By Adriel Hampton
San Francisco Examiner (excerpt)
Monday, September 22, 2003
WHILE Supervisor Gavin Newsom picks and chooses the community forums he'll attend in the mayor's race, former police chief Tony Ribera is getting shut out from a candidates forum at the very school he teaches at. The chief, a crowd favorite on the debate circuit whatever the polls show, thinks it's a slam because he's a vocal Republican. "It's very rude to exclude a faculty member at his own university," Ribera said of the Thursday debate at the University of San Francisco. ... Meanwhile, the anti-Newsom rhetoric is heating up as the number of community forums he declines piles up. At Sunday's Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA) forum in the Women's Building, former Supervisor Angela Alioto lit into the young supervisor early. "He probably taught Schwarzenegger," she opined, before outlining her planned luncheon where candidates could get together to renounce the frontrunner's disrespect for community groups. Before the forum, attendees whispered that Newsom's not showing because of the file of negative info Alioto's been building (perhaps off the mark, but not a happy rumor nonetheless). Mid-program, an audience member asked how the candidates would ensure that Newsom doesn't win, giving Alioto a public chance to pump her planned pow-wow -- "We're going to jump on him collectively," she said, "not tolerate his snobbishness and arrogance" -- and the others a chance to pile on. Treasurer Susan Leal pointed out that Newsom has spent more than $3 million in the past year and a half on his campaigns and pet ballot measures and still can't gain 40 percent of the electorate's support. That says everybody knows who he is and 60 percent are still looking, Leal said. Ribera said people tell him, " 'If I don't vote for Gavin, Tom Ammiano might get in.'" Then the chief dropped the bomb: "Four years ago, I voted for Tom Ammiano. If the Republicans disown me, so be it." Ribera added that he couldn't support leadership that excludes people. Ammiano called Newsom the anti-populist response to his '99 write-in campaign. Supervisor Matt Gonzalez said Newsom is dangerous because he's built a political career on attacking homeless people, adding that it took positive polls to force Newsom into publicly supporting the $8.50 minimum wage ballot measure, Proposition L, he still refused to sign pro-L statements for the campaign. "Vote for anybody at this table," Gonzalez said. "Tony may be a member of the Republican Party, but he's more progressive than Gavin Newsom." ...