Here’s a plausible political scenario that would drive the mayor and his allies nuts—and it’s based entirely on their own colossal screwup:
Proposition A passes in November. It takes a week or so to count all the votes, and another week or so to make sure no problems might have impacted the outcomes. Then the Department of Elections certifies the results, and the new Charter Amendment becomes law.
The next day, former Sup. Aaron Peskin walks into Elections and files as a candidate for District 3 in the 2028 election.
Voters approved a measure in June that was designed to make that impossible: The bill, by Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, imposed a lifetime ban on anyone serving more than two terms on the board. It was aimed directly at Peskin, the only person ever to take advantage of the 1990 Charter rule that allows a supervisor to serve two terms, wait for years, and run again.
Prop. A had several hearings at the board. It was sponsored by Sup. Rafael Mandelman, vetted by the City Attorney’s Office, and approved by the mayor.
None of these people read it carefully enough to notice that the first section of the new Charter, 2.101, includes the 1990 language, which was apparently cut and pasted from an older version.
It reads:
No person elected or appointed as a Supervisor may serve as such for more than two successive four-year terms. Any person appointed, elected, or any combination thereof to the office of Supervisor to complete in excess of two years of a four-year term shall be deemed, for the purpose of this section, to have served one full term. No person having served two successive four-year terms may serve as a supervisor, either by election or appointment, until at least four years after the expiration of the second successive term in office.
In other words: The plain language of the Charter, if approved by the voters in Prop. A, states that Peskin could run again.
Lurie’s billionaire allies spent a fortune passing the Mahmood measure. Now they’re spending millions more to pass Prop. A, which by any rational standard undoes it.
Mandelman and Mahmood insist it’s all a big mistake, and Mahmood says the city attorney thinks the new law doesn’t supersede the old one. “”Proposition A does not make any changes to term limits,” he said on Twitter.
That’s one hell of a legal stretch.
Courts always assume the voters were aware of the language on the ballot, and knew what they were doing when they approved it. And new law almost always trumps old law.
To be blunt, the City Charter is the City Charter, and by approving Prop. A the voters will replace Mahmood’s more restrictive language with the old, more permission version.
So Peskin files to run. What’s the Department of Elections going to do—refuse to accept the paperwork, when the law on the books is plain and clear? Not his fault that Mandelman and Mayor Daniel Lurie didn’t bother to proofread their work. (This is more common than many folks think: Lawmakers often pass complex legislation without reading the full text.)
Will Lurie and City Attorney David Chiu try to say that they don’t respect the will of the voters? Again: I doubt that flies in any California court.
Of course, Lurie and Mandelman can panic and try to call a special election (because there otherwise will be no regular election until the presidential primary in Spring, 2028) and change things back. But if Peskin has already filed, it will be too late: The US Constitution is pretty clear that you can’t retroactively outlaw something that was done legally.
I have no idea if Peskin wants to be a supervisor again. But just the thought of it makes for a great political story.
