But never, ever do you abuse your power for personal gain.
The reasons are twofold.
One, it’s wrong.
And two, you’re going to get caught.
— Willie Brown in his now-defunct San Francisco Chronicle column “Willie’s World, “after the arrest of protégé and former Department of Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru
In September 2014, after City Administrator Naomi Kelly unceremoniously fired director of Animal Care and Control Rebecca Katz for “not being a team player,” I wrote a column called “It’s still Willie Brown’s town: Personal politics run amuck at City Hall.” I interviewed numerous San Francisco employees who had nothing bad to say about Katz, and nothing good to say about Kelly, or about her husband, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission general manager Harlan Kelly Jr.
“Naomi Kelly is a ‘Willie Girl,’ and that’s how she got the job,” one said. Another insider, who worked more than 20 years at City Hall and continues a “strong relationship with government,” had even harsher words: “Kelly was a Willie Brown ornament … and we who worked in city government were skeptical of her credentials. …” Over and over during interviews with current and former city employees, the role of San Francisco’s flamboyant former mayor Willie Brown in elevating the Kellys to prestigious positions they didn’t deserve came up. In fact, Amy Brown, who was deputy city administrator (March 2008 through January 2011) and who served as interim city administrator (January 2011 through January 2012), prior to the late Mayor Ed Lee’s appointment of Naomi Kelley, was infinitely more qualified (she went on to serve in the same role for the City of Campbell).
Willie Brown has aided in the ascension of many politicians, including every mayor since him. Take for example current California Governor Gavin Newsom. A handsome businessman and friend of the powerful Getty family, Brown plucked Newsom from obscurity, appointing him to San Francisco’s Parking and Traffic Commission and later to District 2 supervisor. It was all part of Brown’s master plan to sculpt a compliant mayoral successor (more on that later). With the elevation of each protégé, Brown keeps his finger in the political pot. The marriage of Harlan and Naomi Kelly, which Brown officiated, was one of the biggest feathers in his fedora, but it came amid rumors that Harlan was “a player” not ready to settle down. Melanie Lok of Mlok Consulting, who received a subpoena from the FBI (along with Harlan Kelly, his most recent gal pal SFPUC Assistant General Manager Juliet Ellis, and wife Naomi Kelly’s city administrator department) is said to be a former girlfriend. Lok’s firm received a multimillion-dollar contract with the SFPUC before Kelly was in charge, but he amended the deal to increase the dollar amount after he took the helm.
It’s no secret that former Mayor Ed Lee owed Brown favors for elevating him from a meek bureaucrat to Room 200, so it was no surprise when Lee apparently made good on those favors by appointing the Kellys to the top jobs in the city with more than $800,000 in combined income. Lee famously referred to his fellow officials as “the city family,” a term used by Brown for decades. But as the FBI picked off Brown’s protégés one by one, the normally talkative Brown was surprisingly quiet, particularly about the Kellys, in his since-canceled San Francisco Chronicle column “Willie’s World,” where he distanced himself from city family members that he once helped up the ladder. For example, after Nuru’s arrest Brown wrote “Nuru came to Public Works after I took office,” but in reality, Brown hired Nuru in 2000 as deputy director of operations under then DPW boss Ed Lee. Still, Brown felt guilty (or nervous) enough to openly offer to help fund Nuru’s defense.
In an April 4, 2020 interview with the Nob Hill Gazette, Brown said, “I’m being picked at now because [of ]Mohammed Nuru. He was somewhere in the trenches until Ed Lee and Gavin Newsom moved him [up the ranks],” but in the same breath admitted, “I am contributing to his criminal defense budget. I am being pilloried by all of these social media broadcasters, so to speak. ‘Why would you do that?’ ‘Why would I do what? Here’s somebody in need, who’s a friend, been a helper. Why wouldn’t I reach out to help?’” Some of Brown’s critics said he was banking on Nuru’s loyalty and buying his silence as security. Of course, Brown, who coined the phrase “The ‘e’ in e-mail stands for ‘evidence’,” has been a lot shrewder than most of his students.
