Chris Daly

File:Chris Daily.jpg

Supervisor Chris Daly

Chris Daly (born 1972) is a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He represents District 6, encompassing the Civic Center, Tenderloin and South of Market districts, Treasure & Yerba Buena islands and the northern half of the Mission District (known as Inner Mission). At age 28, he was elected to the Board in 2000, and re-elected in 2002 and 2006, taking advantage of a legal exception granted by the City Attorney in recognition of having only served two years in his first term. Aside from being a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he also represents San Francisco County in the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board of Directors. Daly is married to Sarah Low Daly, whom he met at the World Youth Festival in Havana, Cuba; they have a son, Jack. He and his wife own a condominium in District 6.

Background

Daly grew up in a middle-class family in suburban Maryland outside Washington, D.C. His father was a federal employee and consultant, and his mother an accountant. Daly moved to San Francisco during the dot-com boom of the 1990s, having dropped out of Duke University in favor of a career in community organizing. He worked for the NGO "Empty the Shelters" in Philadelphia and in San Francisco. He then entered the world of politics as a housing rights advocate. He was a co-founder of the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, a community group dedicated to fighting the displacement of tenants, artists and poor people in the Mission District caused by gentrification.

Political career

Daly was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in December 2000. In the 2002 and 2006 elections, supervisors were chosen by district, not at large. In these elections, Daly received 6,642 and 8,654 votes respectively.

Housing and Homelessness

Daly's legislative record has been focused primarily on housing development and homelessness. He has sponsored legislation to help low-income tenants of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) residential hotels, many of whom are located in his district. Specifically, Daly instituted a Sprinkler Ordinance that requires all SRO hotels to have a sprinkler system installed in each room to prevent fires. Most recently, Daly negotiated a planned development on Rincon Hill, where the developer was allowed to build above the zoning limit in exchanged for a higher percentage of affordable housing units and payments to Daly-approved charity groups operating in the supervisor's South of Market district.

Critics of Daly's housing policies point to his attempt to ban tenancy-in-common apartment conversions, which they believe allow middle-income people to buy property in San Francisco. After the landmark State Army building was purchased by ponographic film developers, Daly was criticized for blocking housing developments in the building and rezoning the area around the armory to keep it from being built up.

In June 2006, Daly sponsored the Eviction Disclosure Ordinance, which required real estate agents to inform buyers whether a tenant was evicted from a property they wish to purchase. The ballot proposition won with 52 percent of the vote.

Controversial Demeanor

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Daly is "either a hothead or a passionate advocate -- depending on whose side you are on." In 2001, Daly nearly came to blows with Mayor Willie Brown after Daly brought homeless activists to a meeting that was supposed to be "private." Asked to apologize, Daly replied, "I will apologize that I was lured into the mayor's finger-pointing politics." In November 2004, fellow supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier lodged a petition for censure against Daly after he told a landlord advocate to "fuck off" at a tenants' rights hearing (the petition failed by a vote of 8-2). In 2001, Daly famously told his colleagues at a supervisors' meeting, "I'm not feeling the love" when they rejected his proposals for balancing the budget, as he stormed out the room. In 2002, Daly was arrested after a confrontation with police over a land use dispute concerning Hastings Law School; no charges were filed.

In 2003, serving as acting mayor while Mayor Willie Brown traveled to Tibet, Daly appointed two anti-Brown members to the Public Utilities Commission. After the City Attorney looked into its legality, one appointment was rescinded, but the other, that of Adam Werbach, stayed. Mayor Brown said that the appointment "clearly is a conspiracy to, in one manner or another, move away from the traditions, the rules, the customs and the conduct that has been the hallmark of this city, long before I became mayor of this city." But Daly said by way of explanation for his actions, "I'm an activist. I had an opportunity, and I took it." The custom of assigning the acting mayor position to supervisors on a round-robin basis was discontinued after Daly's actions.

Daly's wife, Sarah Low Daly, celebrating his win in the 2006 supervisorial elections, said to a crowd of supporters, "...I so wanted to give the 'Fuck you speech.' You're going to hear a lot of 'Fuck you' from my mouth tonight. To those motherfuckers who don't want to pay people a living wage at Golden Gate Restaurant Association, fuck you. And if the police don't want to be accountable to the communities for which they're supposed to serve, fuck you. And to all those landlords who think it's okay to evict your tenants and the plumbers who voted it's okay, fuck you."

Question Time with the Mayor

In November 2006, Daly placed a nonbinding advisory measure, Proposition I, on the ballot making it City policy to have the Mayor appear at a monthly meeting of the Board of Supervisors to answer their questions. The measure was modeled after Question Time in the British Parliament. The voters approved the nonbinding measure with 56 percent of the vote, but Newsom has not agreed to attend a meeting, preferring instead to have monthly meetings with the general public.

Elimination of the Police Chief post

Daly has suggested putting a charter amendment before voters in the November 2007 municipal election calling for elimination of the police chief post. Instead, the elected sheriff would oversee all law enforcement in the city and county of San Francisco. The suggestion arose from Daly's disagreements with Police Chief Heather Fong about the placement and use of police patrols. "If they keep the attacks on me, I’ll keep moving forward what I think is good public policy," Daly said. "What they fear is the end of their reign of terror in San Francisco."

External links

• Supervisor Chris Daly's San Francisco City Government profile page
• Chris Daly's "Daly" blog
• Chris Daly's MySpace page
• The Daly Show, a blog devoted to Chris Daly
• Editor, (July 26, 2001) "A Walking Embarassment." San Francisco Chronicle.
• Smith, Matt (August 31, 2005)"Progresive Failure: Why San Francisco Supervisors Who Call Themselves Progressives Should Get the Boot in November." SF Weekly.
• Chris Daly at IMDb