Tag: Connie Chan

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There are some lines you don’t cross in politics

By Willie Brown : sfexaminer – excerpt (audio)

San Francisco politics has often been described as a knife fight in a phone booth. Having spent a life inside that phone booth, I can tell you the description is largely accurate.

I have thrown my share of elbows and taken plenty in return. Politics is a tough business — no one who puts their name on the ballot should expect otherwise.

But there are still lines you don’t cross. State Sen. Scott Wiener’s decision to create an artificial-intelligence chatbot impersonating Supervisor Connie Chan, his opponent in the November race for Congress, crossed several.

Wiener’s campaign built a website around an AI version of Chan, put her face on it and invited voters to have a conversation with a machine programmed to mock her. When prompted about Chan’s accent, the chatbot responded that her “accent is so thick I can barely understand myself.” When asked whether she was an American citizen, it dodged the question with a birther swipe, which Wiener shrugged off as a “joke.”

His campaign has since taken the site down for “maintenance” after widespread condemnation, but not before Wiener dug in his heels on the legitimacy of the attack. He has also yet to formally apologize for the offense it caused… (more)

RELATED:

Pelosi slams Wiener chatbot mimicking opponent as sexist, racially problematic

Scott Wiener takes down AI chatbot mimicking Connie Chan after criticism

You said it Willie. There are some lines you do not cross and Wiener has crossed a lot of those lines in his scramble to the top.

 

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Rafael Mandelman is San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors president

By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

Watching the Board of Supervisors elect its president often feels a bit like observing a live-action game of three-card monte. There’s ever so much twirling about and, until the cup is lifted, you don’t know where the votes are going to be.
Today, however, the political legerdemain took place off-camera. After several furious days of votes being whipped and deals being brokered, District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman ended up being the sole nominee for the position. And, lo, he won.
There’s a lot of cachet in being board president, because it’s a position that has great possibilities. If Mayor Daniel Lurie is hit by a meteor, or runs off and joins the French Foreign Legion, for instance, Mandelman will be your new mayor. And it could happen: In just 2017, Mayor Ed Lee was felled by a heart attack while in the frozen-foods section of the city’s worst Safeway, and Board President London Breed was the next woman up…

So, Mandelman is board president, having been the sole nominee. But expect Melgar to oversee the County Transportation Authority and its billions of dollars in transit monies. Expect Melgar to also accept the mixed blessing of helming the land-use committee.
Why did this happen? Mandelman is perceived by his colleagues as more predictable than Melgar in his votes, for good or ill, and more willing to make deals. The bloc of left-leaning supervisors is counting on it; it will be lost on nobody that he is in this position because of their votes. Expect Connie Chan, who successfully lobbied her colleagues for Mandelman, to remain budget chair…(more)