Sup. Connie Chan opened her new campaign headquarters in the Mission Saturday, and as she arrived, a camera crew from KGO-TV was on hand to ask her a few questions.
They were all about state Sen. Scott Wiener’s racist, sexist AI chatbot. The reporter clearly realized how bad the chatbot was, and gave Chan a chance to say that “mocking women and mocking the immigrant community is unacceptable … I know who I am and who this campaign represents.”
As a crowd packed the 24th Street office to hear from Chan and get canvassing assignments, the political message seemed pretty clear:
Wiener, who is running largely a negative campaign, made a serious mistake, and it’s backfired, badly.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi denounced the Wiener attack:
“Women have spent generations fighting to have our own voices heard in the halls of power. We should not have to fight against artificial intelligence putting words into our mouths.”
So did eight other women in Congress, two SF supervisors, the SF Women’s Political Committee, and a number of other community groups.
Wiener made things much worse by defending his actions, and then taking a shot at Pelosi.
It’s not just the chatbot. Wiener’s campaign at this point is largely about attacking Chan as an obstructionist, and he’s been using billboards to promote the AI bot, which gives fake answers suggesting Chan is against progress.
Progress, in Wiener’s approach, means more luxury housing, which does nothing for the crisis.
At her HQ kickoff today, Chan tried to turn that around: She said she is the candidate of “yes,” to Medicare for all, for free childcare, for reproductive rights, for affordable housing … all things that are popular not just in the district but increasingly nationwide.
So the failure of the AI chatbot is not just, as Wiener tried to spin it, a simple tactical error—it’s an indication that his entire campaign, which is based on attacking Chan for not saying Yes to the Big Tech and real estate agenda, is facing some problems.
Meanwhile, the race, according to two polls, is essentially tied.
I’d like to see some honest discussions of the differences between the candidates on some key local and national issues. Wiener opposed the Board of Supes Gaza ceasefire resolution; Chan supported it. Wiener supports keeping the Great Highway closed to cars; Chan wants it opened on weekdays. Wiener made possible the Marina Safeway project; Chan doesn’t support it (nor does the mayor). Wiener has used his state Senate role to cut communities out of housing development decisions; Chan thinks residents should have a role in the future of their neighborhoods.
Chan supports guarantees that new housing will be built with unionized skilled and trained labor; Wiener supports more streamlined regulations. I’d like to know where they both stand on the Housing Guarantee Act.
Chan supports the billionaire tax on the November ballot. Wiener does not.
These are critical issues, and the voters should know where the candidates stand.
But we know what Wiener and the IE supporting him will do over the next 84 days: Attack, relentlessly, with misinformation if that’s what necessary. That’s what Wiener does when he’s in a close race.
There’s an interesting candidate forum coming up Wednesday/12: The California Alliance for Retired Americans is holding its annual convention, and both Wiener and Chan will speak on senior and disability issues. It’s in Oakland at the Teamsters 2010 hall, but is also online, and you can register here.
Among the issues this group cares about: The future of Social Security. Americans currently pay Social Security taxes on just the first $184,000 of income; people with salaries higher than that pay nothing more towards the basic retirement system. Raising that number would help make the system more stable.
But what do you do about Larry Ellison, who takes no salary at all but lives a luxurious life by borrowing against his stock—and thus pays no income taxes and contributes nothing to Social Security? What about all the tech billionaire investors, whose money comes from capital gains, which are not taxed for Social Security?
Again: I would like to hear where the candidates stand.
That meeting starts at 10am.
Gabriel Lorenzo Greshler and Maggie Angst have a nice scoop in the SF Standard about a slush fund that tech billionaire Chris Larsen has created for Sup. Matt Dorsey. Larsen gave $25,000 to an active account for Dorsey’s potential future election to the Democratic County Central Committee, which has no contribution limits. Dorsey spent some of that on
669 Uber and bike-share transactions totaling $5,374; 65 charges to restaurants ($3,568); and six Apple purchases ($3,373). The restaurant expenses include Turquaz SF, the Italian deli Limoncello, and The Grove.
Dorsey maintains that the charges are for his duties as a member of the DCCC (the body meets roughly once a month) and that he plays a major role in the local party and “may be seeking more of a role at the state party” — hence the need to be zooming around town, taking people out to meals, and buying an Apple computer for the job.
The supes used to have something called “friends accounts,” where big donors could put up cash without limits to help the supes pay their daily expenses. It was a recipe for corruption, and the voters abolished that practice years ago. Now, Dorsey, alone among the supes, has found a way around it.
He earns $180,000 a year as a supe. He can afford to pay his own restaurant bills. Or: Larsen can pay for him. Looks really bad.
Full disclosure: My independent adult daughter works on the Connie Chan for Congress campaign.
