Content warning: This article contains accounts of sexual assault.
The San Francisco Democratic Party on Thursday held the first of what it promised would be several meetings to unroot sexual misconduct in the cityโs political circles โ and some attendees immediately called into question whether the partyโs effort had been born out of opportunism.
Several of the dozen-plus speakers said that the partyโs sexual assault task force, composed of six members of the Democratic County Central Committee, suffered from two critical defects: It contained members who were running for office, raising questions about their motivations, and had no Black or Latinx representation.
The committee was announced last Friday following sexual assault allegations, including against progressive politicos Jon Jacobo, a local leader in the Mission.
โTo ensure this committeeโs integrity โฆ no persons in this committee should be running for office,โ said Sophia Andary, the vice president of the cityโs Commission on the Status of Women and one of several speakers who called for a change to the committeeโs membership. โHow is it possible to establish a committee with no representations from one of the impacted Latino communities who have suffered at the hands of abusers?โ
Michael Rouppet, a vice president of the San Francisco Latinx Democratic Club and a sexual assault survivor, similarly said the lack of Black or Latinx members did not address the โcultural nuancesโ of the communities โwho have historically borne the bruntโ of sexual violence.
Plus, he said, โIf you are running for office, I see a conflict of interest.โ
The meeting, held at Hiram Johnson Building at 455 Golden Gate Ave., came days after news broke that Jacobo, a once-rising Mission community leader who was accused of sexual assault in 2021, had been accused by three more women of similar behavior.
The committee also referenced an online accusation against a president of a Democratic club in the city, though no individual has yet leveled a specific, public accusation or filed a police report against that person.
The formation of the Democratic Party commission to look into allegations of sexual assault, spurred by these accusations, also pulled influential politico Jay Cheng into the spotlight. The head of the big-spending political group Neighbors for a Better San Francisco was arrested in 2010 for alleged sexual assault, but was never charged.
Committee members did not reference any of these specific allegations. The new chair of the Democratic County Central Committee, prosecutor Nancy Tung, said the body would not adjudicate individual cases but instead offer a code of conduct for the cityโs Democratic Party clubs.
And, added committee member Lily Ho, they would not take up โcases that have been previously criminally investigated or closed.โ
It was clear, however, that there was plenty to do.
Most of the dozen-plus speakers, even those critical, thanked the party for initiating the sexual assault examination, saying it was long overdue and that San Francisco politics was rife with abusive behavior.
โIn the last few years, I have gotten sick and tired of having to make phone calls to leaders around the city to let them know that this person or that person is part of this whisper network,โ said Denise Heitzenroder, a project manager at the cityโs Department on the Status of Women and a board member of the San Francisco Womenโs Political Committee.
Heitzenroder said it โbogglesโ the mind that such conversations are still taking place, saying groups like hers have surfaced cases of sexual assault for years. โWe know this is a problem. Weโre tired of it. Weโre fed up.โ
Several of the speakers were themselves survivors of rape or abuse, and some lamented the focus on โalcohol, late nights, and a lack of boundariesโ in local politics.
โIโm probably going to say something a lot of people may say: I am a victim of rape,โ said Susan Pfeiffer, a former Democratic Party delegate and the first speaker. Hene Kelly, a regional director at the California Democratic Party and the second speaker, said the same: โIโm a victim of rape.โ
Emma Heiken, one of the committee members, read testimony from two others who submitted their allegations anonymously.
โI was threatened by a coworker on a campaign I was working on after refusing to rekindle a relationship,โ Heiken read. The person said the campaign manager did โnothingโ and, soon, retaliated against them. โEventually, I was fired.โ
The second account read: โI was at a bar in 2018 at a campaign kick-off when an elected official put his hand on my shoulder and then moved it down to grope me.”
The hearing involved a public comment portion and a private session, where committee members took testimony behind closed doors. The committee will meet several times until August, Tung said, when the cityโs clubs must be rechartered before the Democratic County Central Committee and can adopt any code of conduct created by the group.
Even before any allegations were leveled, the DCCC, as it is known, underwent a complete change of its political composition thanks to a major win by an oppositional slate โ called the San Francisco Democrats for Change โ backed by Cheng and others interested in ridding the committee of progressives. At present, progressives control only six of the 24 elected seats.
Five of the committeeโs six members are part of the incoming slate, and two of them โ Trevor Chandler and Bilal Mahmood โ are running for supervisor in November.
Tung, for her part, said she saw no issue with the makeup of the committee: The Democratic County Central Committee is a political body, after all, and she would have been hard-pressed to fill it with members who were neither current, past, nor potential future candidates for office.
โIโm confident in the composition of the committee to do the work,โ she said. If anything, membership on the committee pulled candidates off of campaigns โ โitโs a sacrifice,โ she said โ and it would be โvery obvious to votersโ if any of the members used their position to score political points.
