Election 2024: Which S.F. voter guides got what they wanted?

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Despite a narrative that San Francisco is moving into a more conservative era, organized labor and progressive voter guides aligned best with the choices made by San Francisco voters in the November races. 

That was a shift from the pattern in the March primary, when more conservative political groups like GrowSF, TogetherSF and the San Francisco Republican Party were the most successful endorsers. 

This time around, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, one of the city’s most influential and progressive Democratic clubs, had the highest marks: It endorsed four out of seven winning candidates and was correct in all its ballot measure picks except for Prop. M, for which the club had “no recommendation.” Prop. M passed.

The League of Pissed-Off Voters, a progressive voter guide since 2004, endorsed four of seven winning candidates and 12 of 15 ballot measures. Labor unions, too, were mostly happy with the election results; the San Francisco Labor Council endorsed 15 out of 22 winning candidates and ballot measures, for instance, while SEIU 1021 endorsed 16 of them. 

However, not all races are equal: “Losing Dean Preston really, really hurts,” admitted Kim Tavaglione, the executive director of San Francisco Labor Council. The District 5 supervisor was defeated 47-53 by Bilal Mahmood.

Apart from endorsements, labor unions spent more than $2 million in the supervisor races: More than $1.1 million was spent in District 1, where labor helped Supervisor Connie Chan keep her seat after an uphill battle against her moderate opponent, Marjan Philhour. 

More than $590,000 was spent by unions in the District 11 race to both boost projected winner Chyanne Chen and blast her opponent, Michael Lai. In District 5, where progressive stalwart Preston lost to Mahmood, labor only spent about $210,000. 

Who didn’t do well in endorsements? The local Republican Party. 

The San Francisco GOP had zero success in its named-candidate and ballot-measure endorsements, though it did back Daniel Lurie and Mark Farrell as the top choices for mayor without officially endorsing them. In March, it was a completely different story: At the time, the Republican chapter’s pick was almost perfectly aligned with the electorate, more so than the Democratic County Central Committee, the local Democratic Party chapter. 

The Democratic County Central Committee, for its part, also had a mixed election this time around: Its candidates won three of seven races, and its picks for ballot measures aligned with voters for 11 of 15 propositions.

San Francisco Briones Society, another local Republican group, endorsed Lurie as its No. 1 pick for mayor and also succeeded in two other endorsements: Prop. M and Prop. N. 

TogetherSF and GrowSF, two political groups backed by tech and real-estate money that have spent handsomely in recent elections, had eight out of 22 and 12 out of 22 successful endorsements, respectively. That, too, was a shift from March, when all those groups’ endorsements matched exactly with what voters chose. 

Higher turnout in a presidential election is the key reason for this difference, said Jim Ross, a veteran Bay Area political consultant. The lower turnout in the March election means mostly “people who are older, homeowners, or longtime residents” turn out to vote. 

“That's why the moderate and conservative groups usually do better in off years or primary elections,” Ross said. 

Tavaglione from the Labor Council agreed. “The voter turnout in March was abysmal,” she said. Only 46.6 percent of registered voters cast their ballot then, while at least 78.5 percent voted in November. “These are working people, and when working people vote, they tend to vote with labor.” 

In March, GrowSF and TogetherSF were able to focus their resources on fewer candidates and ballot measures. But in the November election, “they had to spread that around a lot because they have the mayor’s race and all the supervisor races,” said Ross. “It just kind of diluted the impact.”

The two political groups, which aligned perfectly with one another in their March endorsements, started to drift apart in the run-up to November, diverging on a few fronts: TogetherSF picked Mark Farrell as its No. 1 choice for mayor, while GrowSF endorsed Farrell, Breed and Lurie equally. GrowSF supported Prop. I, which would increase retirement benefits for registered nurses and 911 dispatchers, and Prop. N, which would create a fund to repay first responders’ student loans. TogetherSF opposed both. 

In March, the groups shared a common goal of electing candidates on the Democratic for Change slate to form a moderate Democratic County Central Committee, said Ross. “It was easier to get agreement.” 

In November, however, not only did the two groups split on the mayor’s race, so did the moderate slate of the San Francisco Democratic Party, which endorsed Mayor London Breed. 

Ross called it “billionaire-on-billionaire violence;” Breed, Lurie, and Farrell all had wealthy patrons behind them, and spent big to attack each other. 

Indeed, although TogetherSF, the group that stood firmly behind Farrell for mayor, advised voters to put Breed and Lurie in the second- or third-place slots, it didn’t hold back in efforts to attack its own secondary picks. 

As Joe Eskenazi wrote, it was hard to overstate how badly TogetherSF’s ballot measure, Prop. D, and its preferred candidate, Farrell, underperformed. 

Farrell got some 78,000 votes, or 20.5 percent, as of Nov. 16. Prop. D, the ballot measure to give the mayor power to eliminate commissions and weaken civilian oversight, is failing with 56.7 percent of voters going against it; its countermeasure, Prop. E, is on track to pass, with 52.9 percent of the votes.