By Tom Temprano
The gloves are officially off (were they ever on?) in the race to succeed Tom Ammiano in the 17th Assembly District — and the punches that are flying are literally hitting my home!
In the past week I opened my mailbox to find two pieces from David Campos that hit David Chiu on his willingness to meet with a variety of lobbyists, including one that actually listed the lobbyists Chiu has met with since 2011. As an SFSU alum, I was saddened to see an innocent gator used to represent shady lobbyists in both pieces, but since nobody has every successfully explained to me why SF State’s mascot is an animal that can’t be found in the wild any closer than Florida I’m getting over it.
One expects to find campaign materials in their mailbox, but what one doesn’t expect is to walk out the front door and see illegal posters smearing a candidate taped to the lightpost at the bottom of their stairs. Yet on Monday morning I woke up to find posters decrying David Campos as a “City Hall Hypocrite” taped up in front of my house. 
There are so many things that are weird in this scenario but lets start with the fact that my house isn’t on the corner of a major pedestrian thoroughfare but rather in the middle of a residential block in the Mission. Further enhancing the creepy too-close-to-home factor is the fact that I have David Campos signs in my street-facing windows — leading me to believe that my poor light pole was targeted because I was showing visible support for Campos. When opponents of a candidate are taking the time and resources to tape up smear ads in front of the houses of that candidates’ supporters there’s clearly only one motivation: desperation.
The sheer desperation of the whole thing aside, the content of the signs themselves had logical fallacies abound. One declared that Campos was a hypocrite because he didn’t take action on Ellis Act Evictions until running for Assembly which is a) not true and b) not hypocritical. Signs found in neighborhoods from the Castro to North Beach declaring that Campos’ use of Twitter after opposing the Twitter Tax Break as hypocritical further demonstrated their creator’s lack of a grasp on the basic concept of hypocrisy.
48 Hills has already covered the shameful outcome of Tuesday’s police commission appointment showdown, which left an active, engaged and by all accounts (including those of the supervisors who voted against her) exemplary police commissioner out in the cold. Given all that has been said I have little to add but my profound disappointment in the precedent set by the punishment of a commissioner who was too concerned with representing the people she was put on that commission to represent. My guess is that the snubbing of Angela Chan won’t be an issue that dies quietly – it will be one that is called to the attention of voters again and again in the coming year.
BILLBORT is the word of the week for the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. Our club has long pined for our own piece of the ad-in-the-sky pie, and this week we got it and unveiled our big ole spread featuring Harvey himself on Market and Laguna. Aside from my excitement for this giant opportunity to support the club’s two LGBT endorsees, David Campos and Assembly Speaker John Perez, seeing a 20-foot-tall Harvey watching over the Castro gives me chills. Plus, Daniel Nicoletta told me that in his decades long career of photographing iconic San Franciscans, including Harvey, this is his biggest print yet.
I would like to join the ranks of just about everybody in America and say “F*ck you” to Donald Sterling. As a youngster growing up in Southern California I was basically bred to be a Lakers fan. The Clippers were always a joke: the team you would only go to see when you wanted good seats for real cheap. Their decades of futility came at the hands of professional sports all-around worst owner.
As an adult Bay Area resident and avid Warriors fan, the rivalry between the Clippers and the Warriors always pissed me off even more because I hated to see Donald Sterling have a team that was worth dubbing a rival. Fortunately, what we all knew he said regularly behind closed doors (and about prospective tenants of properties he owned) was caught on tape this past week and one of my least favorite people around is finally getting his comeuppance.
My Sterling (if you will) solution is to get the Clippers sold STAT and to move them up to Seattle, which totally deserves a post-Super Sonics team. LA doesn’t need two NBA teams playing in one arena, plus, last I checked there were a lot more boats in Seattle than in LA. You heard it here first!
TOM’S TOP TWO THINGS TO DO THIS WEEKEND
1) Hard French with special guest DJ BUS STATION JOHN. Saturday, May 3rd at El Rio from 2-8pm.
Yes, this is my party and I’m shamelessly self promoting it but that is what promoters do. I’ve been dancing at Bus Station John’s parties since before I should have been allowed in the bars he was throwing them at and it’s safe to say his records have been the most prevalent soundtrack to my San Francisco experience. Way back when we first started Hard French in 2010 he was our first ever guest DJ and it’s an honor to have him back. Plus, David Campos, the preferred Assembly candidate of daytime dancepartygoers everywhere is going to be hanging out and Hard Frenching in the early part of the afternoon.
2) WATCH THE WARRIORS!!!!!! The Sharks are out, the Giants season is just getting started, the 49ers moved to Santa Clara and I’m just not over it yet so let’s get behind our (privately financed arena having) Bay Area team!!!
