Monday, June 02, 2014

David Waggoner, Mirkarimi's Attorney, Pulls Papers for District 8 Race

The last I had heard about David Waggoner tossing his hat into the ring for the District 8 seat on the Board of Supervisors, was that he wouldn't be running in the November election.


I checked the Department of Elections web site tonight to see who had pulled papers to get on the November ballot and to my surprise there was David's name on the document listing potential candidates for all local races in the fall. 

David is probably best known as the gay attorney who has served as co-president of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club and successfully defended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi in his battle to regain his job when Mayor Ed Lee suspended him from office after he was charged with domestic violence, child endangerment, dissuading a witness and false imprisonment. He pleaded guilty to the final charge and the others were dropped.

Given the wall-to-wall local media coverage of the Mirkarimi mess and David's legal representation of him, I'd say he has the best name recognition of all District 8 challengers.

There are now seven challengers to the Castro district's incumbent and it pleases my democratic, small d, heart knowing a robust number of men are trying to get on the ballot and oppose the incumbent. What would be even more cool is if there were a woman or two joining the pool of challengers. The more the merrier, in my view, for our local democracy.

By the way, if you're a District 8 voter and want to sign my nominating papers, please contact me and we'll arrange a meetup soon. For all potential candidates in all Supervisorial races the deadline to turn in signatures and filing fees is June 10.

Here's a quirk of local election law that ought to be changed. A registered voter in a given district can sign only a single candidate's nominating papers. Why can't a voter support several candidates getting on the ballot? After all, we have ranked choice voting giving voters three choices in elections.

Another District 8 candidate, Simon Timony, made an excellent point to me in a phone conversation about this. He said if voters can sign petitions to place more than one ballot proposition before the electorate, then we should be able to do the same for candidates. 

The District 8 will sure be interesting!

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