Voting with my feet

Today San Fran­cis­cans made their choic­es for May­or, Dis­trict Attor­ney, and Sher­iff, as well as a num­ber of City bal­lot ini­tia­tives, most­ly about bor­row­ing mon­ey (alleged­ly) for street repairs and changes to the con­tri­bu­tions City employ­ees make to their pensions.

The may­oral race was on sched­ule; Lt Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som left his post as May­or when he was elect­ed to Sacra­men­to, but he would have termed out this year any­way so he would­n’t have been run­ning any­way. Instead the «incum­bent» is Ed Lee, the City Admin­is­tra­tor who was appoint­ed by the Board of Super­vi­sors to replace New­som as inter­im may­or. Lee was con­sid­ered for the post only after he pledged not to run for office in 2011 in return for a guar­an­tee that he could get his old job as City Admin­is­tra­tor back once he was done serv­ing as inter­im mayor.

The point of the deal Lee made with the Board of Supes was to avoid giv­ing some­one the advan­tage of being an incum­bent after serv­ing as inter­im may­or for a year. Yet that advan­tage seemed to be too tempt­ing and the deal he made was not legal­ly bind­ing, so he ran for office and he looks like the like­ly win­ner. It’s hard to believe that San Fran­cis­cans care so lit­tle about a bro­ken promise like that. If Lee real­ly want­ed the job so much, the thing to do to pre­serve his integri­ty would have been to run again next elec­tion. But there I go, using «integri­ty» in a con­text where it might be ascribed to a politi­cian. Even in the­o­ry it’s laughable.

What’s not laugh­able is that I got a chance to take a walk over to my vot­ing sta­tion at the Omega Boys Club in Dog­patch, just a half block from my old apart­ment. I once again took a detour to the top of Potrero and down the steps at 22^nd Street. This time I went fur­ther, along the edge of the Potrero Hill Recre­ation Cen­ter to Con­necti­cut Street. I con­sid­ered going one fur­ther to Mis­souri but the way down the hill was­n’t a real path, just a track worn in the side of the hill from peo­ple tak­ing the short­cut. If I’d looked at a map I might have done it so that I could walk around and down Sier­ra Street, one of the few rem­nants of the orig­i­nal Potrero Hill nam­ing scheme for East-West streets in which they were named after Cal­i­for­nia coun­ties. Since that’s a favorite his­tor­i­cal tid­bit of mine, I would have liked to include it on my walk.

After vot­ing I walked back up to Mari­posa Street (a more well-known rem­nant of the pre-num­bered streets scheme) and back home. No trou­bles or sore­ness the sec­ond day after the US Half Marathon, so it seems that one day of com­plete rest may have been enough. Tomor­row I’ll try a run.