Debra Walker is a stooge for the Mayor? Yeah, right.
From the SF Bay Guardian by Tim Redmond
Onward: much, much ado at the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods meeting May 16. The agenda for a group that has too often been under the sway of Joe O’Donoughue included a proposal to rescind the coalition’s endorsement of Prop. D, the badly flawed Laguna Honda measure.
Joe and his ally, former CSFN president Barbara Meskunas, had pushed for (and won) an early endorsement of the measure, which would use zoning rules to ban certain types of patients from the hospital. Somehow, though, the Yes on D presentation wasn’t entirely complete: Most CSFN members who initially voted to back the plan didn’t realize that it had potentially much more sweeping impacts, and could legalize private development on a lot of other city property.
As news about what Prop. D really meant began to get out, some coalition members demanded a new vote — and after a month’s parliamentary delay, they got one.
The debate, I’m told, was lively: At one point, Tony Hall, whom the mayor appointed to head the Treasure Island Development Authority, accused Debra Walker, a longtime progressive, of being a “stooge for the mayor.” Ultimately, though, the vote to rescind the endorsement won, 23–8, with Hall, Meskunas, and Newsom-appointed planning commissioner Michael Antonini in the minority.
Shortly afterward, the members voted on new officers, and a slate of candidates led by Meskunas was roundly defeated. At which point Meskunas stormed out of the room, later resigning from the organization.
“This was a battle for the soul of the coalition,” Tony Kelly of the Potrero Boosters told me. “It’s been brewing for a while.”
Yeah, it’s just one more San Francisco political group and one more internal battle, but it might mean a lot more. First of all, it shows that Hall and Antonini — both, remember, Newsom appointees — are coming on strong against the mayor, fueling the theory I keep hearing that Hall will challenge Newsom from the right in 2007 (and try to get his friend Matt Gonzalez, who also supports Prop. D, to mount a challenge from the left).
Gonzalez told me he hadn’t heard anything about that plan yet (and he found it quite odd), but (of course) he’s not ruling out another mayoral campaign. SFBG
Posted: 2006-05-23 17:29:06
May 25th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Barbara and Doug Comstock are both active in the “Yes on D”.
In the Spring of 1992 Barbara Meskunas and Doug Comstock brought the Coalition into chaos and a schism when they decided to manipulate the membership in their effort to fight the plan to build a baseball park just north of Potrero Hill. It wasn’t a question of the worthiness of their goal but the method they used: misinformation.
It took years for the wounds to heal and for the Coalition and the League for San Francisco Neighborhoods to put the past behind and regroup as a newly constituted Coalition. Josie Mooney actually served as the facilitator during that meeting. Neither Barbara nor Doug was active in the Coaltion at that time. They have since drifted in and out according to their interests.
But when Opportunity knocks they appear.
MORAL: People who want to maintain their credibility should avoid associating with people who don’t have any: Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas.