Happy Day After Election Day! Today you can savor the clarity of a (mostly) known election outcome and the knowledge that your mailbox will no longer overflow with huge stacks of election-related direct mail. Today, it’s all about the results — and the punditry about what those results tell us.
On that last score, Bernalwood is very fortunate to have some of the most clever readers in the entire universe. Specifically, we speak here of Neighbor Patrick, who has done us the great service of looking at some key returns from yesterday’s vote through the prism of the Official Guide to the Microhoods of Bernal Heights.
Neighbor Patrick has broken down the results of the David Campos vs. David Chiu contest for the District 17 Californa State Assemby seat by Bernal microhood. He then did the same for Prop E, the Soda Tax measure, to see how it fared here in the Dominion of Bernalwood.
As you probably know, the current citywide election tallies show that David Chiu is on track to defeat Bernal resident and D9 Supervisor David Campos for the State Assembly seat. As MissionLocal reports this morning, though some absentee and provisional ballots remain outstanding, “with all precincts reporting, Chiu held a 2,397-vote lead over Campos in the Assembly race to replace Tom Ammiano.” (At this writing, Campos has yet to concede.) Meanwhile, the Prop E Soda Tax failed to clear the two-thirds majority it needed to pass.
But how did Campos and Prop E do in Bernal Heights?
For that, let’s go to Neighbor Patrick in the Bernalwood Election 2014 News Center:
I thought I’d do a little digging into the election results and break down voting patterns by Bernal microhood using the Bernalwood map posted on March 18th. I think it’s a little more revealing than the generic “Bernal North” and “Bernal South” designations used by the SF elections department!
I’ve attached charts for the Campos/Chiu vote as well as the Prop E (soda tax) vote as these were the closest races. These are based on the preliminary figures released by SF Elections very early this morning so they may change slightly as provisional ballots are counted.
Note that there isn’t perfect overlap between precinct boundaries and microhood boundaries, but I’ve done my best.
Here are Bernal microhood results for Campos vs. Chiu:
Here’s the Bernal microhood breakdown for Prop E:
Innnnnteresing, yes? It would appear that the residents of Foggy Vista, on Bernal’s west slope, are the most progressive tribe of all Bernalese. Neighbor Patrick adds:
I guess what jumps out at me is the relative conservatism of St. Mary’s and Alemanistan, and the heterogeneity of the different microhoods. I was very surprised to see St. Mary’s actually vote against Prop E (it was over 50% citywide although that wasn’t enough to make it law). Turnout was pretty even across the board, although Alemanistan was below average at 34%.
There’s lots to ponder and pontificate about in this analysis, which is why the Internet Gods have given us the commenting mechanism. Most of all, though, HUGE thanks to Neighbor Patrick for this terrific piece of analysis.
Bernalwood 
As someone who lives on Coso, that map causes a serious identity crisis. Am I Precitavillese or a Foggy Vistan? What does it all mean? What’s for dinner!?
I used to work with a woman who, when I said “Oh, you live in Bernal, too!” she said ” No, I live in St. Mary’s.”
Well, I suppose they were correct because St. Mary’s was an official housing development after St. Mary’s College up and left for Moraga.
Reblogged this on themissionposition and commented:
Check out this cool breakdown of the Campos/Chiu race and of the Soda Tax!
I don’t think “conservatism” is the word for voting against a soda tax
Except, it kinda is.
San Francisco has come a long way from “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.” People need to take chill pill and just need to live and let live.
In my opinion it was not about conservative or libreral, that is unless this was not about social engineering, but rather collecting addition tax revenue then in that case it maybe be considered conservative to vote against…if you’re being cynical. Thankfully we’ll never know.
I do love those Mexican Cokes in the glass bottles paired with a nice spicey taco(salty tortilla chips and salsa for bonus pleasure).
It’s funny, you could certainly make a case either way. In Seattle they faced a similar measure, but Liberal opposition to the tax framed it as disproportionately effecting the poor (which it would have by one metric), and therefore, not progressive. It didn’t pass there either.
I think the soda tax was more about parents taking responsibility – or not –
for teaching their offspring intelligent decisions on what to put in their body.
Why give this terribly run city any more tax money? For what? So they can spend it on union overtime or some tool sleeping in his truck?
I think if the soda tax had passed, many people would just buy their sugary drinks in San Mateo County.
That would include me. This was neither liberal or conservative – it was another attempt at repression by Bloomberg and his ilk. Let’s keep freedom of choice free.
Well, it passed in Berkeley. We can watch and see if that extra tax money goes towards parenting classes, diabetes research, education and the like….
Why write coherent paragraphs when a random list will do nicely?
1) In the dictionary, next to the term “slippery slope” is a picture of the Soda Tax.
2) The picture appears again next to the term “Nanny State.”
3) Can’t wait to watch all those Berkeley kids become fit, cavity-free, well-behaved superchildren. Its’ a miracle.
4) Help! I’m a parent who can’t keep my kids off the High Fructose Corn Syrup.
5) There is more fructose in honey than in high-fructose corn syrup.
6) Food Fads. Food Scares. They sell books but can’t enable you to live forever.
7) You can exercise and burn off sugar. Of greater concern: soda (and many other foods and beverages, by the way) is basically bacteria food (sugar) mixed with a mild acid and applied directly to the enamel of your teeth.
8) Why sodas? I can think of dozens of more unhealthy things that I happen to not like and wish to control others’ consumption of. Because I know better. (Insert finger wag here.)
9) Can we create another little bureaucracy that will never go away, because bureaucracies never go away?
