Ammiano Will Face Brown in S.F. Runoff

Tom Ammiano, the gay stand-up comedian who ran a last-minute, write-in campaign for mayor, has made it into a runoff with Mayor Willie Brown, according to a nearly complete vote count released Thursday.

“This is quite a victory against corporate campaigning,” Ammiano told wildly cheering supporters at City Hall. “The people of San Francisco hungered for a participatory election and I assuaged their appetite.”

With all precincts counted, Brown had 39% of the vote and Ammiano, president of the Board of Supervisors, had 25%. Former Mayor Frank Jordan, who had finished second in early returns, slipped to third place with 17%. Election officials cautioned that they still must count 18,000 absentee and provisional ballots, and said they would finish the tally today.

The prospect of a face-off between two liberals for the city’s top job thrilled the city’s far left, gave its business community heartburn, and left political observers shaking their heads in wonder.

“It is a watershed event in San Francisco’s political history,” said Richard DeLeon, chairman of the political science department at San Francisco State University.

“This is bringing two candidates, both from the left, into a collision course,” said DeLeon, who wrote a book on the city’s left-wing politics. “It could be quite divisive and volatile.”

Divisions between highly politicized ethnic and gay groups and between business interests and anti-business progressives have been mostly submerged during Brown’s first term under the soothing effect of a booming economy.

But a Brown-Ammiano matchup pits an establishment, big-city liberal black mayor against a gay activist who prides himself on incendiary political rhetoric and championing a radical political agenda.

“This race is going to split the community, pull it apart in a way that hasn’t happened for many, many years,” said Joe O’Donaghue, president of the Residential Builders Assn. “This is a race for the soul of the city.”

Even as the vote tally continued, business and development interests mobilized to fight for Brown’s reelection , fearful of what an Ammiano administration would mean.

“We’re taking this as the most serious threat to the construction industry in this city’s history,” O’Donaghue said. “We’ve shut down our offices for a week to register voters and I’ve told our guys: Get the hobnailed boots out. This will be a hard-fought campaign.”

Since launching his campaign, Ammiano has strained relations in the gay community--with elected gay officials backing Brown and grass-roots activists urging Ammiano into the race--and between blacks and gays. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson appealed to Ammiano to stay out of the race.

“If I had known he was going to run before he announced it, I would have asked him not to,” said the Rev. Cecil Williams, a black leader and Brown supporter. “I would have told him: Your time will come. It is Willie Brown’s time now.”

Brown spokesman P.J. Johnston said the mayor did not care who he faced in the Dec. 14 runoff.

“He’s going to continue to make his case that he’s best to run this city,” Johnston said.

Robert Barnes, a political consultant and gay activist, said he worries about the message Ammiano’s candidacy sends.

“Our community has a deep commitment to building coalitions with progressive forces and people of color,” he said. “Here you have a black guy who has presided over gay weddings at City Hall, one of the most pro-gay mayors in America. What kind of a signal does it send when our community has somebody this friendly in office and just dumps him for a gay person?”

Ammiano’s challenge will be to “show that he has a vision for the city,” Barnes said. “People have gotten through their moment of protest, now he has to lay out his agenda for San Francisco.”

Ammiano launched his write-in candidacy just three weeks ago. Polls showed he tapped into a reservoir of discontent with Brown and troubles such as snarled downtown traffic, soaring property prices and the ongoing problem of homelessness.

The supervisor appeared to have political coattails. Many of the same people who voted for Ammiano cast ballots for beleaguered Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan, who came from behind to narrowly beat challenger Bill Fazio. Hallinan had 37.9% to Fazio’s 37.7%, forcing them into a runoff.

Ammiano voters appeared to help pass ballot measures that the former schoolteacher championed, including a sunshine ordinance to provide greater access to public meetings, a bid to replace a downtown freeway stretch with a street-level boulevard and a ban on fees that banks charge non-customers for using their ATMs.

Ammiano’s campaign uncovered a new political fault line in the city, said David Lee, who did exit polling for the Chinese American Voter Education Committee.

“Ammiano’s voters were mostly under 40,” Lee said. “This was not a sexual identity thing. You can’t explain this kind of mobilization by just looking at the gay community alone.”

Lee said Ammiano’s strong showing “represents a generation shift within the Democratic Party, the rebelling of young Democratic voters against the old guard that Willie Brown represents.”

As a supervisor, Ammiano has floated proposals to tax each transaction on the Pacific Stock Exchange, impose an income tax on city residents, establish an $11-an-hour “living wage” and strengthen rent control laws.

Ammiano said his second-place finish is a triumph of ideas over money. Brown and the groups that supported him spent nearly $3 million, while Ammiano spent less than $20,000.

But critics accused Ammiano of executing a “sneak attack” that helped him avoid scrutiny during the campaign. By entering the race so late, Ammiano ducked bruising debates that seemed to weaken support for Jordan and former political consultant Clint Reilly, who finished fourth with 12%.

“Brown has been scrutinized on a daily basis as mayor. There has been a lot of investigative reporting around him,” said Mark Mosher, executive director of the Committee on Jobs, a business organization of 35 of the city’s employers. “Ammiano has led a bit of a charmed life with the press so far, but that will change now.

“There is a deep concern within the business community about Ammiano’s record,” said Mosher, whose group supports Brown. “He has proposed more taxes and more government spending than any politician in San Francisco history.”

Times researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this story.