Years ago, on a visit to Zurich, I noticed the entire city seemed to be hung with political posters, declaring, in German, “No on Dog Law!”
The Swiss were having a national referendum on a new regulation involving pets – leashes, or spaying, or something over which the canines were completely helpless. I soon learned that Switzerland doesn't practice democracy in the way Americans do. (Although, some people believe California should start acting a little more like Switzerland.)
But when it comes to ballot-box lawmaking, San Francisco is a different matter. If you’ve got the money to spend and the time to devote, you can put your pet issue up for a vote – whether anybody has ever heard of it or not.
A recent example was Proposition D on San Francisco ’s November city ballot. Voters were asked if they wanted to allow giant, flashing, electronic billboards in the city’s “theatre district” – a bedraggled stretch of Market Street between Fifth and Seventh Streets. It’s an area of too many street hustlers and boarded-up storefronts, and for decades it’s proved impervious to even the most determined attempts at urban renewal.
But the giant billboards would turn the district around, according to the argument for the measure. Some of the flood of advertising revenue from the billboards was to fund arts and youth programs. The rest would go to local property owners, who then could spend it to upgrade their properties and attract upscale tenants.
The measure was pushed by one of its potential beneficiaries – David Addington, owner of the Warfield Theatre, on Market Street near Taylor Street. Billboard proponents spent $679,000 to boost the measure, and $645,000 – 95 percent of the total – came from Addington’s Warfield Theatre LLC. Opponents raised only $33,000, records show.
It didn’t matter – the billboard measure lost badly. Billboard boosters spent $15.48 per vote in the losing effort.
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