Matt Gonzalez
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Matt Gonzalez
In December of 2000, Gonzalez became the first Green Party member to win elective office in San Francisco when he won election to the Board of Supervisors. Two years later, his colleagues on the Board elected him President of the Board of Supervisors. This surprised many as the Board was comprised of 11 members, 9 of whom were Democrats, 1 an Independent and Gonzalez the sole Green.
During his tenure Gonzalez lead the effort to raise the minimum wage in San Francisco to $8.50 an hour, the highest in the United States; he was the chief sponsor of a measure approved by the voters to implement instant run-off voting (IRV) in all municipal elections; and he was the chief proponent of a measure to keep chain stores out of neighborhood commercial districts. He also lead efforts to prohibit the sale of naming rights to the publically owned stadium "Candlestick Park" and to prohibit the keeping of elephants at the San Francisco Zoo. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to municipalize electricity by creating a municipal utility district and his ballot measure which would have given non-citizens the right to vote in local school board elections failed narrowly.
Gonzalez lost the December 2003 San Francisco mayoral election to Democrat Gavin Newsom. The race drew significant media attention because if Gonzalez had won, he would have been the only mayor of a major U.S. city who is a member of the Green Party. The results of the election also received media attention, as Gonzalez finished with over 47 percent of the vote, in a city with only 3 percent of the public registered with the Green Party. In the end, many political commentators attributed his narrow defeat to being outspent ten-to-one, and to campaign appearances made by prominent national Democrats, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson, in support of Newsom.
Gonzalez comes from a Mexican-American family (his uncle was the mayor of Reynosa, Mexico). He was raised in the border town of McAllen, Texas where he was an Eagle Scout and played high school football. In 1987, he earned a B.A. from Columbia University, where he studied literature and politics. In 1990, he earned a law degree from Stanford Law School, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. His law school classmates included Anthony Romero, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Cheryl Mills, who was a key member of Bill Clinton's defense team in his impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate.
Gonzalez announced in early 2004 that he would not seek re-election and would instead return to practicing law which he had engaged in as a deputy public defender before his entry into politics. He successor on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, Ross Mirkarimi, is also a member of the Green Party.
External links
- Matt Gonzalez Profile: "After Childhood of Privilege in Texas, Gonzalez Forged Career in Public Service," San Francisco Chronicle, December 7, 2003 (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/07/MNG253I2JI1.DTL)
- Matt Gonzalez's Political Legacy By Randy Shaw (01-03-05) (http://www.beyondchron.org/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=110&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=1292&wpage=1&skeyword=matt$$gonzalez&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=)
- Absentees Proved Crucial in Newsom’s Victory, By Rob Wrenn Berkeley Daily Planet (12-19-03) (http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=12-19-03&storyID=17957)
- Gonzalez In, By Adriel Hampton, San Francisco Independent, August 8, 2003 (http://sfindependent.com/article/index.cfm/i/080803n_gonzalez)
- Matt Gonzalez would govern from the left, By Rachel Gordon, San Francisco Chronicle, October 18, 2003 (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/10/18/MNGLC2EG4M1.DTL)
- The Gonzalez Insurrection, By Marshall Kilduff, San Francisco Chronicle, December 3, 2003 (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/03/EDGGA3EDMI1.DTL)