And the media just loves to report on Newsom’s tweets and his Twitter milestones.

Yes, the Newsom for California campaign has added hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers in the past several months.

Gavin Newsom Twitter stats provided by twittercounter.

This astonishing growth isn’t due to the Gavinator’s good looks and popularity, or the organic evolution of a real Internet audience.

Twitter actually gives these followers to Newsom when new Twitter users sign up.

They do it through their controversial Suggested User List (SUL) feature.

This is Gavin Newsom on Twitter's suggested user list.

You may have recently read some news stories and blog posts about Twitter’s SUL.

Through this feature, Twitter is aggregating and building an online audience that the Newsom for California campaign would otherwise have to pay to create, in the same way Newsom’s campaign today buys eyeballs and clicks from Google, Facebook, etc. to ultimately drive traffic to his campaign website.

But since Twitter is giving this non-monetary service to a registered political campaign without its value being disclosed, Gavin Newsom is violating California’s campaign finance law, you know, as he tweets.

California law states that a contribution can be defined as:

§18215(b)(3) Any goods or services received by or behested by a candidate or committee at no charge or at a discount from the fair market value, unless the discount is given in the regular course of business to members of the public.

Does being on Twitter’s SUL constitute a non-monetary contribution? YES.

Twitter is providing this free service to Gavin Newsom, a declared candidate for governor. Newsom uses Twitter to send his Twitter followers links to his campaign website and to campaign news stories promoting his candidacy.

Is this Twitter service discounted and given to members of the public in the regular course of business? NO.

The SUL is not for sale or accessible to the general public. Twitter is a private company so there is no knowing if they’ve been selling the service. Twitter publicly says they don’t charge for the service.

Recent news stories put Twitter’s SUL cash value around $250,000. And when you analyze Twitter’s SUL, it’s not random, and it doesn’t look like any member of the public can ask to be put on the list, or even pay to be on the list.

Essentially, being featured on the Twitter suggested user list is a corporate black box decision and benefit provided to select customers that is not available to the general public though Twitter’s regular course of business.

In the opinion of a campaign treasurer consultant:

Twitter is giving Gavin Newsom privileged access and promotion on its proprietary online network through the company’s suggested user list feature, an Internet media service that is not accessible or for sale to members of the general public. Therefore, the Newsom for California campaign is receiving a non-monetary contribution from Twitter that must be valued, declared and disclosed to come into compliance with California’s government code and Title 2 regulations as enforced by the FPPC.

When a non-monetary contribution like Twitter’s is received, the fair market value of the goods or service must be reported as required by California’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).

Has Newsom reported such a contribution from Twitter? NO.

Now all Newsom has to do is have Gary South send Twitter a missive, ask them how much their SUL contribution is worth, and then go file FPPC Form 460, which is required by all official candidates for public office to disclose monetary and non-monetary campaign contributions of value.

If not, this cozy business relationship will continue to violate campaign finance law.

So, what’s the big deal anyway — I mean besides all this stuff being illegal?

Newsom hasn’t raised enough money to stay competitive and he’s lagging in all polls.

But he claims a formidable “online following” as a testament to his campaign strength.

Newsom has been accumulating Twitter followers primarily due to his campaign accepting a non-monetary contribution from Twitter – a contribution with significant value that legally must be reported.

But if Twitter pulled Gavin Newsom off their SUL, he’d be in for a rude surprise.

That’s right.

No more weekly “earned” media stories about Gavin being tech-savvy.

The answer is 42.

DaniWeb — Remember Terry Childs?

He was the network administrator for the city of San Francisco who — claiming he was protecting the city government’s computer system from incompetent coworkers — changed the system’s passwords and then for more than a week refused to give them to anyone, even after being arrested.

Childs eventually did give the passwords to Gavin Newsom, and was charged with four felony counts.

Well, it’s more than a year later, and Childs is still in jail, without yet having been convicted of anything.

Due process is serving Childs well. But what about San Francisco?

Is the city’s IT system safer than it was one year ago?

The city spends $200 million a year on IT, and still has little to show for it.

Based on Gavin Newsom’s latest PR stunt, he’s more interested in the promise of peripheral user applications like Twitter to run his administration than improving the actual technological infrastructure of the government.

And you know, for once I agree with Gavin.

“Technology Nightmare” just isn’t a sexy headline. Unless it’s Halloween in San Francisco.

Whereas “San Francisco showcases free applications” is a super sexy press release headline. Hey, I want to win that prize money!

The truth is this: the Terry Childs incident should never have happened at an enterprise the size of the City & County of San Francisco.

It happened on Gavin’s watch, hasn’t been addressed, and is a perfect illustration of how the mayor with the gelled hair would rather focus on shiny new things, that actually fixing old and broken infrastructure while improving the lives of taxpayers.

No wonder the man-child mayor is so unpopular at home.

The circus tent taxpayers bought Oracle.

San Francisco Chronicle – A scheduling snafu involving the big annual Oracle party and the TV show “Trauma” has wound up costing San Francisco taxpayers $270,000.

The mega mix-up revolves around the party that Oracle tosses for 22,000 select clients.

