Panther Power

Feinstein faces a recall vote

When San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein last summer got the board of supervisors to pass an ordinance to outlaw most handguns in the city, she was predictably the target of potshots from the right. The local political left, of course, was generally pleased with the antigun crusade of the moderate mayor. But not all factions on the left: more determinedly upset than any of the conservative gun groups was the White Panther Party, a ragtag tribe of about a dozen communards encamped in an electric-blue town house in--yes--the Haight-Ashbury district. The Panthers were formed in the 1960s, and they still adhere to a position popular with the far left in that frenzied time: revolutionaries need weapons.

The present Panthers did not waste time with '60s-style protests and sloganeering: last month they blind-sided the city by turning in petitions signed by 35,000 people that called for the ouster of Mayor Feinstein. That was more than enough signatures to force only the second mayoral recall election in San Francisco since 1900.

The ad hoc election is unofficially scheduled for April 26. Feinstein and her aides fear that even if she survives the recall vote, she could suffer politically in the regular quadrennial election coming up in November. Two-thirds of the voters are Democrats, as is Feinstein, who took office in 1978 after the handgun murder of Mayor George Moscone; the next year she won the popular election. Admits a Feinstein adviser of the April vote: "We can't afford to win this one by only 51% to 49%."

Ironically, the gun ordinance itself is now dead. Last month the state supreme court declined to overturn a lower court ruling that the measure violated California's constitution. By that time, however, the recall petition had become a grievance catchall. Feinstein, 49, though widely regarded as bright and hard working, has alienated various constituent groups. In December she vetoed an ordinance, backed by the city's substantial homosexual population, that would have given unmarried couples, even those of the same sex, many of the rights of married people. Landlords and tenant groups are both critical of her housing policies. Says Feinstein: "You can get people to sign a petition for an overhead sewer line on Market Street." The recall, wrote Journalist Warren Hinckle in the Los Angeles Times, "has reinforced San Francisco's reputation as a tree house for adult delinquents." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.