PUGNACIOUS SAN FRANCISCO PROSECUTOR IN TOUGH REELECTION RACE

SAN FRANCISCO - This should be an easy time for prosecutors to
get reelected, what with crime dropping nationally as prisons bulge
and the economy booms.

Particularly in San Francisco, where a 33 percent drop in violent
crime since 1995 beats the 26 percent decline in New York City as well
as many other cities with tough-on-crime leadership.

But nothing has ever come easy to Terence "Kayo" Hallinan, a
pugnacious liberal who bills himself as "America's most progressive
district attorney."

Hallinan, 62, faces four challengers on Tuesday, the toughest of which
is Bill Fazio, a former assistant D.A. running even with him in a
recent poll.

The same poll -- taken after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that
his conviction rate is the lowest in the state -- showed Hallinan's
negative ratings to be surprisingly high.

Fazio, who was endorsed by both major newspapers, has called Hallinan
"pathetic," "embarrassing," and temperamentally unsuited for the job.

"Four guys are directly running against me. Every one gets up and
bashes me and I just have to take it and keep on my path," Hallinan
said. "I'm really looking forward to a runoff when I can go mano a
mano with Bill Fazio."

Hallinan credits the poor conviction numbers -- and safer streets --
to a series of diversion programs, which have reduced the number of
people his staff sends to prison by two-thirds since 1993. And all of
his challengers pledged in a pre-election debate to continue and even
expand on these policies.

Divert nonviolent drug offenders to school, not jail? Legalize
medicinal marijuana use? Send prostitutes and "johns" to social
workers, rather than courtrooms? Send misdemeanor spousal abusers to
"batterer's school" for a year? Absolutely, and more, the candidates
say.

"This is San Francisco," said Fazio, who lost to Hallinan in 1995
after running a tough-on-crime campaign. "We're all progressive to a
certain degree."

But Hallinan says Fazio only got the support of 98 percent of police
union members because he's paying lip-service to the progressive
programs that keep many of the nonviolent drug offenders they arrest
out of jail -- and what he considers a revolving-door justice system
that fails the community.

"They bank on that overtime on these minor drug cases, sitting around
on time and a half on cases that just get continued and continued and
never go to trial," Hallinan said. "Nine-tenths of these are just
little African-American kids, holding one or two or three rocks of
crack cocaine, selling them for $20."

Instead, he puts young drug offenders without records of violence,
weapons use or substantial criminal records into a mentor program.

"I make a deal with them that if they go to school for two years, I'll
drop the charges against them," Hallinan said. "I'm literally putting
dozens of kids in college and trade schools. In most other counties,
these kids would be going to jail."

Hallinan shrugs off the withering criticism he's gotten from the
Chronicle, which compared police arrests to convictions at trial and
reported that his office's success rate was 32.5 percent.

"I judge my success by a decline in violent crime and an increase in
public safety. On that level, I'm leading the whole country," Hallinan
responded. "When you talk about statistics on convictions, I'm not
that great, because every time I divert somebody and they go to
college, that's a case I lose."

For Hallinan, the political has always been personal. A former city
supervisor and longtime activist for civil rights and other causes, he
had to fight all the way to the state Supreme Court to become a lawyer
after the bar blocked him, citing his civil disobedience convictions
and some youthful fistfights.

Since becoming D.A., Hallinan got heat for firing 14 deputies and
replacing them with minorities and gays and lesbians in what he called
an effort to make the office reflect the city. He's also been accused
of being too willing to plea-bargain with defense lawyers, and
improperly trying to influence several trials with his public comments.

"As a first-time D.A. I've made mistakes; I've gotten into flurries
with judges that would better have been avoided, although I thought I
was legitimate in the criticisms I was trying to make," he said. "I
was trying to do what I thought was in the best interests of the community."

The other candidates include former assistant D.A. Steve Castleman,
who accuses Hallinan of blowing a huge environmental case; Matt
Gonzalez, a deputy public defender who wants to decriminalize all
marijuana use and end the death penalty; and Mike Schaefer, a wealthy
lawyer and ex-con who has spent 33 years campaigning for offices
around the country, almost always unsuccessfully.