Splinter Vote : It’s the Dummy, Stupid! San Franciscans Tackle a Tough Issue

SAN FRANCISCO —  Enhancing their storied reputation for quirkiness, voters here narrowly approved a veteran police officer’s request to walk his beat with a bug-eyed ventriloquist’s dummy, unofficial election returns showed Wednesday.

While not as weighty as other matters crowding the city’s ballot Tuesday, Officer Bob Geary’s plea to keep puppet Brendan O’Smarty with him on the streets--a request denied by a boss who considered the dummy stupid--was one of the most talked-about items in San Francisco electoral history.

“I’m very happy that Brendan is no longer an outlaw officer with the Police Department,” said Geary, 53, after a morning victory stroll with his uniformed puppet through the city’s North Beach neighborhood. “People said this was frivolous, but the ballot was the only hope Brendan and I had left.”

Elsewhere in California, the election news was somewhat more pedestrian. Voters in Contra Costa County signaled their distaste for assault weapons, approving by a 3-1 margin an advisory measure that would ban their sale, manufacture or transportation in the state.

In the north Bay Area, the eco-sensitive city of Fairfax took a firm stand against Styrofoam, outlawing the local use of takeout cups and food containers made of the non-biodegradable material.

Nearby in Mill Valley, teen-ager Andrew Frierson lost his ambitious bid for a seat on the school board, a post that would have allowed him to decide his teachers’ salaries and rule on his classmates’ expulsions. Critics attacked Frierson for listing his occupation as “business consultant” on the ballot, but the 18-year-old senior insists that his parents entrust him with important duties at their investment firm.

San Diego voters, known for their conservative tendencies, broke with tradition to elect their first openly gay representative to the City Council, former council aide Christine Kehoe. Kehoe, whose sexual orientation was spotlighted in flyers circulated by her opponents, was backed by a national gay fund-raising organization.

And despite the success of statewide Proposition 172, which made permanent a half-cent sales tax to help fiscally ailing local governments, six counties failed to persuade voters to approve additional increases in the sales levy. Voters in a seventh county, San Benito, were narrowly defeating a similar measure, but some absentee ballots remained to be counted.

In San Francisco, veteran political observers were hard-pressed to recall a ballot question as zany as the one deciding the fate of Officer Geary’s pint-sized partner. Some called the episode reminiscent of the election campaign of the notorious Sister Boom Boom, a man who dressed like a nun, wore heels and falsies and managed to win 23,000 votes in a run for the Board of Supervisors in 1982.

Geary, a 24-year veteran of the police force, bought the puppet for $1,750 two years ago and spent $250 more to outfit him in a miniature uniform, holster and special badge: No. 1/2. The officer said the dummy “helps me break down barriers” and comforts people who are suspicious of police.

Maybe so, but recently his supervisors decided things had gone too far. Police Chief Tony Ribera said Geary could take Brendan to youth and community events but would have to leave him at the station during routine patrols.

Geary bristled at the new orders. When neither the mayor nor the Police Commission would intervene, he spent $13,000 of his savings to gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Critics say such measures waste money and trivialize the initiative process. Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said: “I have followed politics as though it were my life for 25 years, and I have never heard of anything as silly as this. It just goes to prove the electoral process is for everyone, kooks included.”

But Geary and Brendan won rousing honks of support as they ambled city streets Wednesday, and fellow Officer Jim Diegnan said: “Bob deserves credit for determination, no matter what you think of the dummy.”

San Francisco voters also faced two other intriguing ballot questions Tuesday. Offered the chance to require a dress code for cabdrivers, they declined. Asked in an advisory measure whether city workers ought to ride the bus to work at least twice a week, they overwhelmingly said yes.