NOTA DEL EDITOR: Elections in November of 2015 for mayor of San Francisco and the ‘Proposition I’ were the hottest issues, according to leading human rights and residents of the Mission District of San Francisco, since winning the Latino candidate Francisco Herrera and approving the ‘proposition I, it would have been the hope of the Latino and the community at large who are tenants, to stop the constant evictions that families are suffering.
If he was elected Mayor, Francisco Herrera had already committed to stop luxury and market-rate housing constructions, govern for the people and not serve as an instrument of the real estate industry as it has been the case with Mayor Ed Lee.
At press time, the total count of the votes had not been done, but the votes so far counted were showing Lee with a significant lead over Herrrera and ‘Prop. I’ failing.
At the end, however, the chess pieces moved to the side where it will hinder the work of the Mayor in favor of his rich allies. – Marvin Ramírez.
por Fernando A. Torres
Especial para El Reportero.
– The triumph of Aaron Peskin over Supervisor Lee Julie Christensen (52.4 per cent against 43.6 per cent) in District 3, was not only listed as the most important victory for the opposition in the past elections on Tuesday, Nov. 3, but also a severe defeat to Mayor Ed Lee, and put again on the table of local politics the growing discontent with the performance of the Mayor.
Peskin is now the sixth vote among supervisors in opposition to the policies of the Mayor, a shift in the political balance. Now the opposition at the Board of Supervisors has a majority of the votes, which will force the Mayor to listen to them more carefully.
Thus expressed the Latino leaders who, despite the defeat of proposition F and I, the loss of the Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and the re-election of Lee, were optimistic. “Despite of losing I, we earned much and the most important was that we now have the infrastructure to start another campaign,” said via telephone Roberto Hernández, a face most recognized in the movement to halt the evictions and displacements in the popular Mission District.
“We will now join with Asian residents, with African-Americans, with the people of North Beach, the residents of Sunset, Richmond, Excelsior. Now we will give the city a deadline of 90 days, and if they don’t do what we need, we will propose new measures for elections in the months of June and November of next year,” said Hernández, who runs the organization Our Mission no to Evictions.
Francisco Herrera, the only Latino candidate in the race, received the higher number of votes than the rest of the other opposition candidates. According to the latest figures supplied by the San Francisco County Department of Elections as of Nov. 5 (4 p.m.), Herrera had 21,534 votes, 14.6 percent, and Mayor Lee had 83,453, 56.8 percent. A total of 155,675 votes had been counted, which means 34.8 percent of all registered voters went to the polls.
Local media and political analysts agreed that Lee’s victory was not as strong as expected. The sum of the votes of the five candidates gives a total of 62.989 votes and those received by the Mayor added to 83.453.
Herrera was pleased but cautious. He said that resolving the housing crisis “will take a lot of work, we have many challenges to make (the municipality) understand the wishes of the people and not the those of the investors. They are nothing more a part of the mix. Right now we need to hear the voices of families,” Herrera said.
With the 32.9 percent of the votes, the defeat of Sheriff Mirkarimi, was strongly against Vicky Hennessy, who got 61.1 percent of the vote.
Proposition I, a temporal stop to the construction of luxury homes in the Mission, lost 57.5 per cent against 42.4 per cent; however, Prop. A, the financing for the construction of affordable housing, won easily with a 73.8 percent.
Hernández said that it is important to consider the next year, because it will be the presidential election. “We will win this time because (on this election) there was a low turnout at the polls, but next year we know that this will increase because they are presidential elections.”
Hernández added that there are also talks about a campaign to impeach the Mayor. “Many people are speaking about that, if the Mayor does not do a good job between now and the next elections in June,’ he said.
Reflecting about what was his campaign, Herrera said that it has “very strongly demonstrated that the housing crisis is a serious issue and that 40,000 jobs that (Lee) has created, are for people not living in the city. I am very happy because we have made it very clear that people in San Francisco want a city for working people and set the foundations for a broad civic alliance. I loved the level of participation of the Latino community. The community participated and it was felt,” he said.
