By  Calvin Welch, HANC Board

Haight Ashbury voters showed more interest in the November election than did San Franciscans or Californians and voted to the "left" of both on all statewide candidates and measures. We also defeated the hottest local ballot measure- Proposition L ("Sit/Lie") to the embarrassment of new resident Gavin Newsom and the consternation of various nabobs of the chattering conservative class from Arthur Evans to CW ("Consistently Wrong") Nevius.

Some 64% of the neighborhoods 11,000 voters turned out to vote, topping the City's 61% and the states 59%. Haight-Ashbury voters gave Jerry Brown a whopping 91% of the vote to Whitman's 8% ( SF gave Brown 80%, California voters 52%); Boxer equaled Browns 91%, but Fiorina pulled but 7% of the Haight-Ashbury vote while San Francisco voters gave Boxer 80% and California voters 52%.

On statewide issues the same progression applied: the Haight-Ashbury passed the marijuana legalization measure Prop. 19 with a 81 % yes vote. San Francisco gave 19 64% of its vote but state voters rejected it with a 54% No vote. Proposition 25 which repealed the 2/3rd vote requirement to pass a state budget was approved in our neighborhood with 86% of the voters. San Franciscans passed it with a 56% yes vote and California's passed it by 55% .

Haight Ashbury Voters Reject Prop. L: Nevius "Consistently Wrong"

How the Haight-Ashbury voted on Proposition L has been the subject of two columns by CW Nevius in which he mis-states that the "real" Haight-Ashbury voted for sit/lie . The actual fact was that the Haight-Ashbury voted against Proposition L by a razor thin 35 votes: 3370 Yes to 3405 No.

L won Citywide because of the absentee vote where it prevailed 59% Yes to 41% No. It actually lost, Citywide, on election day 49% Yes to 51 % No.. The same pattern was seen in the Haight-Ashbury with two big differences: first, the absentee vote in the Haight-Ashbury was more close than Citywide, with fewer Haight-Ashbury absentee voters supporting L. Second, the election day vote was more anti-L in the Haight-Ashbury than Citywide.

The figures below use the HANC boundaries of the Haight-Ashbury: Fulton to 17th, Stanyan to Baker/Buena Vista West/Clayton. The figures are from the final Statement of Vote by the Department of Elections.

First, the total vote on Prop. L went like this:

                                Yes               No                %

Haight-Ashbury     3370            3405             50.2%N
Citywide                 142, 601     120,023         54% Y

The absentee vote looked like this:

                                 Yes                 No             %

Haight-Ashbury      1451               1230          54% Y
Citywide                  78,865            53,910      59% Y

The election day vote went like this:
 
                                  Yes                  No            %

Haight-Ashbury       1916                2172        53% N
Citywide                   63,736            66,113     51% N

The significance of this vote and why Nevius had to first mis-state and then contort an argument to imply that L won in the Haight-Ashbury was that our neighborhood was made the scapegoat for the issue by him and the Chronicle. In over 30 articles and columns appearing in the Chronicle on the subject they invented a narrative about our neighborhood as being the reason for the need of sit/lie and if voters here actually rejected that narrative because it was simply untrue then the Chronicle and Nevius would be seen for what they actually were: wrong on the facts. They simply did not report the facts about the outcome of the election in our neighborhood and Nevius went his usual one step beyond using his column to mislead his readers not once but twice about the outcome of the election in our neighborhood.