By Tim Redmond
DECEMBER 11, 2014 – At some point, Ron Conway’s Republican roots, his connections to George W. Bush, and his very non-San Francisco values were going to become a liability – and now Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s CIA torture report is making that happen.
Conway quickly tweeted his criticism of Feinstein and his support for the CIA, saying – wrongly – that the torture of prisoners helped stop terrorists from attacking the United States.
This should come as no surprise to people who have followed Conway – but so far, the guy has been able to prosper politically in a progressive, Democratic town by allying himself with Mayor Ed Lee, Assemblymember David Chiu, and others.
Money talks – and his money helped put both Lee and Chiu in office. Now they have to deal with the fact that they’re linked to a billionaire who thinks torture is just fine.
Lee tried to back off right away with his own tweet. He hasn’t yet said that he would refuse to take campaign money from Conway or that he would reject any attempts by the plutocrat to use independent expenditure money to support his campaign.
And so far, unless I’m missing something (and somebody please correct me if I am, Chiu isn’t getting back to me) I haven’t heard Chiu say (or tweet) a word about this.
If it weren’t for Conway, there’s a good chance David Campos would be the person representing San Francisco’s east side in the state Assembly. If it weren’t for Ron Conway, there’s a decent chance the Mark Leno would be challenging Lee for mayor.
So Lee and Chiu have to take some responsibility here (and that’s more than a tweet, Mr. Mayor). Sen. Feinstein is hardly a liberal lion or a leftist radical; she’s a pretty conservative politician. If Conway wants to be to her right – and an apologist for the Bush Administration and torture – everyone who has been a beneficiary of his largesse should be held to account.
It’s not as if this is a sudden, secret, stupid slip, something he’s going to apologize for in the morning. This is who Ron Conway is – a Republican who gave $50,000 to Bush and has never once said it was a mistake.
The Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee is supposed to meet today, and unless the meeting is cancelled by the storm (which might make it hard to the public to show up and comment) there’s a change that a very dangerous bit of legislation could slip through.
Sup. London Breed has introduced a bill that would eliminate the requirement that permit expediters – who are, for all practical purposes, lobbyists – disclose the income they get for helping developers ease their projects through the Planning Department.
The measure doesn’t end the requirement that the expediters register and report their contacts; it just exempts them from telling the public how much money they make.
That’s not a small deal. Lobbyists have to disclose their fees; so do political consultants.
As Friends of Ethics, a watchdog group, notes in a letter to Breed:
We believe that there is a strong public interest in full disclosure of payments made by clients that result in a financial benefit to the client. We note that it is not unusual for permit consultants to fundraise for candidates who decide on clients’ financial interests. It is also not unknown for permit consultants to have prior work history in city government, including with officials involved in approving client requests. We also believe that repealing this provision at this time would be extremely premature insofar as the new disclosure requirements for Permit Consultants that the board voted for in June, 2014 have not yet even been implemented and won’t take effect until January 1, 2015. This repeal would thus eliminate the public disclosure before it even takes place.
At the very least, the group says, the measure should be continued until everyone involved has a chance to evaluate it and comment on it. And a meeting in the middle of the worst storm to hit the state in many years might not be the best time for that to happen.
