| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Runoff for San Francisco mayor
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Mayor Willie Brown's hand-picked successor and a Green Party upstart seeking to preserve San Francisco's left-of-liberal identity on Tuesday advanced to a runoff that will determine who becomes the next mayor. Democrat Gavin Newsom, a city supervisor with a get-tough approach to the city's homeless problem, was the top vote-getter Tuesday, followed by Matt Gonzalez, who is vying to become the Green Party's only mayor of a major U.S. city. Newsom got 73,635 votes, or 41 percent. Gonzalez had 35,753, or 20 percent, despite entering the race just 13 weeks ago. The runoff next month is necessary because neither candidate got a majority of the vote. "Round One!" Newsom, 36, said in his victory speech. Now, he said, "we have to work stronger, we have to work harder." Gonzalez, 38, expects to pick up support from voters who backed the third- and fourth-place finishers, who also campaigned hard against Newsom. "We're going to win this race," said Gonzalez, a Stanford-educated lawyer. "This is someone who has been running for two years and has spent more than $2 million. We have been in the race for 90 days and have spent maybe $100,000-150,000." Newsom, who would be the youngest San Francisco mayor in more than a century if elected, is best known for his efforts to get panhandlers off city streets. His proposal to outlaw panhandling in many public places was overwhelmingly approved Tuesday. Both Newsom and Gonzalez are city supervisors. Brown said that Newsom "has an awesome task to defeat this man, and I think he will." Gonzalez was able to get this far only because voters found him to be exotic and mysterious compared to the better-known alternatives, said Brown, who cannot run for a third term because of term limits. San Francisco voters decided 14 ballot measures Tuesday, including the panhandling proposal, a citywide minimum wage of $8.50 an hour, a potentially costly measure to subsidize child care for poor families, and a $295 million bond measure to improve city schools. All of those measures passed. The city's district attorney race also goes to a runoff, between the incumbent Terence Hallinan, who proudly proclaims himself "America's most progressive district attorney," and Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor in Hallinan's office. San Francisco was the largest of a number of California cities holding elections Tuesday. In Palm Springs, Democratic challenger Ron Oden became the city's first openly gay, black mayor. In San Bernardino County, emergency polling places were opened for wildfire victims to cast ballots on school and water districts, city councils and local initiatives. And voters in Bolinas, an isolated community on Marin County's rugged coast, appeared likely to approve a measure that was more about poetry than policy. Measure G would acknowledge that Bolinas is a "nature-loving" town, even for skunks. Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
