ike Al Gore, who couldn't carry his home state of Tennessee in 2000, lame duck San Francisco Public Defender Kimiko Burton failed to carry her Potrero Hill neighborhood in Tuesday's election.
Preliminary but nearly final voting results released Friday showed PD-elect Jeffrey Adachi carried all but four of the city's 25 neighborhoods.
Citywide, Adachi beat Burton by more than 10,000 votes. It was a 55 percent to 45 percent victory.
"It was about clean government and reform," said Bob Henderson, Adachi's campaign manager. "We kept the focus on cleaning up the swamp."
Burton's campaign managers were not available for comment Friday.
Adachi's campaign message was that Burton was ill-prepared for the job handed to her by Mayor Willie Brown and the beneficiary of special interest campaign contributions arranged by her father, state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton.
That argument resonated in the tony enclaves of Pacific Heights, Sea Cliff and the Marina as well as the liberal neighborhoods of the Mission and Haight Ashbury.
Burton carried only Bayview/Hunters Point, the Ingleside, South of Market and Visitation Valley.
Henderson said Burton's support came from retirees and older civil rights activists who remember her family's record on behalf of them.
"People develop a loyalty for names, even after they no longer represent their interests," he said. "John Burton has not represented San Francisco for decades [and] was not able to buy this election."
Meanwhile, Adachi's appeal scored in the disparate neighborhoods of Diamond Heights, Chinatown and the Western Addition.
Henderson said the near-1,500 vote edge given to Adachi in West of Twin Peaks showed that more conservative voters chose a candidate aligned with the progressives of San Francisco rather than the old "Brown-Burton machine."
"We tried to unify people on the issue of do we want San Francisco to just have a political machine that benefits only a few," he said.
Adachi also carried both of San Francisco's Assembly districts by comfortable margins. He was the winner in nine of the 11 supervisorial districts.
