MG: The guy went to Reed College. He's a total fuckin' radical. He's probably a communist.
SFW: For one thing ... umm ... I mean I, really, just given, I mean, I mean on certain policy issues ...
RK: Did you call him a socialist stud?
MG: [laughter]
MG: [more laughter]
RK: Didn't you call him a socialist stud?
MG: [even more laughter]
SFW: Um ... I think we have radical policy differences. [inaudible mumbled excuses]
MG: I know. I know, man. It's cool.
RK: Let's talk about the shallowness and superficiality of the press coverage in this race. Let's elevate the level of discourse, motherfucker.
MG: [laughing over Knox]
MG: [more laughter]
SFW: [talking over laughter] I work on investigative projects ... [self-pitying excuses inaudible over laughter of MG and RK]. If I call someone an asshole or a lousy mayor, I get 200 e-mails. If I work weeks on a story, I hear nothing ....
RK: Let me just add: Are you getting sufficiently defensive yet? [more laughter from both MG and RK]
SFW: Um. Um. Um. Whatever; you know what I'm saying. So, whatever.
MG: [still laughing] Naah. It's cool, man. Y'know, Randy once defended me in one of my contempt hearings.
SFW: Did you have a lot of those?
MG: I had a few.
SFW: Judging from our affair in the street with the cop, I can imagine you did.
RK: [interrupting] Naah. Naah: That was so staged for your benefit.
MG: [laughing again]
SFW: The movie seemed to suggest that authenticity kills you.
MG: I don't know about that. I didn't connect with Schwarzenegger being ...
SFW: Inauthentic? I rather felt he came off as an ...
MG: I don't know ... I thought Schwarzenegger was, um, surprisingly honest and revealing about how he was trying to accomplish what he was accomplishing. Somebody who was that calculating -- quote, unquote -- I think would have left a lot of that stuff out. He wouldn't have been as candid as he was.
RK: [glaring at my Oct. 1 SF Weekly column, which contends Gonzalez would be a lousy mayor] I'm glad I didn't read this earlier.
MG: One thing, given what we know about Schwarzenegger ...
RK: [interrupting] ... another pimp for Gavin Newsom ...
MG: ... about his total lack of specificity, about his total lack of knowledge of complicated matters relating to budgeting, statewide budgeting. What does it mean when all you say you're going to do is improve the schools without dedicating monies so it can happen? Given all of that, and given this guy's wide popularity, we know this guy's not popular because he has the best ideas. It's about the persona he has prior to getting into politics. People start liking him because of his films, and the celebrity that surrounds him. But fundamentally it's about money. It's about marketing.
And I think to that extent there's a correlation to the mayor's race ... I don't think we've seen marketing the way we've seen it around Newsom, the likes of which is not something known to San Francisco.
MG: I think one of the ironies here [about who] is susceptible to marketing in a political context, and this is obviously the majority of voters, they're not tuned in to the specifics, and they sort of buy into the advertising. But at the end of the day, you've got to get those voters to the polls. I think what's interesting about this race is the circus of the recall will draw a lot of people to the polls. Even the mayor's race might draw a lot of people. But what's going to decide the [mayor's] race is the runoff. It's not going to be the November election. I think the question is, are those occasional voters who are most susceptible to the money [going to] go out to the polls in December?
My point is, let's say that any one of us is in a runoff against Newsom; you won't be able to measure that in any sort of traditional sense. Are people going to be burnt out? I just can't imagine that the turnout is going to be that high.
SFW: So it's going to be core, dedicated voters?
MG: More informed voters. Voters who go to the polls knowing what's going on.
We're trying to persuade you of the idea that this mayor's race has a candidate who speaks in clichés and is running a massive ad campaign. But the irony is that the potential to beat him may not be the case of an honest candidate who tells the truth, who's going to fight the Goliath. It may very well happen because there's another candidate just like him [Newsom] running for governor in this crazy recall election, which may ultimately impact the race simply because it's added another election in so short a time that it may cause less voters to come out to help him. Then it's going to be the core folks who are going to come out. And they're more informed. And they know what's going on.
I think if you do exit polling after the runoff, those voters will be able to tell you something about Gavin Newsom.
SFW: That's interesting.
MG: I try.
[pause]
MG: It's sort of making it Gonzalez versus this bodybuilding thing. I'm trying to get Arnold to take out Newsom for me.
