More flash than substance

More flash than fashion sense?

Los Angeles Times – The LA Times just printed a Gavin Newsom profile piece that ain’t no fluff.

Angelinos now know the Newsom that San Francisco knows – an absentee mayor lacking substance who governs by press releases.

“Once he’s said it and it’s printed in the newspapers, it’s done in his mind,” said Jim Ross, a political consultant who ran Newsom’s 2003 campaign for mayor. “Then it’s on to the next big announcement.”

Would-be allies say they rarely hear from the mayor. Department heads complain about a lack of guidance. Newsom perpetually wars with the 11-member Board of Supervisors, raising the question of how he would deal with Sacramento’s querulous 120-member Legislature.

Homelessness remains a problem; the city’s official tally shows that more than 6,500 people lack permanent shelter, a slight rise over the last four years after a big decline. Portions of Market Street, the city’s grand boulevard, reek of urine. Muni, the city’s public transit system, is a constant source of complaint. Bayview-Hunter’s Point, the historically poor, black neighborhood, appears as isolated and desperate as ever. Affordable housing is, for many, an oxymoron.

And some of Newsom’s biggest backers – in civic groups and policy circles, among political activists and campaign donors – have in the last few years become some of the mayor’s sharpest critics.

In a series of interviews, they expressed disappointment and accused Newsom, in words oft-repeated, of focusing more on self-aggrandizement and personal publicity than solving the city’s problems.

Of course the man-child mayor denied all of these criticisms in the Times’ story, because afterall, Gavin Newsom lives on Fantasy Island.