If the San Francisco mayoral race was a business investment, where the return for money spent was votes earned, then a number of candidates clearly would be heading into bankruptcy.
Candidates raised nearly $10 million — almost half from public coffers and the rest from their own pockets, individual donors and independent committees. With 16 candidates, the off-year election was a financial gamble.
Without the city’s ranked-choice voting system and lucrative public financing laws, it’s unlikely that there would have been so many candidates. And the amount of money burned by many of the candidates at the bottom of the list will generate continuing discussion of both ranked-choice and the threshold for public financing.
Take the most extreme examples.
Assessor Phil Ting, architect of San Francisco Reset, raised $359,000, nearly two-thirds of that taxpayer money. That came out to $491 per vote received; he got fewer votes than Green Party underdog Terry Baum, who raised $41,000, at $34 per vote.
Joanna Rees, self-made venture capitalist, raised $928,000, about half in taxpayer money. Much of her money was derived from the city’s wealthier neighborhoods, and it shows — she spent $407 per vote, placing one step higher than Baum.
What about the leading candidates? Ed Lee and John Avalos spent close to the same amount per vote: $28 for Lee, $23 for Avalos. But take into consideration how much money outside groups spent in support of candidates, and that amount increases.
Jeff Adachi, the mastermind behind the failed Proposition D, was most efficient, spending $18 per vote.
A big factor in the cost per vote was the low voter turnout, 31 percent. Election officials said last night that this was the worst turnout of the last 10 mayoral contests.
Typically, off-year elections bring lower turnouts, usually to the detriment of more liberal candidates, as young people are less likely to vote.
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You should do an update with all the independent expenditures related to number of votes. That would certainly bring Lee and Adachi much higher.
Can you really call the sponsor of failed Proposition D a “mastermind”???
Logarithmic scale? C’mon…. It makes it look as though there was little difference in how much was spent. That is very misleading, in an article that is otherwise quite illuminating.
I don’t usually like to use logarithmic scale, but I wanted to show the trend in votes based roughly on the money raised. It does horribly distort the lower outliers though.