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- <text id=91TT2834>
- <title>
- Dec. 23, 1991: American Notes:San Francisco
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Dec. 23, 1991 Gorbachev:A Man Without A Country
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 42
- American Notes
- SAN FRANCISCO
- Shift to the Right
- </hdr><body>
- <p> When he was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1987, Art Agnos
- described himself as an outsider who would shake up city hall.
- Four years later, he finds himself on the outside again. Last
- week the liberal Agnos was defeated in his bid for a second term
- by former police chief Frank Jordan, a self-described moderate
- with little patience for the city's high-profile populations of
- homeless people and panhandlers. Jordan got 52% of the vote.
- </p>
- <p> Jordan benefited from a coalition of blue-collar and rich
- voters peeved that under Agnos the city seemed more interested
- in declaring itself a sanctuary for Desert Storm war resisters
- than in keeping Market Street clean. Long delays in repairing
- freeways damaged in the 1989 earthquake, while not attributable
- to Agnos, did not help his image. Meanwhile, increasingly
- militant posturing by activist gays--a key group of Agnos
- supporters--sent more conventional voters scurrying to
- Jordan's camp. The final blows for Agnos were a sputtering
- economy and fewer dollars to spend on costly social programs
- such as caring for AIDS victims.
- </p>
- <p> Those problems will not vanish before Jordan takes over in
- January. But his victory showed that even in one of the nation's
- most liberal cities, competent management is more important to
- voters than political correctness.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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