Race to Challenge Willie Brown Remains a Cliffhanger

With thousands of ballots still uncounted, the mayoral race remained a cliffhanger Wednesday as a write-in candidate battled with the city’s former mayor for the chance to face Willie Brown in a runoff.

Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, who launched his low-budget, write-in candidacy three weeks ago, edged slightly ahead of former Mayor Frank Jordan for second place in a painstaking count slowed by tallying the write-in ballots.

The partial tally gave Brown 42% of the vote, enough for a first-place finish but far short of the majority needed to secure a victory outright. Ammiano had 18.7% and Jordan was right behind with 18.6%.

When those results were announced Wednesday afternoon, putting Ammiano in second place for the first time, dozens of his supporters erupted in cheers at City Hall and chanted, “Win, Tom! Win, Tom! Win!”

After working through the previous night, exhausted elections officials called it quits at 5 p.m. Wednesday and said they would finish counting today.

Counters left thousands of ballots--enough to change the election’s outcome--locked up in City Hall’s basement.

“Most of us here have had 40 minutes of sleep in the last 40 hours,” said Naomi Nishioka, head of the Department of Elections. “We’re going home today and will continue tomorrow.”

An additional 5,000 write-ins remained to be counted. Nishioka said that there were questions about several thousand damaged ballots and that some 19,000 absentee ballots are still to be tallied.

“Runoff: Brown vs. ?” screamed the afternoon San Francisco Examiner’s banner headline Wednesday.

Throughout the day, supporters of Ammiano--a gay activist and stand-up comic--insisted he would knock Jordan out of the contest. Jordan refrained from declaring himself the winner of the second-place spot, although early returns showed him in second place.

“These percentages are meaningless,” fumed Jordan spokesman Mark Foehr. “It is a mess, a total screw-up.”

The only major candidate to issue a concession statement was former political consultant Clint Reilly, who spent more than $3 million--most of it his own money--to place fourth.

“The voters have spoken, and I am not their choice,” Reilly said, even as he hinted that he will try again. “Many of our finest leaders lost their first elections and then went on to become distinguished leaders of our city.”

Reilly, too, blasted the Elections Department’s handling of the vote count, calling the city/county agency “as badly mismanaged as Muni,” San Francisco’s much-maligned public transportation system.

At Ammiano’s headquarters, campaign workers were more sanguine.

“We are in suspense,” said Hank Wilson, the volunteer campaign manager. “But we feel that we’ve already had a success. We’ve involved hundreds of people in the process who have never been involved before, especially large number of young people. We did it for less than $15,000: that’s refreshing.”

The fact that no one knew who would face Brown in the Dec. 14 runoff didn’t keep political observers from analyzing the possible outcome of the next round.

Brown, who did better than polls predicted he would, is in a strong position, said San Francisco pollster David Binder. Many of the 24% of voters who proclaimed themselves undecided two days before the election seem to have voted for the mayor. Binder thinks those voters are likely to stick with him.

“Who knows if it was the endorsements by the Chronicle and the Examiner or Bill Clinton’s phone call [a tape-recorded message to voters] at the end, but people began to think: Maybe there is more to this guy than we gave him credit for,” Binder said.

The mayor also put together an effective precincts operation, the pollster said, that got his backers to the polls.

“It definitely puts him on top,” Binder said. “I don’t think there is any doubt that Brown will be the front-runner [in the runoff].”

The ebullient Brown, a nationally known Democratic Party leader with a long history in California politics and a vast network of political allies, will be able to raise money and turn out voters more easily than either Jordan or Ammiano, pundits said.

“I imagine the solicitation letters from his campaign will be in the mail today,” said Jim Ross, a consultant who helped run Jordan’s losing campaign against Brown four years ago.

But the tenor and substance of the next round of campaigning could vary wildly, depending on whom Brown faces. Jordan, a former police chief, appeals to more conservative voters than Brown. Jordan’s base lies in the western section of the city, and he is particularly popular with small-business owners.

If Jordan makes it into the runoff, Foehr said, “we’re going to continue what we’ve been doing--highlight Frank’s 38 years of public service as opposed to Brown’s lifetime of manipulating the process.”

A Jordan-Brown match-up would essentially be a replay of the 1995 runoff, said David Lee, head of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, “only this time, Jordan wouldn’t have the advantages of incumbency and money.”

Raising money will be a high priority for the Jordan campaign. The former mayor spent about $400,000 in the general election, to Brown’s more than $3 million. Much of Jordan’s campaign so far has been self-financed, while Brown collected thousands of $250 donations that rolled in from across the nation.

One constituency the two will be certain to target, Lee said, is Chinese American voters, a majority of whom appear to have backed Brown in the general election.

“That was a dramatic switch,” Lee said. “The Chinese voted for Jordan last time.”

Rose Pak, who ran Brown’s campaign in Chinatown, said she was not surprised at the surge in Chinese support for the mayor.

“Four years ago, the Chinese did not know Willie Brown,” she said. “They voted for him this time because he earned their respect and their support.”

Ammiano makes it into the runoff, the city will face a splintering of the progressive coalition that has long united blacks, gays and other left-leaning groups, political analysts said. Ammiano appeals to gays, young people and the city’s more liberal voters--constituencies Brown counted on in his runoff four years ago against Jordan.

“The city will be very polarized because it will be liberal against liberal,” said Pak.

Ammiano’s challenge, Binder said, will be to persuade voters outside his core constituency that he is not too radical to govern the city. The former schoolteacher is a strong supporter of a so-called living wage for city workers, of stronger rent control laws and of taxing businesses to fund social services.

Brown, Binder said, is likely to move toward the middle in an effort to capture Jordan’s and Reilly’s voters. The mayor already enjoys the support of the downtown business community, of labor unions and of the police and fire associations.

Speaking to cheering supporters late Tuesday, Brown promised that he will debate whomever he faces in the race “and let the chips fall where they may.” He already has debated Jordan several times, but has yet to face Ammiano.