NEWSOM'S 2ND ACT

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared victory Tuesday night in his almost effortless bid for re-election - confident that the cast of characters running against him won't catch up - and pledged the start of his second term will be marked by major environmental initiatives and an attempted reconciliation with his critics at City Hall.

Taking the stage at the Ferry Building alongside his father and girlfriend, Jennifer Siebel, Newsom spoke for just under 15 minutes and told hundreds of campaign volunteers, City Hall staffers and other politicos how humbled he was.

"To my critics, this is an opportunity, and in some ways a reconciliation," he said. "I commit to working with you for the next four years, and I commit to resolving those areas where you still believe we can do better."

While strict new state rules regulating how ballots in the city are counted this year mean it could be weeks before the final results are known, Newsom ran virtually unopposed and has long been considered a shoo-in for a second term. When the polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, 48,104 ballots had been counted, with 77 percent going to Newsom.

The party at the Ferry Building pretty much died down by 10:30 p.m., paling in comparison to the much more boisterous bash at the Fillmore marking Newsom's first mayoral win four years ago. That time, it was a close race with Newsom narrowly beating then-Supervisor Matt Gonzalez. Newsom acknowledged Tuesday this year's race was anticlimactic.

After his victory speech, he highlighted the environment, as well as homelessness, housing, health care and education as his top priorities for the next four years. But specific details are still to be spelled out.

One priority Newsom has identified is to ask San Francisco voters to approve a bond next fall to pay for the seismic rebuild of San Francisco General Hospital, the city's main trauma center.

Despite predictions of a low voter turnout following a lackluster race for the city's top job, the ballot-counting requirements imposed by Secretary of State Debra Bowen mean local election workers will have to inspect each ballot by hand, a process that is expected to take days, if not weeks.

Only the results of absentee ballots and early votes cast at City Hall in advance of election day were released Tuesday, with additional results being made public in the coming days as more ballots are counted.

As of 4 p.m., only 26 percent of the city's registered voters had cast votes, though that percentage was likely to rise to well above 30 percent when all the votes are tallied. Still, the turnout is remarkably low - the lowest for a mayor's race in decades.

Sister Paula Guhs, a retired nun who lives in the Western Addition, still managed to get to the polls to vote for Newsom.

"I think he's doing a good job," she said after casting her ballot in City Hall on Tuesday. "But I also didn't think any of the other candidates could take over if they won."

Political consultant Jim Stearns said the reason for the low turnout is simple: a ballot with some interesting propositions, but no real race among any of the city's top elected officials.

"People respond to the candidate appeal - the emotional appeal of a person or a battle between people," he said. "That just wasn't present, so this wasn't unexpected."

Newsom's bid for re-election has seemed more like a coronation than a campaign. One by one, big-name politicians who over the past year considered challenging Newsom, including Gonzalez, backed down. Despite a widely reported sex and alcohol scandal earlier this year, Newsom has enjoyed high approval ratings in polls, and ultimately was viewed by would-be competitors as unbeatable.

Not surprisingly, the mayor didn't mention that affair Tuesday. In his victory speech, though, he grabbed Siebel's hand and thanked her for "sticking by me in this very challenging year."

Eleven candidates signed up to challenge Newsom, but none of them had the name recognition or fundraising ability to pose a real threat to the mayor, who made a national name for himself - and locked in local support - after his 2004 decision to administer marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Quintin Mecke, a program director of the nonprofit Safety Network Partnership and a former Gonzalez campaign worker, picked up endorsements from critics of the mayor on his political left, such as Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi.

At a party at the Peacock Lounge in the Lower Haight, Mecke said he was glad he ran even though early results showed him garnering just over 3 percent of the vote.

"The reason why we have elections is to talk about issues and regardless of the results, regardless of the funding, democracy demands that we have that discussion," he said.

The other candidates were Chicken John Rinaldi, a professional "showman"; Grasshopper Alec Kaplan, a homeless taxicab driver; George Davis, a nudist; Michael Powers, a sex club owner; H. Brown, a blogger and former teacher; Harold Hoogasian, a florist; Lonnie Holmes, a Juvenile Probation Department manager; Wilma Pang, a music professor at City College of San Francisco; Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, a physician and personal trainer; and Josh Wolf, a journalist and blogger who was imprisoned this year for refusing to surrender to authorities video he shot of a violent San Francisco protest.

San Francisco elections officials predict that 75 percent of the votes cast at the polling places Tuesday and 65 percent of all the absentee ballots cast will be tallied by Friday.

It is the city's first mayoral election involving ranked choice voting, in which voters can select their three favorite candidates for mayor. Under that process, early returns showed Hoogasian and Pang trailing Newsom in second and third place, respectively.

Pang held a party at the Far East Cafe in Chinatown on Tuesday night and said she was delighted by her third place finish in early returns.

"My platform was don't forget the immigrants, and it worked," she said. "I'm a professor and seen as a person of integrity, and people paid attention to that."

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, a frequent Newsom critic, congratulated the mayor and said he looks forward to Newsom reaching across the political aisle in his second term.

"There are a lot of pressing issues out there and I, and the board, look forward to working with the mayor to get things done," Peskin said.