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Addressing an auditorium filled with many students expressing support for another candidate, Matt Gonzalez, running mate of presidential hopeful Ralph Nader, spoke yesterday about reasons not to vote for Barack Obama. Gonzalez, who was announced in February as Nader's vice presidential choice on the independent ticket, spent most of his time speaking to the Political Science 179 class about what he called Obama's "troubling" voting record. "I'm picking on Senator Obama ... because your professor told me this is a pretty strong Obama crowd," Gonzalez said. "It says something about a candidate that can stand in front of you and...

McALLEN - A student forum Saturday with vice presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez began calmly enough. But the discussion at South Texas College became heated when an attendee asked if Gonzalez's campaign with Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader was a spoiler in Democrats' efforts to retake the White House. Gonzalez, a San Francisco area lawyer and activist, defended his campaign's right to give the nation's voters another option in a heated contest, adding that the mainstream presidential candidates' voting records prove none of them represents the force of change to which they lay claim. "Don't vote for us if you don't...

"People say we're being self-centered and egotistical - but in politics, everything is called egotistical," says Ralph Nader's new running mate, Matt Gonzalez."If you run for mayor, people say you're being egotistical," Gonzalez, who nearly upset Gavin Newsom in the 2003 San Francisco mayor's race, told us Friday. "If you decide you won't run for mayor, people say you're being self-centered and egotistical."Why should it be any different when you're running for vice president against the two-party system?"Such is the burden that the 42-year-old former San Francisco supervisor must bear as he teams with Nader for what could be another...

Ralph Nader's choice of San Francisco lawyer and activist Matt Gonzalez as his running mate isn't likely to propel the consumer advocate to victory in his fifth presidential campaign since 1992. But it offers Gonzalez - a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who narrowly lost his 2003 bid to be the first Green Party mayor of a major U.S. city - a platform to try to influence the debate in the presidential race. It's a role with some risks. Although the 42-year-old Gonzalez is a hero to the Bay Area left, many local progressives - including...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader selected Matt Gonzalez, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, to be his running mate. Nader, who launched his fourth White House bid last weekend, made the announcement Thursday at a news conference. The Texas-born Gonzalez ran for mayor of San Francisco as a Green Party candidate in 2003 but lost to Democrat Gavin Newsom after a surprisingly close runoff election. Gonzalez, a lawyer, has been largely inactive in city politics since then. When Nader announced his third-party campaign for the president last Sunday, he criticized the top contenders...

SFSU Hosts a TerroristBy Lee KaplanFrontPageMagazine.com | May 2, 2005 Lynne Stewart “Why can’t we get anyone but criminals to come here to SFSU and speak?” Robert Journey, treasurer of San Francisco State University College Republicans asked rhetorically as five members of the campus club met to attend a lecture by Lynne Stewart. The terrorist lawyer, who billed herself as a “Civil Rights Lawyer and Political Prisoner,” was recently convicted of conspiracy and for passing along fatwas (Islamic religious edicts) from Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to his terrorist followers in Egypt’s Islamic Group. Rahman is the blind sheikh responsible for...

<p>The Political Party that Stands for Nothing came close to being embarrassed last week when it needed help from San Francisco Republicans to win a run-off election for mayor.</p> <p>As it turned out, the Democrats didn't act embarrassed. They should have -- and would have, if they had any principles -- but modern Democrats stand for only one thing: winning.</p>

<p>It was a long time in the making, but word is former President Bill Clinton will be in San Francisco for a final get-out-the-vote pep talk Monday for Democratic mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom.</p> <p>The Clinton drop-by was pulled together by Walter Shorenstein, the Democratic fund-raising king. And while scoring Clinton took some work, the biggest headache for Newsom's camp was deciding where to hold the rally.</p>

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- On paper, the job of San Francisco mayor is nonpartisan.</p> <p>In practice, it has been more than four decades since voters elected anyone other than a Democrat to run the city, where the political spectrum seems to run from left-of-center to liberaler-than-thou.</p>