And, she said, different communities would be heard throughout the process, including in future public meetings. โThis is not going to happen in a vacuum.โ
The committee should have a set of guidelines to institutionalize throughout the city in August, Tung said, stressing that this was only the beginning of a long process.
Ho, the committee member, ended the public portion of the hearing on a similar note: The results of the groupโs actions would not live in a forgotten document, she said. โWe will be doing something about this.โ
This article has been updated to clarify a second set of allegations referenced in the Democratic County Central Committeeโs announcement of its task force.
The majority of the DCCC was so well aware of Jay (Jesse) Cheng’s “history,” that they created a special carve out to exempt him from scrutiny. His case is “old” and led to no charges or civil suit so our DinoCCC decided to let him skate. So far, neither Jacobo nor Ortiz have been charged or sued. What’s the difference?
The latter two are “progressives” while Cheng is a “moderate” – that could explain it.
Or the DCCC’s utter lack of concern about sexual violence/domestic violence is to exploit it to their own political violence. They don’t care about the victims except to the extent that they can pimp them out to their political advantage. That could explain it.
Already one fine “moderate,” former District 2 Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, had to resign from the committee because she thought it was okay to overlook the fact that Nate Ballard had been convicted of domestic violence.
Jay (formerly known as Jesse, until he needed to reinvent himself) Cheng is married to Kanishka Cheng of Together SF, the “moderate” group that helped buy positions on the DCCC for the majority of its members. Kanishka Cheng/Together SF are so stupid that they were working on a ballot measure that would make SF’s mayor more power. Governmentally, SF’s mayor has more power than any other big city mayor in the country. And Kanishka/Together SF know that – they were just spouting lies. This week they pulled the plug on that effort because a dim lightbulb went on to shine enough light for them to have an “aha moment” and they realized their funded candidates might lose the election and their scheme would end up increasing the power of someone the didn’t “prefer.”
This is the type of ignoramus that has or benefits from billions of dollars of libertarian capital and is out to remake San Francisco so venture capital, tech and other corporate interests always win and the dominant media (owned by the same people) hit us over the head with the lie that this is “moderation.”
These “streamlining reformers” flushed almost two Noe Valley toilets worth of cash money down the crapper on the strong mayor charter amendment.
Hard to tell from the story and the comments if this is about accountability and prosecution of sexual predators or about using the issue of sexual assault for political means.
Cheng, Jacobo and Ortiz all have to go.
I am confident that the party of Bill and Hillary “Stand By Your Man” Clinton, Joe “Womens’ Hair Sniffer” Biden and Gavin “Boink your best friend’s wife and employee, breaking up their marriage” Newsom can get to the bottom of sexual abuse within the SF Democrats’ political miasma.
We can count on kicking more hippies, like how the Democrats threw Al Franken under the bus, where the in group is granted every consideration and the out-group held to account on everything.
Between sex and anti-semitism panics, conservative Democrats are playing all of the chords on their Wurlitzer of political deflection to marginalize progressive political power. None of this theater makes women or Jews any safer. It only further empowers the reactionaries who could not care less about oppression.
Joe,
Shouldn’t there be a place on the Committee for an ad hoc SFPD Special Victims Unit representative ?
h.
We are witnessing the strange and terrible outcome of voting for a slate of power hungry, law and order and free market worshipping neoliberals (the โSFDemsforChangeโ slate) in a lack luster, low turn out election to a little known body (the DCCC) of endorsers/influencers in SF politics. These newly empowered sycophants are actually exploiting human beings who have experienced rape or sexual assault in order to advance their own political agenda. Youโve got to ask yourself: why would the new DCCC think they can or should make such a kangaroo committee to โinvestigateโ gravely serious crimes like rape, sexual violence and abuse? Might the decision have something to do with this yearโs HUGELY impactful election โฆโฆ.a David versus Goliath conquest for SFโs future? And Jesse now โJayโ Cheng, long time protege of Mary Jung, is a de facto influencer and fund bundler for candidates; Cheng helped strategize and fund the SFDemsfor Change slateโs candidates and their recent โwinsโโฆโฆan irony not lost on us.Hereโs hoping that thoughtful San Franciscans are outraged by this garbage. If Tung and Dorsey and the newly elected robot slate think this will go anywhere, they are wrong. The optics could not be worse. Jesse Jay Cheng is Mary Jungโs protรฉgรฉ and a โdeciderโ and funneler of funds to chosen neoliberal Tech friendly candidates. Itโs truly vile that Grand Inquisitor Nancy Tung is pretending that Cheng gets out of rape free but Jocobo or any other political organization or individual who doesnโt fit the new DCCCโs agenda will be scrutinized. Rape and sexual and domestic violence are horrible and serious crimes. Also: ANY candidate currently running for elected office CANNOT sit on this committee (looking at you Chandler and Mahmood). Come on!
In the ml newsletter, this story came after the clarion call about the red Indian takeover, indicating that actual sexual abuse is less of a threat?. Only one of the stories is no more real than pro wrestling.