Matt Gonzalez

70
Matt Gonzalez bigraphy, stories - Activists

Matt Gonzalez : biography

June 4, 1965 –

Matthew Edward Gonzalez (born June 4, 1965) is an American politician, lawyer, and activist prominent in San Francisco politics. He currently serves as chief attorney in the San Francisco Public Defender’s office.

Gonzalez was a member and president of San Francisco County’s Board of Supervisors.As a consolidated city-county, the only such municipality in California, San Francisco does not have a traditional city council. Instead, the county board of supervisors acts as the legislative branch of government, while the mayor of the city acts as the executive branch. He was also one of the first Green Party candidates elected to public office in the San Francisco Bay area. In 2003, Gonzalez ran for mayor of San Francisco but lost in a close race to Democrat Gavin Newsom. In the 2008 presidential election, Gonzalez ran for vice president as the running mate of candidate Ralph Nader.

Gonzalez currently maintains two blogs, The Matt Gonzalez Reader and As It Ought to Be.

Early life

Matthew Edward Gonzalez was born in McAllen, Texas, to a Mexican mother, Oralia, and Mexican-American father, Mateo. Gonzalez spent his first four years in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Gonzalez family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; and Louisville, Kentucky, before the family returned to McAllen when Gonzalez was 11 years old.

In an interview with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle, Gonzalez described his father as a salesman who initially started out selling "cigarettes from the back of his car in south Texas" in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and later started an import/export business selling medical and dental supplies.Segment of SFGate.com video of requires Quicktime7. See also: San Francisco Chronicle December 4, 2003. A profile in the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gonzalez’s father was a division chief for the international tobacco company Brown & Williamson.Guthrie, Julian. The San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, December 7, 2003

"Eddie", as Gonzalez was called in his youth, was an Eagle Scout and the president of his senior class. He discovered a talent for debating at Memorial High School, from which he graduated in 1983. Gonzalez said about his childhood in South Texas: "The Mexican-American–Latino–Chicano culture in California is different than my experience in Texas. I grew up in a town that is majority Mexican and Mexican-American. In McAllen, we didn’t refer to ourselves as Latinos or Chicanos. We referred to ourselves as Mexican. There’s a different feel in that border area."Jones, Very Rev. Alan, interviewer. May 16, 2004, interview conducted at Grace Cathedral

Gonzalez earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1987, and a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1990. At Columbia, he studied comparative literature, political theory, and was a member of the debate team.Matt Gonzalez campaign website biographical information: While attending Stanford, he was an editor for the Stanford Law Review and member of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. He worked on immigration issues at the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, pending death penalty cases at the California Appellate Project, and "gender discrimination and religious clause issues" as a research assistant to the Dean of the School, constitutional law scholar Paul Brest.

In 1991, he began working as a trial lawyer at the Office of the Public Defender in San Francisco. He was a Certified Specialist in Criminal Law (the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization). He represented and won eight out of nine life in prison cases (the ninth was later won at appeal) and was named "Lawyer of the Year" by the San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association in 2000.Roth, Gabriel. The San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 6, 2000.

An unorthodox politician

Newspaper accounts from the San Francisco mayoral election noted that Gonzalez slept on the uncushioned slats of a futon frame because "it’s more comfortable," wore Doc Martens shoes and baggy suits (some of which were given him by former San Francisco mayor Art AgnosMcKeethen, Richard (February 2, 2005) Golden Gate Xpress Online.), and did not wear a watch,Cheevers, Jack and Lesley Anderson (October 8, 2003) SF Weekly. even though he owned a Rolex given him by his father. The "floppy-haired, slump-shouldered champion of the counterculture," as the Christian Science Monitor called him,Sappenfield, Mark (December 9, 2003) Christian Science Monitor. is not married and owns no real property. He gave away his 1967 Mercedes-Benz sedan because, he said, he found it easier to get around on public transportation.Martinez, Mariam (February 20, 2004) Latino Leaders.