Kevin J. Mullen
In 1991 former Police Chief Frank Jordan challenged incumbent Mayor Art Agnos for the office. Starting in early 1991, I submitted the following article several times to the San Francisco Examiner where I had previously placed a number of opinion pieces. The paper declined to publish the piece on the grounds, according to its political editor, the premise was farfetched.
FRANK JORDAN JUST MIGHT DO IT
With the entry of Richard Hongisto into the mayor's race, Frank Jordan's chances are looking up. Until now, the smart money had about written him off. For one thing there is a question of how a former police chief could ever hope to win in liberal San Francisco. Jordan is the "favorite candidate for mayor of San Francisco in the suburbs." says one local pundit. Then there is the question of whether he has the killer instinct, the "fire in the belly," so essential to victory in the bruising game of San Francisco politics. It would seem that Jordan is just the latest in a long line of "white hope” conservative candidates who have gone down to defeat in recent San Francisco elections. But those who think he will be a pushover may be in for a surprise.
Frank is well known to a degree that is unusual for a former department head in the customary centers of whitebread power: the boardrooms of real estate, commercial, and financial interests; the editorial offices of the major media; and the chancelleries of big religion. What's more important, though, he also knows all the little guys who no one else pays much attention to in between elections: the small fry ethnic and neighborhood leaders; the senior citizens groups and store front preachers; the small district merchants and the members of all the obscure little neighborhood associations. And it won't be just west of Twin Peaks that he will find his support.
More than fifteen years ago, Frank Jordan, then a middle level supervisor in the police department, took a job nobody else much wanted. As head of the newly formed Crime Prevention Division, it was his job to go out and instruct community groups about how to protect themselves from crime. Night after night and year after year, while nobody else paid much attention, Frank Jordan talked to small groups of citizens: in church basements, in school cafeterias, even in private living rooms. Over the years he built up a tremendous store of good will, both for himself and the police department and he made friends with all the "little people" who vote.
In dealing with the disparate groups that is "the community" in San Francisco, each with its own agenda and all with widely divergent and sometimes conflicting goals, Frank had to develop a way of pleasing all while offending none. To do this he refined a speaking style which sounded eloquent without really saying much, an indispensable skill for someone seeking political office in the factional patchwork of San Francisco. Even as he rose to the top of the police department, Frank kept his community contacts alive. Indeed, if he has one vulnerability stemming from his professional career, it is that he devoted too much of his attention to external relations at the expense of internal operations. (We can expect to hear more on this from close to the police department in the coming months.)
But if, as Tip O'Neal has said, all politics are local, Jordan may fool them yet. When the other pols go about on their quadrennial rounds this Summer and Fall to all the little groups that make up the mosaic of San Francisco politics -- the bar mitzvahs, the ethnic weddings, the neighborhood spaghetti feeds -- they will find Frank Jordan at the family table, an old and honored friend who has been coming around all along. So don't count him out yet.
In November 1991 Frank Jordan was elected Mayor of San Francisco.