the highest ranking Iranian-American holding elective office in North America, committed official misconduct when he bruised his wife last December.
But the commission couldn’t decide whether Mir-karimi’s action warranted booting him out of office and made no recommendation to the city’s Board of Supervisors on that.
It is the 11-member Board of Supervisors that must vote on whether to allow Mirkarimi to stay in office. The law requires that nine of the 11 supervisors vote against Mirkarimi to kick him out of his job. That may be hard. Mirkarimi was a member of the board for seven years until last December and knows every board member well. But a number of supervisors clearly disliked Mirkarimi when he served with them.
Gabriel Hasland, a labor organizer and Mirkarimi supporter, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the board’s decision will be personal. “None of the decisions at City Hall get made on policy,” he said. “At the end of the day, they’re based on relationships, friendships, grudges, history. This is not going to be any different.”
Others disagreed and said the supervisors are looking over their shoulders at what a highly polarized electorate is saying about a case that has electrified the city throughout this year.
The 4-1 vote by the ethics commission was welcomed by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who initiated the misconduct proceedings in March, suspended the sheriff over the abuse case, and is urging that he be dumped from his sheriff’s job by the Board of Supervisors.
“The members of the Ethics Commission have sent a powerful message and strong case to the Board of Supervisors for why Ross Mirkarimi is unfit to serve the people of San Francisco as sheriff,” Lee said in a statement.
However, the board rejected most of what Mayor Lee had accused Mirkarimi of. Beyond the official misconduct charge for bruising his wife, Mayor Lee also charged Mirkarimi with trying to dissuade witnesses, abuse his power by threatening to take his child away from his wife, deceive an inspector sent to collect the sheriff’s firearm and failing to support and encourage victims to give testimony. The five-member Ethics Commission did not accept any of those charges.
The saga has rocked San Francisco’s political establishment and dominated local media coverage for months.
Mirkarimi, who was sentenced to a day in jail and three years of probation, has filed suit seeking reinstatement to his post and his salary. He claims he cannot be removed for official misconduct because the offense in question occurred eight days before he took office as sheriff.
The case against Mirkarimi grew out of a New Year’s Eve quarrel with his wife, Venezuelan television actress Eliana Lopez, that the couple carried on in front of their young son, Theo, now three, over her plans to take the boy along when she visited her family in Venezuela.
In a cell-phone video shot by a neighbor the next day, Lopez tearfully claimed that her husband had grabbed her arm with such force that he left it black and blue. She said it was the second time he had bruised her.
Lopez later refused to testify against her husband and sought to bar the video from being introduced as evidence against him. On Thursday, the couple entered the packed hearing room together, holding hands and smiling to cheering supporters. Lopez has been Mirkarimi’s most vocal supporter, and has accused politicians opposed to her husband of an “attempted coup” in trying to oust him.
The supervisors must act within 30 days after they receive a formal, written report from the ethics panel, which could take weeks to prepare. That means the board is unlikely to take up the matter before mid-September. If the board takes no action within that 30 days, Mirkarimi will automatically keep his job.
But he will face the voters in another three years, and there is an expectation that he will face a spirited challenge then.
Mirkarimi was charged January 13, five days after being sworn in as sheriff, with misdemeanor counts of domestic violence battery, child endangerment and dissuading a witness.
His deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to a single, lesser charge—false imprisonment, for grabbing his wife—was structured to allow Mirkarimi to keep his badge and his gun. But the mayor decided Mirkarimi’s conduct amounted to a violation of the public trust and his role as a law enforcement officer.
The last time the San Francisco supervisors considered ousting an elected official was in 1932, when the then-public defender was indicted for murder and forced from office.
The Mirkarimi issue has sharply divided San Francisco. Mirkarimi is very popular with the far left and has strong support there. The Harvey Milk LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Democratic Club, the San Francisco Labor Council and the National Lawyers Guild have all approved resolutions supporting Mirkarimi.
On the other hand, feminist groups—and especially domestic violence activists—have generally opposed him.
Mirkarimi’s backers do not defend what he did, but say that the bruising of his wife’s arm was not egregious enough to warrant removing him from office. His detractors counter that his status as a criminal offender on probation makes him unfit to serve as a top law enforcement officer. As sheriff, his main job is to run the city jail—in which he served his one-day sentence.
Many in the city feel Mir-karimi has pulled the political rug out from under himself. Instead of turning contrite, bowing his head and apologizing, he has been aggressive.
First, he pushed the charges aside saying what happened was just a family matter and nothing for the involvement of the general public. That was a red flag for the domestic abuse community, because that is a standard argument made by chronic abusers.
Then Mirkarimi and his supporters demonized the neighbor, Ivory Madison, who made the video of his tearful wife showing the bruise. That further incensed the domestic abuse community, which saw Mirkarimi in effect saying: Don’t report domestic abuse or you may end up the target.