PHDC NEWSLETTER

ISSUE #66 JUNE, 2014

Dear ,

Please join us for the first D10 debate of the season! We are pretty jazzed. More news below, including our super-fun "Shop Local" silent auction coming up in August.

Joni Eisen, President

Potrero Hill Democratic Club

Wednesday, July 2nd: D10 Supervisor Debate

Potrero Hill Democratic Club will host the first debate of the season among candidates for District 10 Supervisor. Moderator will be Marisa Lagos, politics reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. All five official candidates on the November 4th ballot are scheduled to appear: incumbent Malia Cohen and challengers Ed Donaldson, Tony Kelly, Shawn Richard, and Marlene Tran (left to right above). Click on a name to find the web site; the ones not linked promise to have one up soon.

PHDC resident members in good standing will vote Wednesday night on the Club's endorsement for Supervisor, using ranked-choice ballots which will be counted at the end of the evening. A candidate has to garner 60% of votes cast to earn endorsement.

Stay tuned for any possible updates; check the PHDC website or Facebook page.

WHEN: Wednesday July 2

7:15pm - setup, sign-in, social

7:30pm - program

WHERE: Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, 953 De Haro St @ Southern Heights

Eligibility to vote on Nov 4, 2014 endorsements

To be eligible to vote at September endorsement meetings, you must

● be a resident of Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Mission Bay or the houseboats; and

● have attended 2 or more meetings or other club-sponsored events during the past year, and

● either be a 2013 member who has paid 2014 dues at or before the endorsement meeting, OR

● be a new member who has paid 2014 dues 2 months before the endorsement vote.

Anyone joining the club as a new resident member during the first half of July will be able to vote in September on endorsements for the November General Election, as long as they have attended at least 2 club events within the previous year. To check your dues or attendance record, please reply to this email.

More details about voting membership, including boundaries used to determine residency, can be found on the membership page on our web site.

Save another date: Saturday, August 23rd

6th Annual "Shop Local" Silent Auction

What with all the new businesses moving into the are, plus the great ones that are already here, the Auction should be more fun than ever - quite the opportunity to explore something delicious, cutting-edge trendy, incredibly affordable - or all of the above. There will be wonderful food (from local merchants and PHDC cooks) and fabulous live jazz (by local musicians).

WHEN: Saturday, August 23, 5pm to 8pm
WHERE: Dogpatch Saloon, 2496 Third St @ 22nd St

Some updates from our allies

Saving City College

The Accrediting Commission just keeps on issuing obfuscating statements - but whatever they say, our City Attorney, neighbor and PHDC member Dennis Herrera will forge ahead with his lawsuit challenging their nefarious practices. A June 18th article by Tim Redmond lays it out for you.

Clean and Fair Elections

Several bills have recently gotten a whole lot of attention in the State Capitol.

SB 27 (Correa), dealing with dark money and nonprofits by requiring the latter to report to the Secretary of State the sources of political spending over $50K, has been signed into law.

AJR 1 (Gatto), resolution calling for a federal Constitutional Convention. As of Monday on the floor of the State Senate, California is the second state (after Vermont) officially to call for an Article V Convention to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United! If 32 more states act, it will happen whether Congress likes it or not. See history being made here.

SB 1272 (Lieu), the Overturn Citizens United Act, will put a question on the November ballot allowing Californians to vote on whether Congress should propose the amendment mentioned above, and whether the state Legislature should ratify it. it passed the Senate and was scheduled for an Assembly floor vote today.

SB 52 (Leno & Hill), the, California DISCLOSE Act. I spent the day in Sacramento yesterday to lobby and testify in support of SB 52 (amplifies the disclosure required of SB 27: the top 3 funders of a political ad must be revealed clearly and unambiguously on the ad itself). Success! - It passed the Assembly Elections Committee, 5 to 1. A few more hurdles, then onto the Governor's desk. Our Senator, Mark Leno, was especially brilliant in his rebuttal eviscerating a Republican member's objections. Of the 141 people who came to Sacramento to testify in support, at least 3 were Republicans; regular people DO want fairness.

I must say, it was energizing to see so much statewide grassroots activism in person, in action, in the belly of the beast. It was also heartening to be joined at the hearing by young people from 99Rise, who are in the middle of an Occupy the Capitol action. On May 17 they began a 480-mile March for Democracy from Los Angeles to Sacramento, arriving on Sunday with a simple demand to the leaders of our nation's largest state: publicly acknowledge the crisis of corruption by big money in politics, and take immediate action to end it. The specific actions are passage of the last 3 bills mentioned above (one down, two to go!). Members of the group have been arrested for civil disobedience at the Capitol every day since they arrived.

Revenue-neutral carbon tax

Also yesterday, over 600 volunteers from Citizens' Climate Lobby descended on the halls of Congress to lobby legislators for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. They also staged a "Congressional Climate Call-in day from anywhere" on Monday June 23 (too bad this newsletter came too late to alert you).

A helpful hint about water use from the SF PUC

My Account is an online application that allows current water and sewer customers of the SFPUC to view their water consumption usage online. This portal provides monthly and daily consumption data to assist customers with monitoring their water use, water and sewer bill costs. Voluntary water conservation will help San Francisco reach its goal of water usage reduction by 10%. Customers can compare their water consumption with other San Francisco households of a similar size, track their own conservation progress, and save water and money.

Every gallon you save helps all of us! To register, go to myaccount.sfwater.org.

June 3rd (election night) meeting followup

Because the theater was in use as a polling place, we met downstairs in the Game Room. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi (right) gave an engaging update on happenings in and around the SF Sheriff's Department, including a number of initiatives regarding public safety and rehabilitation both inside and outside the jail system.

Ed Kinchley, SEIU 2121 political education co-chair, talked about the Campaign for a Healthy California, whose mission is to "finish the job on health reform" by eventually replacing private health insurance with guaranteed, single-payer healthcare for all Californians. The Club voted to join Campaign for a Healthy California's coalition as an endorser.

And we're STILL waiting to hear whether Betty Yee, our endorsed candidate for Controller, will be in the November runoff election. The most recent results show her in 2nd place, just 661 votes ahead of former Assembly Speaker John P�rez. Lake County is the big holdout (why?), but I heard somewhere that the count between the two is so close there that it wouldn't affect the result. Go Betty! Derek Cressman, endorsed by PHDC because he's by far the best-qualified candidate for Secretary of State, came in second in the top-two primary - in San Francisco. Sigh.

Speaking of elections and endorsements...

We have decided to revisit several Primary endorsement votes in races where events and circumstances since the original vote seem to warrant such a thing for the November election. These include Superior Court Judge, where the original vote yielded no position and the candidate field has now narrowed from 3 to 2; 17th Assembly District, where the original vote also yielded no position, but members have had a lot more time since that first vote in March to consider the two candidates; and Secretary of State, where our candidate was eliminated. We hope we will not have to revisit the Controller race!