San Francisco poised to elect its youngest mayor in over a cent

SAN FRANCISCO -- The two candidates in Tuesday's runoff mayoral election weren't even born when the man they hope to replace, 69-year-old Willie Brown, began his storied political career.

But youth and inexperience are not exactly liabilities in a place as covetous of its cutting-edge image as San Francisco, where voters are poised to elect the city's youngest mayor in over a century.

Democrat Gavin Newsom, 36, and his opponent Matt Gonzalez, 38, are the candidates challenging Brown.

Their lifestyles and physical appearances help the candidates to play up their differences. The married Newsom is a buttoned-down, all-American type who lives in a $3 million home. The single Gonzalez hangs out with poets, shares an apartment with three roommates and looks as if he just rolled out of bed.

In most other cities, both Gonzalez and Newsom would fall into the same liberal category. Both favor rent control, gay marriage, immigrant rights and restrictions on gun ownership.

Each has his own base of crucial Chinese-American, Hispanic, gay and lesbian and labor union support.

Yet if the candidates' campaign rhetoric is to be believed, it's a matchup no less stark than George Bush vs. Ralph Nader.

Newsom, for instance, has painted his rival as an ideologue with views that are "extreme by even extreme standards," who would infringe on property rights and tax businesses out of the city.

For his part, Gonzalez casts Newsom as a cold-hearted conservative who led the initiative to cut back benefits for the homeless and is beholden to legions of monied campaign donors.

Their lifestyles and physical appearances have made it easy for the candidates to play up their differences. The married Newsom is a buttoned-down, all-American type who subdues his hair with copious amounts of gel and lives in a $3 million home. The single Gonzalez hangs out with poets and artists, shares an apartment with three roommates and looks as if he just rolled out of bed.

According to the latest filings, Newsom has $3.3 million and Gonzalez has $401,000.

San Francisco State's DeLeon said it's unclear how traditional "get-out-the-vote" methods will play with an electorate "fed up with the old way of doing things."

"There is a sense that the Gonzalez campaign is really a neighborhood-based, grass-roots campaign, which almost validates this as an insurgent people's movement against the machine," DeLeon said. "A lot of folks, especially on the left in San Francisco, are always looking over their shoulder for the next thing, thinking they are the vanguard of the nation."