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Jewish World Review Nov. 8, 1999 /23 Mar-Cheshvan, 5760

George Will

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Willie Brown Besieged


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- SAN FRANCISCO—From his black snap-brim fedora sporting a red feather in its band, to his mirror-shiny black tassel loafers -- the solid purple tie complements the shirt of robin's-egg blue with white collar and cuffs; there probably was a comma in the price of the double-breasted suit -- Willie Brown, a mayor as histrionic as this city's geography, is his usual resplendent self this Election Day as he emerges from the union headquarters.

Resplendent, but not altogether chipper, even after a one-legged man, whose flannel shirttails flap as he swings himself across the street on crutches, assures Brown of 60 percent majorities in the housing projects.

Citywide, Brown will not today get the 50 percent plus one vote he needs to avoid a Dec. 14 runoff but will come close enough (above 40 percent) to make reelection likely. Still, as he heads downtown for a breakfast, Brown, the once and, undoubtedly, future Tribune of the Downtrodden, unburdens himself of hard feelings against those he calls "the heavy left."

They, he says, "want to double taxes on the wealthy, on businesses, they want to tax every stock transaction, to control rents -- actually, they want to roll back rents -- and they want neighborhood-based, not citywide, land-use controls, and they want a referendum on every decision by government." Yes, mayor, such people are called "San Francisco Democrats."

They are criticizing Brown for the "Manhattanization" of the city (allowing high-rises) and for "the Starbuckization, Blockbusterization and Rite Aidization" of the city (allowing national chains to taint the uniqueness of neighborhoods). Above all, there is the matter of the homeless.

Parts of this city, including stretches of Market Street downtown, literally reek with the residue of '60s liberalism: The city spends substantial sums steam-cleaning sidewalks, and still the smell of urine is assaultive. The city's generous welfare provisions, some without residency requirements or time limits, make it, Brown says, "clearly a magnet" for homeless people.

The other Slick Willey
Earlier in his term, he celebrated such policies as proof that "we're humanistic." Now he says "we give them tokens" for public urinals that the homeless don't use. When the police began seizing stolen shopping carts in which the homeless store their possessions, he was accused by some (the "humanistic"?) of initiating "blitzes and sweeps," and criticized by others for not doing so.

This city, which still flaunts its tolerance of everything except anything not "progressive," has reached the limits of its tolerance, and not just regarding the homeless. An infestation (as some see it) of cyber-yuppies -- they get rich in Silicon Valley and live here -- is driving up housing prices as rent controls (Brown does a disdainful riff on "people making $100,000, $200,000, living in $600 rent-controlled apartments on Nob Hill") and other regulations restrict the housing stock.

Hence the leaflet handed out at the union headquarters, saying Brown gives working people "hope that there will still be a place for us" in the city. There is, Brown says, a one percent vacancy rate in residential housing.

"Never," he says, "did I think a liberal left-winger, former housing authority resident would be regarded by the left as other than a hero." But he is a hero to the public employees' unions. He has increased the budget 40 percent, from $2.9 billion to more than $4 billion, has increased the city work force by more than 4,000 (even so, overtime has increased 60 percent), and he would perish on the barricades fighting to prevent serious privatization of public jobs. He also is a hero to the building trades unions because he helped persuade the University of California (the city's largest employer, other than the city itself) to build a huge new facility near the Giants' (privately financed) new ballpark.

Born in the Depression and into segregated Texas 65 years ago, Brown rocketed like a Roman candle from the cultural ferment of '60s San Francisco to serve 31 years in the state legislature, 15 of them as assembly speaker, which he would still be had the voters not done him the (at the time) bitterly resented favor of imposing term limits. Today, luxuriating in his executive life, Brown says, "I've outgrown Sacramento."

But he has not really outgrown urban liberalism characterized by government support of every environmental, diversity and fairness fad. Most places, a conservative is, as the saying goes, a liberal who has been mugged by reality. In San Francisco, where someone called a conservative can probably sue for slander, a post-mugging liberal is just a liberal with bruises and a deepened determination to eradicate the "root causes" of reality.



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Up

11/04/99: One-House Town
11/01/99: Crack and Cant
10/28/99: Tax Break for the Yachting Class
10/25/99: Ready for The Big Leagues?
10/21/99: Where honor and responsibility still exist
10/18/99: Is Free Speech Only for the Media?
10/14/99: A Beguiling Amateur
10/11/99: Money in Politics: Where's the Problem?
10/08/99: Soft Thinking On Soft Money

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