SF Mayor Race Energized Youth Like Dean Campaign

by Elena Shore

Ground Zero for Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez's campaign on election night was a huge white tent crowded with nearly 2,000 young, mostly white 20-somethings drinking beer and listening to live local rock and jazz bands.

Everywhere I went, people were celebrating or engaged in passionate political conversations. Strangers looked me in the eye and smiled as if we were sharing something, we were part of something, something bigger than Matt Gonzalez.

I think that's true: the San Francisco mayoral election energized young people all over the city, and they took matters into their own hands. They created a decentralized, grassroots movement behind Gonzalez that resembled the large numbers of young people who have been campaigning for Democratic presidential Candidate Howard Dean in what the New York Times Magazine dubbed the "Dean Swarm."

Mayor Elect Gavin Newsom's campaign revolved around a well-organized, Democratic Party center. But Green candidate Gonzalez' supporters sprang up everywhere and did their own thing. They crowded onto buses and trucks, shouting campaign slogans in the rain. They made art, music and videos in support of Gonzalez. They formed their own groups, including Mutts for Matt, Dudes for Matt, Hipsters for Matt and Punks for Matt.

Much of this energy came from people who had never been involved in politics before.

"This was the first campaign I ever worked on," says Kimm Killebrew, 31, who works as an administrator for a nonprofit arts organization. "It was the first time I didn't just vote because the other candidate was worse."

Killebrew says she has already talked to four friends who are interested in running for supervisor. "People didn't feel empowered before. They do now."

According to several older campaign volunteers, that kind of energy hasn't been around since the 1960s. But can this momentum affect real change on a national level, or does it just make for a good party?

Surrounded by young white hipsters at the Gonzalez Headquarters, it is apparent that the Gonzalez campaign -- like that of Howard Dean -- has been unable to stir much excitement among non-white voters. Newsom won handily in the city's black and Chinese neighborhoods.

The Gonzalez campaign, outspent 10 to 1 by Newsom, did take at least one cue from Howard Dean and used of technology to spread the word among some young voters all over the city. Like Dean's largely Internet-propelled campaign, Gonzalez used e-mail blasts, cellular phone text messaging and other "flash mob" technology to get people to vote.

And also like Dean, the energy behind Gonzalez is part of a social movement as much about connecting to each other as it is about the candidate. It may even be as much about a culture -- with its own music, art and fashion -- as it is about politics.

The culture is that of young urban "hipsters:" A group of people in their 20s and 30s who live in the Mission, the Haight and other liberal and youth-populated areas of San Francisco. Hipsters define themselves as anti-yuppie, anti-corporate and politically liberal. If the stereotype of yuppies is Starbucks-drinking corporate professionals who dress preppy and live in affluent neighborhoods, hipsters are liberal artists, musicians, poets and activists who have a stylish alternative look, listen to local underground bands, work in non-profits and hang out in dive bars.

"Hipster," like "yuppie," can be used disparagingly, to refer to someone caught up in the trendy scene of certain Mission bars. Also like the term "yuppie," it is almost universally used to describe someone else, never oneself.

In their search for authenticity, hipsters have created a culture so stylish it is seen by some as just as superficial as the yuppie culture that they claim to reject.

But if these young people seem to define themselves more by what they aren't than by what they are, that's because they see very few reflections of themselves in the public realm. In a supposedly liberal city where corporate chains are killing off neighborhood businesses, skyrocketing rents have squeezed out many poor people and politicians only seem to be interested in money and power, many young people have rejected traditional politicians.

Gonzalez was different. He spoke directly to the concerns of young liberal voters. He opposed "Care Not Cash," a policy written by Newsom that takes away money from the homeless without providing real care. Unlike Newsom, he seemed genuine. Young people ran into him in their neighborhoods. He was one of them. Those in search of authenticity, validation of their hipster culture, and hope that their political beliefs could create real change in the civic realm found it in Gonzalez.

Other candidates have ignored the concerns of young people because they think that they don't vote or care about politics. Gonzalez proved the opposite: The reason young people don't vote is precisely because politicians ignore them.

Dean, too, has energized youth. According to the Dean campaign, one quarter of the donations they received between July and September of this year came from people under 30, many of them first-time contributors. But no San Francisco hipster would mistake the Democratic presidential contender for one of their own.

"Howard Dean isn't hanging out in the dive bars of San Francisco," says Alex Mack, 25. "We don't see him at our local taquerias, and he isn't getting ripped off by paying too much rent like we are. Howard Dean isn't one of us."

Gonzalez' chief campaign strategist, Ross Mirkarimi, isn't sure where things go from here. "We've seen the energy from campaigns dissipate in the past," Mirkarimi says. The challenge is to "channel this energy," whether locally against Newsom or as "part of a larger umbrella, like an anti-war movement or the collective mission of trying to unseat George Bush."