The Bay Citizen: Running for Mayor, but With Her Money Not in Play

How’s this for a Harvard Business School case study: The Bay Area is renowned for its entrepreneurial culture and the fortunes amassed by its technology elite. But leaders from that world have been notably unsuccessful persuading voters that business smarts qualify them for elective office. (Think Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Steve Westly.)

Can a member of this tribe win an election here?

As she campaigns to be elected San Francisco’s next mayor, Joanna Rees, a moderately successful venture capitalist and a Columbia M.B.A., is determined to prove that the seemingly immutable laws of local politics do not apply to her.

Ms. Rees, a 49-year-old mother of two, has spent the past two years visiting coffee shops and churches and riding Muni buses (in four-inch Chanel pumps) to chat up voters — employment anxiety dominates the conversations — as she angles to break the business elite’s string of electoral losses.

A formidable networker, Ms. Rees has an impressive list of campaign contributors: Mark Pincus of Zynga, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, assorted Pritzkers and Bronfmans and Coppolas, the wife and the sister of former Mayor Gavin Newsom and the musician Quincy Jones.

As Ms. Rees makes her rounds, with a business-friendly message that puts her well to the right on the San Francisco political spectrum, she is winning some support. “She is as smart as hell, a real person, not political,” said James Ludwig, former head of Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco.

Impressed by her focus on public-education innovation and her business savvy, Mr. Ludwig recently sent out hundreds of letters on Ms. Rees’s behalf. Hilary Newsom, the former mayor’s sister and president of the PlumpJack Group, has done the same.

Yet Ms. Rees remains mostly unknown. The mayoral race has many contenders, with old City Hall hands — David Chiu, Bevan Dufty, Leland Yee, Dennis Herrera, Phil Ting, John Avalos and Michela Alioto-Pier — crowding the field. In a March poll, Ms. Rees’s name did not even register. The powerful San Francisco Labor Council has not included her among the seven candidates invited to speak to 500 union delegates next week.

Ms. Rees’s problem is money. She has it. (She and her husband, her partner in a venture capital firm that is now being dismantled, live in Presidio Terrace, a gated enclave with uniformed guards.) But she has, as yet, refused to spend it.

Though she stands to collect as much as $900,000 in public financing by agreeing to campaign-spending caps, Ms. Rees herself has not yet contributed a single dollar. And under the campaign-spending caps, none of her well-heeled contributors can give more than $500.

“I am an entrepreneur who bootstrapped my way into the old boys’ club of venture capital,” said Ms. Rees, who is not affiliated with a political party but has contributed to Democratic candidates, including the liberal Senator Barbara Boxer. “I have been down in the trenches with entrepreneurs, rolling up my sleeves, to help turn a small idea into something real.? That is why a grass-roots field campaign is so compatible with who I am.”

“I am raising money the old-fashioned way, supporter by supporter,” she said.

Corey Cook, a University of San Francisco professor who organized a candidates’ forum last week, sees promise for “someone who can really claim to reform from the outside, who is effective on the business side.” However, Mr. Cook notes, “that’s not a message that traditionally plays well in San Francisco.”

And, of course, Ms. Rees cannot win if most voters do not know she exists.

“She cannot just go to bus stops and shake hands with strangers,” said Nathan Ballard, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Mr. Newsom. Mr. Ballard is not involved with any of the mayoral candidates, though he is one of the many local political operatives Ms. Rees has consulted.

“I would advise her to write a big check,” he said. “She needs to help herself.”

And that, even if you didn’t go to business school, is Marketing 101: Under-investing when launching a new product is a recipe for, well, nothing.

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On Basketball: At the Point for the Knicks With Time Running Out

It was May 6, 1990, and the Knicks were protecting a scant lead in the fourth quarter of a decisive Game 5 at the old Boston Garden, when 33-year-old Larry Bird drove the baseline and went up for an uncontested reverse dunk.

“Him, of all people, trying to dunk — and missing,” Jeff Van Gundy, then a Knicks assistant, recalled of that Sunday afternoon.

With the invisible leprechaun in charge of making sure the ball splashed through the net taking a nap, the long rebound settled into the sure hands of another 33-year-old, this one in Knicks road blue. Maurice Cheeks quick-dribbled his way to the other end to nail a pull-up jumper.

Just like that, the building was drained of certitude and the Knicks pulled away to a victory that sent their grinning general manager — an old Celtics-hater named Al Bianchi — into the cramped corridor to puff on a victory cigar as Red Auerbach, the Celtics’ patriarch who would not live to see another Celtics title, walked by.

Twenty-one years later, we have a potential re-enactment at the point of attack with 34-year-old Chauncey Billups manning the position for the Knicks as they return to the playoffs for the first time since 2004 on Sunday night at TD Garden in Boston.

