A Hallinan-Fazio Rematch
APIs could make the difference
By Jason Ma

Though San Francisco’s Asian Americans heavily favored Mayor Willie Brown in last week’s election, they were more divided when it came to the district attorney race -- making APIs a valuable bloc for incumbent Terence Hallinan and challenger Bill Fazio, who face each other in a runoff next month.

Since Friday, when all but a few thousand provisional and write-in votes were counted, the lead has wavered between them by only a few thousand votes. As of Tuesday evening, both Fazio and Hallinan were in a virtual tie, each having 38 percent of all votes cast, with Hallinan having an edge of only 370 votes. Yet on the night of Nov. 2 -- before most of the more than 44,000 Ammiano votes were tallied -- Hallinan had been trailing by some 13 points.

That means that ironically, both the mayor and Fazio will be courting similar groups of voters -- largely Chinese American, moderate to conservative home owners -- in the western parts of the city, according to CAVEC executive director David Lee.

“You may see an intersect, a coalescing, of objectives between Fazio and Brown,” he said.

The presence of two liberal candidates in the mayoral run-off puts less pressure on Hallinan to move to the left, Lee said. But Hallinan will have more incentive to break with Brown, especially since Ammiano supporters helped push him slightly ahead of Fazio. “From Brown’s standpoint Ammiano is an opponent, but from Hallinan’s he is a friend.”

“We’re very pleased with the results,” said Hallinan campaign spokesperson Ross Mirkarimi. “Whether he retains first or second position doesn’t matter. The bottom line is his position is very strong.”

Mirkarimi said it had not counted on riding the coattails of either candidate and will begin “an aggressive” run-off campaign, noting that the campaign would start intensifying field operations and its phone banks.

“We’re not expecting the mayor’s race to pull us to victory,” Mirkarimi said. “We’re looking for our own work.”

Mirkarimi played down reports that Brown has had a “falling out” with Hallinan, a longtime ally, and denied that Hallinan had called Ammiano “Mr. Mayor” during a joint appearance Oct. 30. Though both he and Fazio spokeswoman Ellie Schafer said Fazio had met with the mayor for about an hour this month, both said nothing was promised. Said Schafer: It was “a cordial, see-you-everyday-for-the next-six-weeks meeting. It wasn’t a big top-secret meeting.”

Although she admitted that the presence of Ammiano in the run-off “changes the dynamics a little bit,” Schafer said the fact that Hallinan has been unable to put any distance between himself and Fazio is still symbolic. “Mr. Hallinan could not have had a better scenario and he still comes out a pathetic second.”

Matt Gonzalez, who placed third with 11.1 percent, has not endorsed either candidate. Steve Castleman, who garnered 9.8 percent of the vote, and Mike Schaefer, who got 3.1 percent, both endorsed Hallinan on Tuesday.

While most Asian American politicos supported Hallinan, Community College Board Member Rodel Rodis went for Fazio. “They’re not that far apart” on the issues, Rodis said, making personality and temperament that much more important a factor.

“There is a lot of respect for the law in the Asian American community,” he said. Referring to critical news coverage about the incumbent for the past year, Rodis added: “When the DA criticizes a judge and when the Chronicle does a story, questions of competence will resonate.”

Emphasizing that his Filipino American Democratic Committee did not the committee did not make endorsements for the D.A.’s race, Rodis stressed he was speaking as an individual.

Rodney Leong, a member of the Republican County Central Committee that officially endorsed Fazio on Monday night, said he would personally support him over Hallinan on Dec. 14. “Fazio is the only one with solid experience,” he said. Hallinan, a city supervisor before winning a runoff against Fazio four years ago, “is a politician, not a prosecutor.”

But Community College Board President Lawrence Wong called Hallinan “a visionary” who had championed diversion programs, which Wong sees as a way to stop the revolving-door justice system.

Even Fazio campaign spokeswoman Schafer said that Fazio intends to continue the programs, which have diverted hundreds of nonviolent offenders into jail alternatives.

“Asian Americans need to realize that crime affects all of us,” said Wong, whose Asian Pacific American Democratic Club also endorsed Hallinan. “We need to be enlightened.”