Yesterday I pointed out in the Battle for Bayview that Lennar’s spending to qualify their land-grab initiative for June’s ballot seemed like a political jobs program for Team Gavin. With over a half a million spent, plenty was spread around to Newsom’s political operatives.

Well, today Lennar submitted another supplemental filing to Ethics, showing they’ve dropped another $113,000 into their signature-gathering effort. Over $90,000 of this has gone to pay off Gavin’s political handlers. This brings Lennar’s total so far to nearly $625,000! The take-home for San Francisco’s political class? Over $360,000. And keep in mind that the campaign hasn’t even begun!

Didn’t anyone tell Lennar that Gavin could’ve placed the measure on for free?

For those keeping score at home, we’ve spent less than $2000 on the Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative so far.

Clearly, The San Francisco Chronicle excels at publishing talking points from corporate special interests. In today’s release, they boil down the epic battle for the soul of Bayview to just another installment of Chris Daly versus the Newsom establishment (with Supervisors Peskin and McGoldrick now on the other side). Like any good corporate PR firm, The Chronicle doesn’t even acknowledge the community in opposition to the Lennar’s land grab — no mention of the 1,000-person coalition that’s been protesting Lennar for blanketing the neighborhood with asbestos dust and no mention of the 33,000 San Franciscans who signed the referendum of the Bayview Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan and whose voices were silenced by a legal technicality. And, of course, The Chronicle fails to mention of the fact that the Lennar Corporation is single-handedly funding their campaign – to the tune of over $500,000.

In what amounts to a Gavin Newsom political jobs program, Lennar has already dumped over $250,000 into San Francisco’s biggest political consultants. Terris, Barnes, and Walters have received over $100,000. Eric Jaye’s Storefront Consulting and Singer and Associates have each received at least $50,000. Jim Stearns and Alex Tourk’s Ground Floor have taken in $25,000 and $20,000 respectively. And the campaign hasn’t even gotten going yet!

Even with what seems to be the entire political establishment on retainer, Lennar must have been caught off-guard by the timing of the Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative. Typically, Lennar uses elements from the community that they’ve bought off to do their bidding for them. Today, Lennar had to do its own dirty work…

The Daly-backed measure “is essentially a poison pill,” said Kofi Bonner, president of Lennar’s urban land division in San Francisco. “No private developer is going to be able to create something on this scale of development, including parks and infrastructure, and be able to provide 50 percent affordable housing.”

Funny. I actually agree with Lennar on this. We shouldn’t rely solely on private developers, especially the likes of Lennar, to deliver the affordable housing that we need in San Francisco. In fact, last year the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution establishing policy for the eastern neighborhoods of San Francisco authored by Sophie Maxwell and co-sponsored by the aforementioned Mssrs. Peskin and McGoldrick. In it the Board sets an aggressive goal for affordable housing production – 64% with “28% of housing affordable to Moderate Income households, 10% of housing affordable to Low Income households, and 26% of housing affordable to Very Low Income households.” The policy goes on to say that the “affordable housing implementation strategy developed with the Mayor’s Office of Housing (and) the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (should) include the mechanisms and financial resources needed to meet the housing production percentage targets specified.”

So, how is the Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative off-target with this policy? If anything, the measure doesn’t mandate enough affordable housing. That’s a far cry from the positions of Peskin and McGoldrick. In the largest swath of underdeveloped land in San Francisco, in one of the most affordable-housing hungry neighborhoods of our City, we need to be delivering unprecedented levels of affordability to meet our housing challenge. The Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative, along with November’s Affordable Housing Charter Amendment, will do this.

So what’s the problem? I think that The Chronicle sums it all up in two little sentences. “Bonner said the Lennar project is estimated to cost $1.4 billion. The company would expect to eventually make a 20 to 25 percent rate of return on its investment.” Twenty-five percent of $1.4 billion is $350 million — simple math. $350 million is the profit Lennar admits it wants to extract from the Bayview, and that’s the problem.

