Backlash to Speier run?

This raises the prospect that councilmembers Emily Beach of Burlingame and Gina Papan of Millbrae may have been a little hasty discontinuing their candidacies mere minutes after Speier announced. More on that shortly.

In the meantime, the events as they unfolded demonstrate, once again, the line oft-quoted by me: “Politics ain’t beanbag.”

The complaints about Speier fall into a few main categories: She said she was retiring and now she is taking that back; this all about ego; and she has been around too long and it is time for her to get out of the way and let a new generation of leaders emerge. One letter writer noted that Speier was preventing Beach and Papan from running, which is not true, of course. She may have prevented them from winning, which is something entirely different.

In a phone interview this week, Speier professed not to have heard the objections to her candidacy. “I’ve had people stopping me at the grocery store and Costco and say they are happy I’m running,” Speier said, although she acknowledged with characteristic wryness that the people who oppose her probably are not confronting her over the salad bar at Draeger’s.

Regarding her “retirement,” Speier said, “I didn’t say I was retiring. I said I wasn’t running for reelection and I would continue to find ways to be of service to my constituents.”

On the matter of age, Speier, 73, who once said Congress should have a mandatory retirement age of 75, said: “I like to think I’m value-added. … What’s wrong with experience? If you had to choose from someone with no experience or someone with experience, who would you have?”

And, of course she would say that. She is not the only officeholder to believe she can make a difference. Call it ego, if you want, but she does not have the market cornered.

Supervisor Ray Mueller, undoubtedly happy to have a potential ally of Speier’s skill and stature, and who probably encouraged her to run, made a point of reaching out to praise her decision as “selfless.”

It is notable that no one has suggested she would do a bad job. Just that she is in the way.

This is the essence of the complaints about ego and making way for the next generation: It is someone else’s turn. As anyone in the political realm will tell you, this is not how things work.

One longtime advocate for more women in office said the sentiment of anyone in office is, “After me, you come first.”

Virtually no one wins office by waiting their turn. Ask Supervisor Noelia Corzo about that. Or Speier. When she first was elected to the board in 1980, Speier defeated 20-year incumbent James Fitzgerald, and plenty of people told her she would lose, that she was wasting time, money and political capital, and that she should wait her turn.

Still, as one veteran consultant said, “When does someone else get to be the next Jackie Speier?”

This brings us back to Papan and Beach, who swiftly folded their tents, despite campaigning for most of the year and raising combined treasuries in excess of $300,000.

Both of them immediately endorsed Speier. It was a bitter moment for each of them, I am certain. Neither has wanted to talk about the decision beyond their official news releases.

But, Beach’s announcement said she was suspending her campaign; Papan’s said she was putting her campaign on “pause.”

Is there enough resentment against Speier’s decision that a viable campaign could be waged by Beach or Papan? Maybe not. Speier, in the vernacular of one observer, is the Big Dog.

Still, there are plenty of cases where a candidate wins by losing — waging a credible campaign, raising name recognition, developing a fundraising base that carries over to the next campaign. Speier lost her first campaign in the 1979 special election to replace the late Rep. Leo Ryan; Rep. Anna Eshoo lost her first congressional race in 1988 and was well-positioned for the next race in 1992, in which she won the Silicon Valley seat Republicans thought they owned.

This brings us to another question: How long does Speier want to serve? Under the county charter she is eligible for three four-year terms. I asked her if she would commit to serving only one term. She declined to respond.

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.