Peruse San Francisco voter guides and ballot-measure endorsements for Tuesday’s election, and the most successful advocates become clear: Mayor London Breed and her allies were triumphant. Across the board, the ballot measures she backed were chosen by the electorate.
Who else in the city had a field day? Local conservatives: Breed’s favored policies adhered tightly to the wishes of the San Francisco Republican Party.
More than organized labor, progressive political clubs or the official San Francisco Democratic Party, the local Republican chapter’s picks for ballot measures were the closest match to what Breed and her allies endorsed — and what voters chose.
The Republicans’ endorsed measures differed for only one: Proposition A, the $300 million affordable housing bond.
The measure, which asked voters to take out hundreds of millions in debt to publicly subsidize affordable housing, was called an “unnecessary new tax” by the local GOP. It was placed on the ballot by Breed, and supported by every corner of the city’s political establishment. It held firm, as of Thursday morning, at 67.41 percent, and will need to maintain at least a two-thirds majority — 66.67 percent — to pass.
Breed abstained on Proposition D, which would strengthen ethics rules, but her stances on policing, drug screening, real estate taxes and middle-school algebra were welcomed by the Republicans.
More San Franciscans, in fact, voted for all of the local Republican chapter’s endorsements than voted for the Democrats’ picks: When filling out their ballots, 6,641 people chose to follow every single endorsement from the Republicans, but only 2,507 did the same for the San Francisco Democratic Party’s picks.
16% of voters voted in line with Breed's endorsements — and only 2% matched the Democrats'
That could change: As of Thursday morning, the Department of Elections had tallied about half of the total ballots in the election — 104,760, with another 110,500 to go. The remaining votes are likely to skew younger, less white and more progressive, and more people may yet hew to the Democratic Party line.
But ballot measures are not likely to shift. Proposition A notwithstanding, every measure looks likely to stay as-is.
Will this boost Breed’s chance of success in her re-election campaign come November?
Not necessarily, cautioned Jim Ross, a 30-year political consultant.
“How do you reconcile how unpopular Breed is with how well her propositions did?” he asked. Given this is a primary election with low turnout, “this is a much more moderate audience than you would otherwise expect or normally see in San Francisco,” he said, and “skews to being very favorable to her, and towards that universe and its policies.”
And, the mayor’s unpopularity may be more about who she is than what she stands for, Ross said. “There are a lot of people who are very frustrated with the mayor’s performance, not her policies.”
Added David Latterman, a retired political consultant who largely worked with moderate candidates: “I don’t know if it’s going to have any impact on the mayor’s race whatsoever … There’s not a lot of carryover” between this election and November’s.
“It’s a minor victory for Breed, in that it shows that what she’s been endorsing is popular, it’s what people want,” he said. “She represents, and pretty much always has, the political mean of the city.”
Upstarts are on the rise, mostly
The other big winners Tuesday, as far as voting guides go, were GrowSF and TogetherSF — two political pressure groups with endorsements matching Breed’s that spent hundreds of thousands on the March election. Both are backed by donors who form part of a network of big tech and real estate money that has poured millions into city elections in recent years.
The groups’ guides, whether they pushed voters or simply tracked their opinions, were right on the money: More San Franciscans chose every single endorsement of GrowSF and TogetherSF in the March election than went with the picks from the San Francisco Chronicle, the League of Pissed Off Voters or the San Francisco Labor Council.
“The voters have spoken and they demand results,” said Steven Buss, the co-director of GrowSF. “Elected leaders need to focus on sound policies, not just sound bites. Voters want City Hall to deliver on the basics: Clean streets, safe streets, great schools and a ton more housing.”
GrowSF and TogetherSF were also successful endorsers in the race for Democratic County Central Committee, after backing a slate of 24 candidates that was, as of Thursday, trouncing opponents.
The slate, San Francisco Democrats for Change, had won 21 seats to their progressive rivals’ three. It outspent its rivals 3 to 1 in direct campaign contributions and perhaps 5 to 1 when including slate mailers, largely financed by tech executives giving five-figure sums.
Control of the Democratic Party endorsement in local races will all but surely switch out of progressive hands in time for November, likely handing boosts to allied ballot measure contests and candidates.
