Pat Dando Week: Gonzales' Vice Mayor

The term 'Vice Mayor' was, last year, interchangeable with the term 'albatross'. Taking advantage of (Chuck Reed endorser) D.A. George Kennedy's (ultimately thrown out) charges against Ron Gonzales, opponents of Cindy Chavez lambasted how close she was to Ron - why, after all, she was his Vice Mayor! The classic example of this was a smear mailer showing a closed door with plaques reading 'Mayor Ron Gonzales' and 'Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez'. A pretty blatant attempt to tie them together as joint decision-makers on key decisions. Most of those decisions, however, happened during the tenure of a different Vice Mayor - the Vice Mayor who, in her new job, paid for the piece. Guess who.

Pat Dando, as has been mentioned earlier, became Vice Mayor in a telling way, according to numerous sources.

When the state successfully sued tobacco companies, resulting in an enormous windfall, counties across California began discussion on how to spend the money. In Santa Clara County, organized labor and community partners proposed that the money fund what eventually became the Children's Health Initiative - guaranteeing affordable healthcare for every child in the County. Though now model legislation across the country, it faced an uphill battle in San Jose from newly elected Mayor Ron Gonzales, who had other ideas.

The Labor-led community coalition made the rounds of Councilmembers, eventually persuading six to support their proposal. The key swing vote was Pat Dando, someone who Gonzales, given her conservative nature, assumed would be opposed.

Shortly before the vote, Gonzales, having been tipped off about Dando, confronted her and, according to multiple folks, made a classic political deal: dump your support of children's health, and I'll make you Vice Mayor in 2003.

Done and done. Children's health, which is now being replicated in more than half the counties in the state, failed at the City Council on a 6-5 vote. (The County later passed the plan, and the City now contributes to it.) This failure happened, it seems, because Dando wanted power more than she believed in protecting children. In 2003, for the last two years of her last term, Dando became Vice Mayor.

Let's switch gears for a second. Put on your thinking caps, and try to guess who was Vice Mayor during these pivotal events in San Jose history.

1. The Vice Mayor co-signs a memo recommending an additional $11 million for Norcal.
2. The Council votes to use eminent domain on the Tropicana.
3. Ron Gonzales suffers a mini-stroke during the State of the City.
   
4. Ron Gonzales is censured by the Council, following the Vice Mayor's lead.

If you've caught on to the point of Dando Week, you'll get that 1, 2 and 3 were during the tenure of Vice Mayor Pat Dando. Well, if, as the Chamber claimed during last year's Mayoral race, Vice Mayor holds so much sway and if issues 1 and 2 were so critical to the problems San Jose faces - why, then, didn't Vice Mayor Dando address them? One of two possibilities emerges: either the issues weren't so critical, or Pat Dando was not an effective leader.

Incidentally, for the last issue above, the Vice Mayor was Cindy Chavez. I would guess that, after the censure, Ron asked that Cindy's name plaque be taken off that closed door.

See previous Dando Week posts: A Look Back and Blue Ribbon Councilmember.