For years, Oracle has rented out a big chunk of the eastern side of the island for its party, including an old airplane hangar.

That was the plan for this year’s Oct. 14 bash as well.

However, the city rented out the hangar to NBC’s “Trauma,” which, while filming in the city, has provided a number of people with jobs – including the mayor’s actress wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

Oracle – one of the biggest conventions of the year – found itself out in the cold.

Now, to keep everyone happy, the city is putting up a football-field-size tent on Treasure Island for the Oracle party. Cost: about $270,000.

Newsom didn’t try to explain away the mix-up or defend the ensuing costs.

How’s that?

The city is in an ongoing budget crisis and no explanation from the man-child mayor?

Network World is on the ball with a thoughtful analysis of the Newsom administration’s ineptitude, facilities mismanagement and callous response to the scandal.

Now times are tough in the high-tech industry, but Oracle last year made a profit of $5.6 billion on revenue of $23.2 billion. Not bad. They’re willing to spend $7.4 billion to buy Sun. And, of course, Oracle head honcho Larry Ellison is among the most ostentatiously rich people on the planet; Forbes has him pegged at No. 4, worth a sweet $22.5 billion.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s municipal finances have been anything but rosy given the destitute state of that state.

Under the circumstances, couldn’t the company — or Ellison himself — have picked up the tab for that tent instead of sticking it to the already traumatized taxpayers of San Francisco?

If not, the least the mayor’s office could have done is apologize for the costly screw-up.

Don’t hold your breath.

San Francisco definitely has enough staplers but Gavin Newsom's IT department is in total shambles.

Let it ring out — Gavin Newsom is tech savvy!  Yippee!

How did he become tech savvy?  Well gentle readers he announced his bid for governor on Twitter and Facebook.

For those of you who just returned to earth these are two sites where people announce they are hung over, have herpes, and basically act like hysterical twats.

I’m sure the man-child mayor is even more proud of his technology chops when it comes to managing the actual information technology of San Francisco.

Isn’t that the professional measure of tech savvy?

Gavin Newsom’s system is so well designed and managed, that ONE MAN locked the WHOLE CITY out of system administration:

Not only was Terry Childs the only admin, he was always on call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. As the only admin with the knowledge and access to the FiberWAN, he had no help. During the past few years, the DTIS staff has been significantly reduced due to budget cuts, keeping the city dependent on a sole admin for its core network.

With newly acquired kneepads, Gavin begged Childs for the password in jail.  Shortest jailhouse bromance in history, I’m sure.

Oh those pesky tech workers with their god complexes!  Maybe Childs just was trying to show how flimsy Gavin’s IT system and department is:

When I asked Terry if we could get a copy of the City’s network security policy some months ago, he told me, ‘I’ve been trying to get them to approve one for years. I’ve written ones up and submitted them, but they don’t want to do it, because they don’t want to be held to it.

It’s a known fact that San Franciso’s criminal justice computers don’t talk to each other, and City Hall still uses 10 year old desktop computers running Lotus notes or some other combination of paperclips and bubble gum.

Gavin pumps $200 million a year into IT and has little to show for it.

Savvvvvy?

Gavin stealing credit from then Supervisor Tom Ammiano.

Did I get you with that sex headline?  Well, there’s no sex in Gavin Newsom’s gubernatorial bid launch video but their are plenty of lies and it’s on YouTube so there you go.

Gavin steals credit for Supervisor Tom Ammiano’s hard work on universal health care (among other things).  That’s right, he lied on his YouTube resume.  Can’t you lose your job for that?

But don’t take our word for it, the Bay Guardian has a little write up and some clever person did a nice job fact-checking the video.

That’s not enough lie for you?

In the opening segment of the three-minute YouTube clip, a man who is implied to be a Latino immigrant stands in front of his daughter and proclaims, in Spanish, that San Francisco schools are improving.

Doesn’t sound bad, right?

Well, turns out he was a ringer who wasn’t what he was presented to be in the video.

WTF?

When future campaign videos come out, can we trust that the people speaking in the video are not actors or people presenting themselves as someone they are not?

Seems like Gavin’s campaign videos mimic his entire political career and campaign — highly scripted, lots of acting, and presenting your record as Mayor in a overly positive way that doesn’t reflect reality.

Phil Bronstein writes that in lieu of the required end of the year “State of the City” address, the man-child mayor produced a 7½ hour marathon, delivered as a 10-part webisode via YouTube.  No reporters were present, no questions were asked.

Maybe it’s a quaint and outdated view but I always thought public officials were elected by a real people public and answerable to them. Last time I checked, the Mayor was not listed as a virtual official.

Like pushing a button on a drinking fountain and getting a fire hose, viewers who tune in are assaulted for 30-45 minutes at a time with randomly strung-together facts on a particular subject.

Remarkably, after hearing all those statistics, one comes away still not knowing much about where The City is going.

Gavin uses Web 2.0 technology to remove himself further from the actual public square of politics that allows residents to mix it up with their elected officials.  He claims to want a dialogue, a discussion—yet the comments section of the videos was initially turned off until essentially people forgot about Gavin’s 7½ hour monolgue marathon.