“There’s still a ton of votes out there, but there’s no way that we’re losing, like, 10 seats,” said Todd David, the leader of AbundantSF, which spent handsomely and organized the campaign to elect the Democrats for Change candidates. The progressive slate could yet erode that victory, David cautioned, but not by much. “Could the other side win another three seats? Sure, let’s just wait and see.”
Latterman, for his part, praised David and the organizing efforts of the ascendant slate. The DCCC race is a down-ticket affair, The Democrats for Change victory, Latterman said, indicated a well-organized, well-financed effort.
“All of the money and mailers that they put into it made a difference,” he said. The campaign benefited from “a ton of money” and “message clarity and consistency” greater than previous attempts to control the local body, he said, going back over a decade.
“I think when all the ballots are counted, it won’t be quite as great [of a lead],” he added. “But it’s a hell of a step forward.”
The outlier was the judicial elections. There, Breed’s allies lost: The incumbents for San Francisco Superior Court held comfortable margins, as of Thursday. They were well ahead of the two tough-on-crime upstarts backed by GrowSF and TogetherSF despite the prodigious money poured into that race.
The two insurgents, Albert “Chip” Zecher and Jean Roland, fundraised $705,000 and $406,000, respectively. Michael Begert and Patrick Thompson, the sitting judges, matched them with $417,000 and $275,000, respectively — almost a 2 to 1 discrepancy, but less than the enormous spending gap in other races such as the DCCC.
The San Francisco Republicans, too, backed the challengers in the judicial races, who lost.
Breed did not endorse proposition D. Not much talk about proposition D and the obvious undercurrents of discontent about the criminally corrupt Breed administration. How many of the people who answer directly to her need to be sitting in jail before it finally comes home?
Sad republicans are the sane ones now. The decline of leftist civilization in San Francisco, is so glaringly obvious now.
Winning in a very low turn-out election with disproportionate big money influence does not correlate to sanity. The Republican line has always been to say that the only reason their policies don’t work is that we don’t do enough of them. There is no Republican solution to homelessness because their policies cause it.
A broken clock is right twice a day, as the old adage goes. Republicans are the broken clock.
Most of these propositions involve the creation of new gov’t entities and require either additional bonds/taxes or expenditures to support them. That doesn’t sound very Republican to me….. and it’s completely wrong and disingenuous of the writer(s) to attempt to label it as such. Policies that are labeled “Republican” in SF would still be left-of-center almost anywhere else in the country.
Sir or madam —
Rep. Matt Gaetz is an advocate for dope-testing welfare recipients. And he’s pretty Republican and Florida is Florida. Rolling back police oversight and reducing use-of-force reporting are not left-leaning positions.
Yours,
JE
Right, Matt Gaetz is conservative because wants those things without living in a place where people are dying by the dozens in the street from Fentanyl overdoses. We are liberal and want those things because our progressive dominated Board of Supervisors and DCCC were unwilling to do or propose ANYTHING to fix those problems, despite the fact that our drug problem has continued to worse dramatically. San Franciscans didn’t vote for E and F because we are conservative. We voted for E and F because they were literally the only measures offered to us by anyone. And as voters, we clearly couldn’t trust our Supervisors to do anything, or they would have done it.
Until Progressives stop being the solutionless party of no, they should get used to losing here. SF voters have had enough of electing people who don’t want to make any hard choices to fix our problems. We will pick trying over not trying any day.
Jennifer —
I’m sorry to inform you that fentanyl is indeed a problem in the state of Florida. Plenty of people are dying. Regressive solutions don’t become magically liberal because they’re proposed by enlightened San Franciscans.
I do agree with you that these were the only options offered and that a frustrated electorate took the only choice it had.
JE
The looming gigantic deficit facing Mayor Breed and the Demo Regime
serves the electorate to recall the wisdom of Prime Minister Thatcher
of the United Kingdom with respect to Socialism;
“The problem with Socialism is that sooner of later, one runs out of
other people’s money to spend”. For SF, this is “later”.
London Breed is hardly a socialist. The deficit is a perfect storm of bad circumstances (exit of capital and office rental, delay in state relief, etc.) with some garden variety mismanagement thrown in. Calling Thatcher’s ideas wisdom is like calling warmed up garbage a delicacy.