Daily Pundit

Conflicted San Francisco voters eject sanctuary city sheriff « Hot Air

There’s something strange going on in the City by the Bay after yesterday’s municipal elections, but I suspect that it’s far too early to get very excited about it. San Francisco voters went to the polls and rejected their sheriff who had become something of the face of the so called “sanctuary city” and they did so by a wide margin. (Fox News)

Mirkarimi was at the helm of the Sheriff’s department when Francisco Sanchez was released in defiance of immigration law requirements, only to go on to murder Kate Steinle this summer. Hennessy, the incoming Sheriff, has been critical of the policy in the past.

Allahpundit’s piece here demonstrates the accuracy of the truism that when you actually know about something, you see all the errors and ignorance journalists perpetrate when they write about that something.  As AP does here.

I actually know about this matter, because I’ve lived in San Francisco for nearly 35 years, and I’m a political junkie.  I also voted in this election, and, yeah, I voted against Mirikarimi.

AP wonders about the effect of other factors:

Still, it looks like Mirkarimi had some other problems brewing before election time rolled around. We’re not talking about huge scandals here, but the local reporting does indicate that he had his driver’s license suspended for a short time when he failed to report a minor car accident and he failed his marksmanship test earlier in the year. Some other, more serious allegations dealt with a high profile escape at the jail (bringing his leadership and security handling into question) and a case where jailers were staging fights between inmates for gambling purposes. (But if the boys are going to scrap anyway, making a few bucks off the deal is just old fashioned capitalism, really.)

None of this had any effect.  But there was a huge scandal that erupted just a few days prior to Mirikarimi’s initial election to the Sheriff’s office:  His wife showed a neighbor who was a journalist bruises on her arms where she said her husband had assaulted her – and not for the first time, either.  She told the neighbor (who videotaped the bruises) that she wanted somebody else to know, in case Mirikarimi tried to take her kids from her.

This was headline news for days, and dominated the political scene for months.  Mirikarimi was charged with several different variations of domestic violence abuse and assault, and Mayor Ed Lee demanded that he resign from office.  Mirikirami refused, and, eventually, was suspended from office for several months, while the whole thing was hashed out in the courts and at the Board of Supervisors.

And here’s the political background Allahpundit knows nothing about:  Mirikirami is an extreme lefty even by SF standards – which, of course, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a constituency.  He does, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as the organization opposing him.  The fact that Ed Lee led the charge to remove him from office is telling:  Ed Lee is an integral part of the Willie Brown machine that has ruled SF’s political scene for decades (and still does). He’s also immensely more popular that Mirikarimi himself.

Anyway, Mirikarimi finally managed to get himself into office after his wife “recanted” most of her testimony against him, but the machine doesn’t forget.  And the machine waged all-out war against him this time around.  Oh, and in case you don’t get the point – Vicki Hennessy is an integral part of the Willie Brown machine.

As for this:

Mirkarimi was at the helm of the Sheriff’s department when Francisco Sanchez was released in defiance of immigration law requirements, only to go on to murder Kate Steinle this summer. Hennessy, the incoming Sheriff, has been critical of the policy in the past.

…

So were the voters sending a message on the Sheriff’s sanctuary city status or did they just not care for the job Mirkarimi was doing in general? They keep electing the same old progressives to other leadership positions in the city and in October their board of supervisors unanimously gave a thumbs up to a resolution keeping the city’s sanctuary status in place. It doesn’t sound like the voters have let the murder of one of their own residents by a violent illegal alien felon put them off their feed all that much or we’d have seen more people in city government getting the boot.

Sheer ignorance on AP’s part.  Yes, the Steinle affair had a huge effect on the election.  Since AP doesn’t live here, he has no idea how San Franciscans feel about the Embarcadero, especially the area close to Fisherman’s Wharf, where Steinle was murdered by an illegal alien Mirikarimi released onto the streets.

We don’t really go there that much, just as New Yorkers don’t visit the Statue of Liberty or ride to the top of the Empire State Building very often.  These areas are for tourists.  But they are one of the things The City is known for, and we regard them as safe places that must and should be protected.  Beyond petty street crime, there is very little threat to any but the residents of a housing project plunked right in the middle of the wharf neighborhood.  The murder of Steinle was a shock, just as New Yorkers might be shocked at somebody being shot to death on the observation platform of the Empire State.

Now, SF being SF, nobody is going to lead a charge against ending sanctuary city status, or boot the Board of Supervisors or, especially, Ed Lee, who is tremendously well liked (even I voted for him) over it.  But given his history of domestic violence (and every San Franciscan who paid attention is convinced that Mirikarimi did smack his wife around, and probably still does), he made a perfect fall guy for the nervousness and anger created by the Steinle murder.

The thinking went – at least among those I discussed it with – well, sanctuary city policy is a Good Thing, but Mirikarimi broke the rules even of that policy, and an innocent white woman was murdered because of it.

So, the election didn’t turn on sanctuary city policy.  It turned on Ross Mirikarimi himself, and it turned out that a large majority of the locals despised him.

UPDATE:  Fox displays similar ignorance.