10) Progressive. Liberal. Democratic. Should any of those have as a definition: “Movement organized with the intent to control every aspect of the behavior of the citizenry?” I believe that is the purview of religions, dictatorships and boarding schools.
11) In a way, Prop E was a good thing. It was a symptom of a populace that has it pretty well. We have the luxury of sitting around and legislating food choices. Awesome.
🙂
Whoof. I guess you’re against nanny state cigarette taxes too? Cause they are actually very effective at reducing smoking actually.
Well, you’ve struck a nerve. Please excuse the length of my reply. It is said with a smile, but the subject is, IMHO, actually very important in a nominally free and democratic society. (How’s that for a grandiose setup?)
Comparing soda and cigarettes… hmmmm. It says something about the mindset of those who wish to legislate lifestyle that such an inapt analogy is made without any hint of irony. I feel like the complete list of reasons why that is a terrible comparison would probably run to several thousand words. So just one:
Sugar is not a harmful substance. In fact, the major purpose of eating is to fuel the machine. And, my friend, the simple truth is that the machine runs on sugar whether unqualified nutrition gurus like it or not. So, the first activity involves consuming a liquid that contains two ingredients necessary for life: water and sugar. (Think about the countless situations where drinking a soda would be beneficial. Adrift on raft at sea. Lost in desert. Took insulin shot with no food. The point being that soda, like every other “food,” is only harmful when inappropriately consumed.)
Then there’s cigarette smoking. Always harmful. Never beneficial.
Stated another way: soda is a food. As much as fruit juice, kale smoothies and soy lattes are food. Cigarettes are not. It is therefore entirely different to attempt to create LAWS which intend to regulate/influence/control a DIETARY CHOICE. Soda may indeed be “the new cigarettes” for those who’ve lost the ability to think clearly. But it shouldn’t be. Because: why stop there? Actually, why START there? What makes a person wake up one day and decide that they have the right, let alone the intelligence, to have a say in my diet?
It feels very strange to have to say this in 2014: It is neither progressive nor liberal to tell others how to live. That is what Republicans do. And, in my experience, Southern Baptists.
My feeling about cigarette taxes: I don’t care. I almost never feel the need to tell other people what to do. I find quite a lot of satisfaction and stimulating challenge in telling myself what to do. Do taxes have a deterrent effect? Not even a little bit. Please provide a single scientifically valid, statistically significant point of data that supports your assertion. Taxes deter smoking to the same extent Prohibition deterred drinking. Actually, less. Because nicotine is infinitely more addictive.
Why do I feel strongly about this? Thanks in advance for asking. I smoked for 23 years and the following things played no part in my being able to quit: taxes, laws, lectures, taxes, bans, warnings, fees, hateful stares, nicotine patches, taxes, 12-step programs, shame-based therapy and least of all, taxes. The thing that worked? E-cigs. Immediate near-total harm reduction for me. Absolutely no effect on anyone else. In less than two weeks I stopped inhaling burning ash and tar without any withdrawal symptoms.
How is this personal anecdote relevant? Again, thanks in advance for asking. Guess what the new Puritans—with complete disregard for scientific fact, common sense, and, to my mind, common decency—are feverishly trying to both heavily tax and outright ban? Why, e-cigarettes, of course. Because they don’t like them. Because they believe they are immoral. Because they hurt children. (I would go look up Bible verses to hammer home the similarities to Bronze Age religious proscriptions, but, honestly: way too tedious.)
So yes, I do have a problem when people try to control* my–or anyone else’s—body without an urgent, clear, logical and otherwise-unachievable reason.
Don’t you?
________
* If you don’t believe that taxes are a form of control, then I freely admit I’m not smart enough to understand why you support a soda tax in the first place.
PS–If you want, after I climb down off this soapbox, I can head over to Cortland and we can continue this discussion of how bad sodas are over a giant untaxed buttery blueberry scone and a double shot espresso ice cream smoothie…
Cheers!
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For takebackthegreen, since you asked, here is an article with several references to studies that found that cigarette tax is very effective in reducing the demand for cigarettes among several groups of people, mostly young and poor people. It’s over 100 pages, yet still shorter than your comment here.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/
-Greg
LOL! shorter than my comments here. good one. 🙂
Thanks for the link. I wasn’t clear in my original post. I wasn’t talking about taxes reducing the number of kids who START smoking. That seems possible. I don’t accept that taxes make people quit. (I could just leave it there and risk seeming like someone who’s just obstinate. To show I’m interested in a factual discussion, can I get away with just saying that “studies” are not the same as “experimental results” and you are not alone in mistakenly assigning equal confidence to the two very different types of research, and leave it at that? It’s actually an insidious problem: the public is confused because contradictory studies come out every week. Experiments either have repeatable results or they don’t. True or False. We end up where we are now: the Far Right and the Far Left slap fighting each other over who can be most anti-science… meanwhile the Middle checks out altogether.) Anyhoo…
For this particular discussion, none of that matters. Let’s say that you’re correct: higher taxes keep kids from starting smoking and keep poor nicotine addicts from being able to afford cigarettes (very compassionate: forced withdrawal with no system of support or therapeutic contact of any kind; ask rehab doctors how well THAT works…).
The MAIN point was soda=food, cigarette=drug. It is the first step down a slippery authoritarian slope to start trying to control dietary choices.
AND, I almost forgot: I am very proud that my fellow San Franciscans have enough intelligence and commitment to personal freedom to reject that first step. (Or something…) Although apparently not the majority.
Doesn’t matter: WHEW!
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