As I wrote in April 2019 (“It’s time for Mayor Breed to sweep DPW boss to the curb”), Nuru was no stranger to corruption even before Brown made him a member of the city family. In 1991 he became second in command at the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, or SLUG. He took the reins in 1994, winning city grants totaling $7 million, which drew praise from environmental groups — and the attention of then California Assemblyman Willie Brown. In 1995, he volunteered for Brown’s successful bid to unseat San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan, and he worked for Brown’s reelection campaign in 1999. Former SLUG workers claimed Nuru said their jobs depended on Brown’s reelection and required them to walk precincts, attend rallies, and work phones for Brown’s campaign while they were supposed to be cleaning streets.
Ghosts of Nuru’s past: Gomwalk, Newsom, Harris, Peskin
In 2004, allegations of election fraud surfaced again when Nuru and SLUG’s then Executive Director Jonathan Gomwalk were accused by street cleaners of bullying them into working for the mayoral campaign of another city family member and Brown’s chosen successor, Gavin Newsom. They said they were repeatedly told their jobs depended on Newsom being elected. Gomwalk acknowledged that SLUG had taken employees to vote by absentee ballot prior to the Dec. 9 runoff. He and Nuru also assigned them to walk precincts, knock on doors, and distribute campaign literature.
The allegations were serious enough that then District Attorney Kamala Harris — another Brown protégé — decided to investigate. But street cleaners also said Gomwalk told them to participate in a Dec. 2 get-out-the-vote event sponsored by the Harris for District Attorney campaign, riding in vans organized by Harris to the Department of Elections at City Hall, where they were pressured by SLUG crew chiefs to cast absentee ballots for Newsom. After casting their ballots, they said, crew chiefs asked them to turn over their voter stubs. One street cleaner even said a crew chief peered over her shoulder as she voted.
Nuru, of course, denied any wrongdoing, and like Brown did the second time around, city officials wanted to help. In a March 30, 2004, article in the Chronicle, supporters — led by Supervisor Aaron Peskin — said they wanted to raise money so Nuru could hire John Keker, one of the country’s most prominent criminal defense lawyers, should he face any charges as a result of investigations by the ethics commission and the City Attorney’s Office. Peskin said he had begun organizing a fund-raising dinner, “scheduled for Wednesday night,” after “speaking with constituents who were concerned that Nuru didn’t yet have legal representation.” Peskin said 1,000 invitations were distributed asking for a minimum $50 contribution in exchange for a buffet-style meal at the Four Seas restaurant in Chinatown.
Rich DeLeon, a political science professor at San Francisco State University, told the Chronicle he thought it “unprecedented” to have members of the city’s legislative body raising money to aid the legal defense of a city official under investigation by the city attorney. “I haven’t heard of anything like that happening in my 20-odd years of observing local politics,” DeLeon said.
Peskin told the Chronicle he was not acting in his capacity as a supervisor in raising money for Nuru’s defense. “I’m agnostic on whether or not he has committed any wrongdoings, and obviously he is innocent until proven otherwise … but I’ve been extremely appreciative of the work he has done not only for my district but city-wide,” Peskin said. “I felt that as somebody who had gone above and beyond the call of duty for the citizens of San Francisco, that people who have experienced the fruits of his labor could come together and help provide him with resources he may or may not need.”
Then supervisor Fiona Ma (who, in classic San Francisco political fashion, failed up to California State Treasurer, and is facing legal woes of her own), said she was sponsoring a table of 10 seats at the dinner “out of appreciation for Nuru’s community involvement.” Then supervisor Gerardo Sandoval (now a superior court judge for San Francisco) said he also planned to attend, as did Peskin’s fellow progressive supervisors Bevan Dufty and Sophie Maxwell, whose names also appeared on the invitations. Maxwell said she was helping raise money for Nuru because it is the right thing to do. “He has made a big difference, and I will do whatever I can to help him because we need people who will work hard and get this city clean.” That certainly didn’t age well, nor did the fact that in April of 2019, Mayor London Breed appointed Maxwell to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
Peskin’s 2004 support of Nuru didn’t age well either (he also boasted it was “his idea to approach the firm of Keker and Van Nest to represent Nuru because Keker was a constituent in his district”), and it sounds even worse considering after Nuru’s 2019 arrest, he told me that “everyone at City Hall knew Nuru was corrupt” but they stayed silent because “you could call him at 2 a.m. on a Saturday and tell him there was a garbage can dumped over on Columbus Avenue and he’d go there himself to clean it up.”
