SAN FRANCISCO — Volunteers take yoga breaks. Musicians wander in to plunk out tunes on the borrowed grand piano or entertain supporters with the mournful sounds of the didgeridoo. More than 300 local artists have covered the walls with their lent works, turning this once-barren warehouse into the city's largest impromptu gallery.
Just a month ago, this space was vacant. Today, it is ground zero for the upstart mayoral campaign of Board of Supervisors President and Green Party member Matt Gonzalez.
Gonzalez's opponent, millionaire entrepreneur and city Supervisor Gavin Newsom, was widely expected to sail to the finish line without a hair out of place. He has campaigned for more than a year as the chosen successor of outgoing Mayor Willie Brown. In the November general election, voters handed Newsom a resounding 42% to 20% lead over Gonzalez in the nine-candidate field.
But after Gonzalez leapfrogged his progressive mentors to snag the runoff slot, the landscape of this city's top political contest shifted with a seismic jolt.
With two days before residents vote Tuesday, Democratic Party favorite Newsom is on the defensive. And Gonzalez, whose shaggy mane and ill-fitting suits contrast sharply with Newsom's slicked-back hair and preppy attire, has created a buzz in liberal circles as a populist cure to politics as usual.
Newsom, 36, has outspent Gonzalez by about 10 to one, pouring more than $3.6 million into mailers that have turned increasingly negative as the race has tightened. He has secured a range of Democratic Party endorsements, including former Vice President Al Gore, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi -- who has warned that a Green Party victory in the nonpartisan race would damage the Democrats.
At Gonzalez's Mission district headquarters, supporters relax on donated sofas in a low-lighted lounge named the Elector8 -- in a twist on San Francisco's defunct Club DV8.
Here, volunteers who have swelled in ranks from 1,000 to more than 4,000 in weeks sip organic juice and talk about a new era in national politics if Gonzalez, 38, can pull off an upset. Many are new to politicking and have embraced the candidate's image as an ethical outsider who will place the interests of the working poor above corporate concerns.
"All of a sudden, at age 40, I have more excitement and enthusiasm about participatory democracy than I've ever had in my life," said Eckhart Beatty, a lanky freelance writer who tied Gonzalez signs and yellow balloons to his bicycle on a recent evening before riding off with other supporters for a promotional tour through city streets.
"People have ... a sense of awe that someone can put himself out there as a no-nonsense, down-to-earth leader who is genuinely concerned with some sense of ethics," he said. "It's time for a leader for the people and not primarily rich special-interest groups."
Gonzalez, political observers say, has managed to cast himself as the antipolitician at a time when many have soured on the system in general, and on Brown's machine-style politics specifically.
This despite the fact that Gonzalez holds the top seat on the Board of Supervisors, where he was ushered to power with a slate of left-leaning newcomers in 2000.
In presenting himself this way, Gonzalez has fired up a grass-roots campaign that is nipping at Newsom's heels.
Polls by New Jersey-based SurveyUSA have shown Gonzalez with a growing lead over Newsom. Even though those polls are viewed as suspect because they can capture improbable and unqualified voters, they were widely reported in the city and gave Gonzalez a boost.
Meanwhile, San Francisco's respected pollster David Binder conducted polls for Newsom and a consortium of business interests that support him. They show Newsom in the lead by a steadily narrowing margin, with Gonzalez drawing to within 7 percentage points.
"Gonzalez seems to be mobilizing young people in a way we haven't seen in a long, long time," said San Francisco State University political science professor Richard DeLeon.
"Newsom is running this classic, well-oiled, professional campaign that in the past has steamrolled everyone," DeLeon added. "But in San Francisco, with its deeply ingrained antipower bias as part of the political culture, that has a recoil effect. It is not consistent with grass-roots neighborhood activism, and it backfired."
Poets, artists, comedians, bikers and even strippers have hosted fundraisers for Gonzalez, a former deputy public defender who once played bass in a punk band, holds monthly art openings in his City Hall office and is a beat poet aficionado. Nearly 100 house parties have spread the word from neighborhood to neighborhood.
Though Gonzalez says "98 percent" of volunteers are city residents, some have come from as far as New Jersey to donate their time. "Coming to San Francisco with 50 people from Portland. Need floor space to sleep on. Nothing fancy," read one recent phone message for volunteer coordinator Alli Starr.
