G. Whitney Leigh is not a politician.
There is only one lawyer at his San Francisco firm, Gonzalez & Leigh, seeking public office, and that guy set his sights on the west wing of an 18th Century Georgian estate.
Back home, however, someone had to handle the inevitable fallout from Matt Gonzalez’s candidacy as a running mate with independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. And it appears that Leigh has stepped up to the task.
In an editorial recently posted on FogCityJournal.com, a Web site that
publishes San Francisco news and political coverage, Leigh defended his law partner against claims by a local political reporter that Nader and Gonzalez are campaigning to play “spoiler” and derail Democrat Barack Obama's shot at the White House. (He apparently had already counted Hillary Clinton out last week.)
In short, Leigh wrote that there are “multiple good arguments by which to question the value and potentially negative impact” of the Nader-Gonzalez campaign. Leigh, for one, cited Obama’s readiness to “engage adverse governments in countries like Cuba” and the prospect of electing a progressive African American president as reasons to support the Illinois Democrat. But Leigh said the San Francisco Bay Guardian* reporter who criticized Nader and Gonzalez didn’t articulate any of those arguments.
Much of the subject matter in Leigh’s article can be characterized as in-fighting among the political left. But when the former Keker & Van Nest partner talks about considering the “upsides and downsides” of Gonzalez’s decision to join the Nader campaign, you have to wonder if he is starting to question the future of his firm.
— Matthew Hirsch
*where, full disclosure, your Legal Pad correspondent once worked
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