Like Cheeks, acquired for Rod Strickland in 1990, Billups joined the Knicks (with Carmelo Anthony) around the February trading deadline at the cost of a younger point guard (Raymond Felton).

Like Cheeks, he came with a championship ring to impress and inspire his wannabe teammates.

Like Cheeks, who had had many playoff battles in Boston during his prime with the 76ers, Billups has no great love for the Celtics, as a former conference rival with the Pistons and as a top 1997 draft pick dealt away by Rick Pitino’s Celtics after 51 games.

In effect, and in further indictment of Pitino, Billups was traded for Kenny Anderson.

“Everybody thought that I hated Rick and Rick hated me, and that wasn’t the case,” Billups said.

“Rick had signed for a lot of money. When I got traded, he just told me there was a lot of pressure on him to win and he wanted to get a veteran point guard.

“But it was tough to get traded at that point in my career. Third pick in the draft, you feel like you’re going to be there for 9, 10, 11 years.”

Instead, Billups became a journeyman, a perceived bust, wearing five uniforms in six years before evolving into an All-Star, Mr. Big Shot, in Detroit.

There are no hard feelings, no residual anger, he said, about his short-lived stay.

“My first couple of years, I did,” he said. “But none of the guys I played with, nobody’s really there anymore.”

Don’t believe Billups isn’t relishing this opportunity to participate in what promises to be an old-school, hard-knocks series because that is how these Celtics play and that is how his no-frills Pistons, champions in 2004, went about their business.

And for those who contend that the Knicks are playing with house money, in Stage 1 of their grand renaissance, Billups would argue on a more personal level that time is of the essence, just as it was for the point man 21 years ago.

In Game 5, 1990, Cheeks played all 48 minutes, had 21 points and 7 assists, his last great N.B.A. occasion.

After the Knicks beat the Celtics, breaking a 26-game losing streak at Boston Garden, they lost in the next round to the Pistons of Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars.

Cheeks did return for the next season — one of turmoil and regression — but was gone by the time Pat Riley revitalized the franchise in the fall of 1991.

Who can say that Billups, like Cheeks, will not ultimately be a drive-by Knick, one of their few tradable assets next season, assuming the team picks up the option on what would become a $14.2 million expiring contract?

By next February, Billups could be part of the bait for Chris Paul or some other leveraged free-agent-to-be.

For now, his matchup with the crafty blur named Rajon Rondo is being called a key to this much-anticipated series.

“Although they got a lot of Hall of Famers, he is the kind of guy that makes them go,” Billups said.

But for all the talk about Billups’s chances of keeping Rondo in front of him, Coach Mike D’Antoni does have another defensive option, Toney Douglas.

Hence, the more important order for Billups will be on offense, not allowing the Knicks to make the Celtics’ lives easy by giving in to quick-jump-shot temptation. To win close games, the Knicks must execute in the fourth quarter against a premier help defense, space the floor, drive the ball, get to the free-throw line.

From Billups, they will need big shots, but also a calm, steady hand, an approach that doesn’t let his younger teammates succumb to the notion that time is their ally and the big February trade wasn’t really for now.

For Billups, there may be no playoff tomorrow in New York, and that is not the worst mentality to take into a series against the proud and favored former champions.

Because history does tell us that even the leprechauns are not a slam-dunk.

 

Carl Lewis running for election

 11 April 2011 Last updated at 22:08 ET  Mr Lewis (centre) said he wanted to give back to the southern New Jersey district where he grew up Nine-time Olympic champion Carl Lewis has said he will run again, but this time for a Senate seat in the state of New Jersey.

"When I run, as you see from my record, I run to win," Mr Lewis said.

The 49-year-old said he wanted to give back to the southern New Jersey district where he grew up by running for the Senate as a Democrat.

Mr Lewis, a former sprinter and long-jumper, is considered one of the greatest athletes of all time.

He said he was seeking a Senate seat in order to inspire people and improve educational opportunities, particularly in the area of physical education for children.

He also said he hoped to bring civility to the currently bitter US political climate.

"The people are fed up with their elected officials playing the blame game and treating their political counterparts as enemies," he said.

Mr Lewis, who will run in the 8th legislative district now represented by Republican Dawn Addiego, added that he would announce an issue-based platform within the next several days.

It will be the first time Mr Lewis has sought elected office.

On the track, his greatest triumph was the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, where he won gold in the 100 and 200 metres, the long jump and the 4x100-metre relay.

He won two golds at each of the next two Olympic Games, and took his final Olympic title - his fourth straight Olympic gold in the long jump - at the Atlanta Games of 1996.