Ultimately, Nuru wasn’t disciplined, but Gomwalk was arrested by immigration officers for overstaying his student visa (he was also arrested twice for check fraud in 1994). Because his father and uncle were assassinated by the Nigerian leadership, Gomwalk filed for political asylum, even setting up a website, JusticeForJonathan.org, to ask SLUG workers and others for money to help pay his legal bills. Gomwalk told Roger Gordon, then chairman of SLUG’s board of directors, that investigators were squeezing him for information about Nuru’s alleged wrongdoings. “He said ‘they are trying to get to Mohammed through me, but what they don’t realize is that I don’t have anything to give them,’” Gordon recalled at the time. As is always the case with the city family, that loyalty paid off: Nuru created a support analyst job for Gomwalk with the Bureau of Street Environmental Services, making him responsible for multiple programs, including the controversial Pit Stop toilets. According to Transparent California, as of 2021, Gomwalk takes home $172,000 annually in salary and benefits.
The sound of silence
As the FBI picked off the city family one by one, the silence from Mayor Breed — another Brown protégé — was deafening. And it wasn’t just Breed: Nuru and fellow city family members were corrupt under the noses of four mayors and numerous members of the Board of Supervisors, as well as aides like Hillary Ronen and Connie Chan who became supervisors. Only District 2 supervisor Catherine Stefani and then District 6 supervisor and current California assemblymember Matt Haney seemed genuinely concerned. As the longest-serving supervisor in San Francisco history, perhaps no one has more culpability on the board than Peskin, who has known about Nuru’s ethical issues since those first charges in 2004.
As for city family patriarch Willie Brown, he had the Chronicle to set the record straight on everything from escaping prosecution despite years of corruption allegations to his relationship with now Vice President Kamala Harris. When Harris was briefly the frontrunner in the race to become the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Brown wrote a Chronicle op-ed declaring for the record that he and Harris had dated 20 years ago, and he was pretty much responsible for every job she’s had since. There’s nothing honorable about a man who demeans a strong woman by publicizing their history in the bedroom and taking credit for her successes. There’s also nothing honorable about a man who mentors the mighty, from Nuru to Lee to the Kellys to Mayors Breed and now Governor Newsom, and then comes calling for favors. And when they play dirty, get caught, and fall from grace — their careers, their lives, and their families’ lives ruined — he abandons them with a cold-heartedness that would shock a snake in the dead of winter.
“I’ve been investigated by every agency with initials for a name that’s ever existed, and I came out clean,” Brown crowed in one Chronicle column. Then he dropped the name of City Hall’s most feared man at the time: “I had a long lunch a little while back with U.S. Attorney David Anderson, the top federal prosecutor in San Francisco. Not once did he give so much as a hint he was looking at Nuru or anyone else. Anderson was as cool, friendly and funny as could be, the complete opposite of the stone-faced lawman who rolled out the charges against Nuru … .” Apparently Brown doesn’t worry about the city family turning on him, but he isn’t so sure about Anderson. “I wouldn’t want him as an enemy,” Brown concluded.
At the age of 90, Brown still keeps his finger on the pulse of City Hall, including the mayoral race coming up this November where his hand-chosen incumbent, London Breed, faces dozens of competitors who believe her record makes her weak enough to beat. In contrast, San Jose mayor Matt Mahan recently ran unopposed, as Breed did in 2019 where she was elected to a full term against five unknown candidates. If Breed loses this fall, for the first time in decades Brown will lose his grip on Room 200. Still, with Anderson replaced as U.S. Attorney by Ismail Ramsey, perceived as a friendlier face to the city family, it is unlikely any of Brown’s disgraced protégés will ever turn on him — despite knowing that Brown is the big bass, and they are just minnows swimming in his murky undertow.