Cops Have Yet to Donate to Anti-PAC; Firefighters Quiet, Too
Being an enemy of San Francisco plumbers and pipefitters is not easy — but neither is being one of U.A. Local 38’s political allies.
The city’s plumbers union in late August formed a political action committee to oppose mayoral candidates Supervisor John Avalos and Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and did so in concert with the police and firefighters’ unions, the Examiner reported at the time.
The committee, named “Educating Voters for Jobs Against Avalos and Adachi for Mayor 2011, a coalition of police and construction workers unions,” has thus far sent out one anti-Avalos mailer, but has yet to lash out at Adachi — and has also yet to entirely live up to its name. The Police Officers Association has not donated any money to the cause, city records show, and a Hayward-based plumbers’ union has shown more zeal in opposing the two candidates than San Francisco’s firefighters, contributing almost double the cash pledged by SFFD’s PAC.
Thus far, the PAC’s received $5,000 each from the Building and Construction Trades PAC; U.A. Local 38’s Committee on Political Education Fund; and Hayward-based Sprinkler Fitters & Apprentices Local 483 PAC, city records show.
Firefighters threw down a mere $3,000, after union honcho Tom O’Connor “told me that he wouldn’t put his names on it [the attack PAC],” Avalos told the Appeal this week. Yet he doesn’t seem irritated.
“If it puts my name out there, I’m for it,” Avalos said of the mailer, delivered to District 11 residents, which accused him of using the supervisorial seat as a stepping-stone to higher office.
The plumbers have long been angry with Avalos for authoring San Francisco’s local hire law, which requires city residents to be hired on city-funded construction projects, but have not had public beef with Adachi. Police and firefighters have publicly clashed with Adachi since last year, when the public defender authored pension-reform measure Proposition B, but have not spoken out publicly against Avalos since 2009.
But where are the cops and firefighters, and why is the PAC just angry plumbers?
Plumbers union honcho Larry Mazzola, Sr., listed as the campaign committee’s chairman — who told The Examiner in April that many out-of-town plumbers were compelled to lie on employment forms thanks to Avalos’s law — did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
Ditto O’Connor, the firefighter’s union head, and Gary Delagnes, head of the Police Officers Union.
The PAC will indeed take aim at Adachi in coming weeks, according to Michael Thierault, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building Trades Council, who declined to elaborate further.
Adachi was anti-union with his pension reform measures, while Avalos has “cost San Francisco 78,000 jobs” with his votes, according to Thierault, noting votes the supervisor cast against development projects like 555 Washington, Parkmerced, Treasure Island, and others, including projects like 555 Washington which never advanced past the paper stage.
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