After a veto-proof majority of the Board of Supervisors voted this week to give due process rights to immigrant youth, Mayor Gavin Newsom said he would just tell Juvenile Probation to ignore the ordinance. To blatantly flout our system of checks and balances undermines the democratic process we are told to respect, and sends an awful message to the hundreds of kids who came to City Hall – many for the first time – to lobby their elected officials on this measure. Sadly, this is not the first time Newsom has abused his power as Mayor – just because the outcome did not go his way. Newsom refused in 2006 to abide by a voter-approved policy to meet with the Board once a month, and in 2007 said he would not spend affordable housing money that the Supervisors appropriated. What good is our democratic process if we have an executive who acts like the legislative branch does not matter, and what kind of precedent does that set if Newsom becomes Governor?

In our democratic process, we have rules – and if you passionately believe in a certain policy, you work hard and play by those rules to achieve that outcome. And after one side has won and the other has lost, we expect the winners to prevail. If the voters pass a ballot measure, we expect – unless it gets thrown out by the courts – that it becomes law. If the Supervisors pass a piece of legislation, we expect that the Mayor either signs it or vetoes it – and if he vetoes it, only a super-majority of the Board can override it. Does it mean you always get what you want? No, but at least we all know that the rules are fair.

For a while, Gavin Newsom had it good. During his first three years as Mayor, every one of his vetoes were sustained – because the Board failed to muster the eight votes needed for an override. But in November 2006, Supervisor Bevan Dufty joined the progressives to support police foot patrols – and the proposal became law. Newsom was so furious, that apparently he did not talk to Dufty for months. Since then, whenever the Mayor has been outflanked he has found some extra-legal maneuver to invalidate or annul the policy that he opposed.

In November 2006, the voters approved a “non-binding” advisory measure that asked the Mayor to meet with the Supervisors once a month to answer their questions. Newsom refused to attend, instead opting to have scripted Town Halls where he got to pick which questions were asked. In May 2007, Dufty again joined the seven progressives on the Board to allocate $33 million for affordable housing. Rather than veto the ordinance if he disagreed with it, Newsom opted not to spend the money – an effective “back-door veto” that gutted the legislation.

Now, the Board has passed legislation – consistent with our 20-year old Sanctuary City Ordinance – that would require the police to only turn in undocumented immigrant juveniles to the feds for deportation after they are convicted of a felony. Under Newsom, the City’s current practice is to report them once they are arrested, even if wrongly accused. Once again, Dufty joined the seven progressives to pass a veto-proof ordinance. Once again, Newsom has said he will ignore it. “The Campos bill isn't worth the paper it's written on,” said his spokesman Nathan Ballard.

The Mayor argues the ordinance is pre-empted by federal law, and the City could get sued for following it. He even leaked a confidential memo by the City Attorney (which in and of itself was probably unlawful) that expressed concern, so it’s not really a surprise that Newsom opposed it. But what’s surprising is the Mayor’s willingness to simply ignore the law, rather than put up a political fight – or put pressure on the Supervisors to back down.

And there are problems with his legal rationale. First, the ordinance in question was “approved to form” by the City Attorney – which means it is at minimum defensible in court. It’s not unusual for proposed legislation to bear some legal risk, and in those cases the City Attorney issues a cautionary memo. Second, if the measure is illegal, so is San Francisco’s entire Sanctuary Ordinance – which the voters adopted in 1989. If we have operated as a “sanctuary city” for twenty years, what allows Newsom to now say he wants to “protect” the City?

Moreover, “going against the law” didn’t stop Newsom in February 2004 from ordering the City Assessor to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples – despite clear language under state law that such marriages were not legal. 4,000 gay couples were married at City Hall during the “Winter of Love,” until the Supreme Court ordered us to stop.

Sometimes, doing the right thing requires the City to challenge state or federal law – and open ourselves to the risk of being sued. It’s up to our elected officials (through the democratic process) to make the calculation of whether doing so is worth the effort. It’s not up to the Mayor alone – after a veto-proof vote of the Board – to make that call.

Of course, the obvious reason why Newsom is doing this is that he’s moved beyond San Francisco – and is running for Governor. Just like how Dianne Feinstein used her battle scars against the local left to prove to Californians that she’s not a San Francisco liberal, Newsom is triangulating against progressives – and scapegoating immigrants. This has his consultant Garry South’s fingerprints all over it – because after all, being “tough on crime” worked for Gray Davis.

But Newsom’s anti-immigrant position could backfire in the Democratic primary against Jerry Brown. Latinos are a huge chunk of the electorate, and this will not endear them to Newsom. Nobody wants to see families broken apart, and it will have a greater downside than the upside of pandering to the suburban white voters who are afraid of immigrants.

Californians have become more liberal in recent years, and Democrats no longer want a candidate who likes to screw the progressive base. Of course, old-school political consultants like Garry South – who worked for Davis, Steve Westly and Joe Lieberman – don’t get that yet.