Please join me this Wednesday, as community leaders from Bayview-Hunters Point and progressive allies launch a signature-gathering drive to qualify the Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative for the June 2008 ballot. This initiative will require that at least 50% of all housing built in Hunters Point/Candlestick be affordable to San Franciscans at a mix of incomes (between 30% and 80% median income). It will also require the phased rebuilding of Alice Griffith Public Housing while protecting all current residents against displacement.

The Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative is especially important, as the political establishment joins forces with megadeveloper Lennar Corp. in one of the largest land grabs in San Francisco history. Lennar, who is developing 1600 units of housing in Hunters Point, has already reneged on promises of affordability in those units and has negligently exposed neighboring residents to asbestos particulate. Lennar, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein, former Mayor Willie Brown, and Mayor Gavin Newsom, is now circulating a petition called the “Bayview Jobs, Parks, and Housing Initiative” for June’s ballot that would green-light Lennar’s control of an additional 350 acres of San Francisco land without mandating any minimum level of community benefit. This means that Lennar may be allowed to develop up to 10,000 new housing units with no minimum housing affordability, despite the fact that the primary housing issue facing Bayview Hunters Point is affordability (Bayview Hunters Point Area Plan).

The Bayview-Hunters Point/Progressive coalition has less than 2 weeks to gather 7,168 valid signatures to qualify the Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative for June’s ballot, as signatures are due by February 4^th.  Needless to say, it is going to take a significant grassroots effort to quality our measure.

Please join me this Wednesday, January 23^rd, at 5:30pm, at the SF Green Party, 1028 Howard St # A (between 6^th and 7^th) for a brief training and signature-gathering mobilization.  Also, watch out for big weekend mobilizations in the next 2 weeks.

And make sure to read more about Lennar in Sarah Phelan’s excellent Bay Guardian articles, Question of Intent and The Corporation That Ate San Francisco.

A single day after the close of the filing period for Mayor, Gavin Newsom did what establishment Democrats are supposed to do. He endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. Back when the threat of a progressive campaign loomed, Newsom considered supporting Barack Obama to deflect the challenge from the left. But with the Mayor’s race secure, Newsom looked to build his own fortunes in national political circles as an establishment Democrat.

With Clinton up 20 points in national polls (and with polls even showing her leading Iowa) Newsom jumped at the opportunity to affix his star to hers. Certainly being an early endorser of the next President could only help one with his own Presidential ambitions.

No matter that Hillary’s out of step with San Francisco voters on the big issues, especially the war in Iraq. Gavin’s never been there either. Considering Newsom’s opposition to grassroots efforts to impeach Bush and Cheney and his total lack of support for measures to call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq and military recruiters from our schools, Clinton really was the best match for him.

In the past month, Newsom really played up his role in the Clinton campaign with two trips to the Hawkeye State. Showcasing his own small town mettle, Newsom “charged from tiny middle school theater to weather-beaten Elks Club, from local bar to coffee art house, from Cedar Rapids to Fairfield to Solon, working phone parties and home gatherings, in the space of a few hours.” He even bragged about spending an hour and a half wooing one difficult Iowa voter. Funny how Newsom hasn’t been able to make it down the hall to a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting.

Newsom and the Democratic establishment had their fortunes dashed tonight as Barack Obama’s sea of change swept through Iowa. Momentum from the win in Iowa, and a very strong speech at his victory celebration, should be enough to catapult him into the lead for the New Hampshire Primary and on to South Carolina. An Obama sweep of the first three states puts the Junior Senator from Illinois into frontrunner position going into California’s primary on Super Duper Tuesday in February. Clearly, this is not what Newsom and the rest of the Democratic establishment had in mind.

My interest was certainly piqued by John Edwards’ anti-corporate, populist message in Iowa. However, with the Democratic race now all but narrowed to a 2-person contest, it’s time to rally support for the upstart progressive against the status quo.

Sorry, Gavin. Barack Obama for President!