The Chronicle editorial board is powering through our endorsements for the June primary election, and we’ve already started interviewing candidates for governor. Stay tuned for that endorsement.
On Thursday, we published our pick for state treasurer.
One of the candidates is Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who is running for a dry, wonky job that would seem to be a step down for someone once considered a contender for governor.
Kounalakis, who served as U.S. ambassador to Hungary under President Barack Obama, told the editorial board that the technical aspects of the treasurer’s office appealed to her after years of “standing in front of a podium with a visiting dignitary.”
Editorial writer Emily Hoeven, who wrote the endorsement, told me she didn’t have room to include this, but Kounalakis said that after Donald Trump was reelected president in 2024, “I just didn’t see … what my theory of the case was” for the governor’s office. Leading California would inevitably entail lots of showboating and tangling with Trump, and Kounalakis said that “my personality has always been much less showhorse and much more workhorse.”
Five other candidates are running to replace Treasurer Fiona Ma, who’s termed out. Along with Kounalakis, another candidate who we thought stood out is state Sen. Anna Caballero of Merced, a former Assembly member and mayor of Salinas who also led the state Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency under Gov. Jerry Brown.
Reader Mike Tsoi emailed to rightly point out that in last week’s newsletter, I mischaracterized the visitation data for Sunset Dunes park.
The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department counts a “visit” every time someone passes infrared sensors at Sunset Dunes. Since the park opened last year through March, there were 1.7 million visits. Someone could be counted more than once, or just passing through the park to Ocean Beach.
Perhaps the 1.7 million figure is not as impressive, but Sunset Dunes is a popular attraction that people enjoy, and again, in my view, a benefit to the city.