The band of big-money groups and donors that have emerged in San Francisco since the pandemic, focused chiefly on ousting progressive politicians and curing the city of perceived urban lawlessness and bureaucratic excess, had a busy 2024.
The four most active public pressure groups in the coalition — GrowSF, TogetherSF, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, and the Abundance Network — spent close to $20 million on various ballot measures and candidates this year. The year’s six top individual donors, meanwhile, spent $17.5 million.
That outlay was partly responsible for making the Nov. 5 election the most expensive in the city’s history.
What those groups and donors got for their money was a mixed bag. None chose Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie as a No. 1 pick, putting the groups’ leaders in a precarious (or worse) position with the new administration right from the get-go.
“We don’t owe them a goddamn thing,” said one source close to Lurie. Earlier in the year, many envisioned the November races as a “sea-change election” for consolidating power among the groups. Instead, they are starting 2025 on the back foot.
No matter. The groups, and their funders, made it clear in a series of interviews that they can get along fine with Lurie, if he lets them. Leaders of all four groups, equanimous in defeat, said they were looking forward to furthering Lurie’s agenda.
They also remain resolute on continuing what they’ve started. According to their leaders, the next couple of elections will likely see better-orchestrated and equally well-financed campaigns to amend the city charter and rid the Board of Supervisors of any progressives.
While the groups’ leaders mostly counted the November results a success, others were more candid: The tech and business coalition split by backing different mayoral candidates, they said, and all suffered as a result.
‘As a business community … we screwed up’
In November, coordination among the network of groups, which share not only ideological goals but close connections among staff and donors, was absent.
One group, TogetherSF, sank millions into a losing charter-reform measure, Prop. D, that would have expanded mayoral power and halved the number of city commissions. TogetherSF also backed fourth-place finisher Mark Farrell, who tied his campaign to the measure and likely sunk it: Both were pounded by voters, and the defeat of TogetherSF’s all-in effort revealed the limits of the group’s power and, perhaps, its political acumen.
Neighbors for a Better San Francisco officially stayed out of the mayor’s race, but its biggest donors opted for Farrell, who barely topped 20 percent. The Abundance Network, meanwhile, put together a $3.2 million PAC backing Mayor London Breed, who lost to Lurie by a 55-45 tilt.
While the groups managed to oust democratic socialist Dean Preston from the Board of Supervisors, a campaign backed by GrowSF, their candidates fared poorly in other supervisor races, losing four of six. The mayor’s race, several said, sucked all the oxygen, and funding, out of the room.
“We spent, what, $20 million on a mayor problem that we didn’t have?” said cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen, who backed Breed with nearly $1 million. “And we just squeaked through on the Board of Supervisors which, of course, is the heart of the problem … We should have focused on that 100 percent, should have been an eight-to-three board instead of a barely six-to-five.”
“We as a business community, we as a pragmatic community, we screwed up,” Larsen added. “We focused on the wrong thing. And I think most of the groups realize that now. We should have been 100 percent on the Board of Supes and charter reform, period.” Now, he says, moderate-leaning groups and donors will have to wait years to get charter reform on the ballot.
Zack Rosen, the ex-CEO of tech company Pantheon and founder of the Abundance Network, added: “With all of the campaign funding this cycle, moderates directed only 5 to 10 percent to the Board of Supervisor races. We were outspent by a wide margin in D1 and D11, which is inexcusable. We must keep improving our game, or we could easily lose our tenuous board majority in ‘26.”
Todd David, the Abundance Network’s political director, said ahead of the election he felt it possible for the coalition to “disagree on the mayor’s race” while still collaborating elsewhere. But, in practice, “that was not possible to execute.”
New political groups spent millions in 2024 — but focused on different races
$8 million
$4.9 million
$2.2 million
$1.6 million
TogetherSF Action
Abundance Network
Neighbors
GrowSF
measure
mayor
supervisor
DCCC
other
measure
mayor
supervisor
DCCC
other
TogetherSF Action
$8 million
Abundance Network
$4.9 million
Neighbors for a Better San Francisco
$2.2 million
GrowSF
$1.6 million
Chart by Kelly Waldron. Data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission.
Others chose to take a longer view: Since their beginnings after the pandemic, they said, the new pressure groups and donors have notched several victories that have made the city’s politics much more closely aligned with their own.
And, with nearly inexhaustible funds coming from a cast of millionaires and billionaires, they can afford to take a few rounds on the chin.
“Our goal is to be a steady presence in elections; to, cycle over cycle, be able to represent our values,” said Jay Cheng, the head of Neighbors for a Better San Francisco. Pointing to a changed Board of Supervisors, a new district attorney, and a moderate-leaning school board, Cheng added, “A lot of what we set out to do, a lot of that has been accomplished.”
Cheng is probably in the most precarious of posts: The source close to the Lurie administration said Cheng is persona non grata, citing alleged ethical lapses by Neighbors under his leadership and echoing past reporting from the San Francisco Standard. Neighbors paid $54,000 to settle an ethics fine against it earlier this year.
What that animosity means for others is less clear.
Cheng’s wife, Kanishka, the CEO of TogetherSF, savaged Lurie during the campaign despite endorsing him as a second choice. While boosting Farrell, TogetherSF sent out emails stating that Lurie had zero experience and was trying to buy the election.
In defeat, Kanishka Cheng has been decidedly more positive on the future Mayor Lurie. “We really hope that he’s successful in enacting the vision he ran on,” she said. “We were never unhappy with the platform or the vision … Everything he ran on are things the TogetherSF community is really bought in on.”
Jay Cheng, for his part, said it was “a uniquely difficult election cycle,” and that he hopes emotions will die down. “We’re going to be patient,” he said, adding, “We’re very supportive of a Lurie administration … We understand he is in the driver’s seat, and we are here to follow his lead.”
It’s unclear whether Lurie will be as ready to set aside the brutal campaign, but those who lead the political organizations are movable parts. Meanwhile, the money behind the groups is unlikely to go away. While conceding that the current system of money in politics is “completely toxic,” Larsen points out that it is the system, and that perhaps the groups should take a page from labor, and vow to be in it for the long game.
“It’s not so much the amount of money; it’s the consistency of the money,” said Larsen. “Why do the public unions have so much power in Sacramento? Talk to any of the politicians out there, and they’ll tell you: ‘Well, it’s because they’re there every year, year in, year out.’” That counts more than an occasional big check, he added.
Rosen, the ex-Pantheon CEO, agreed. The current campaign finance system is “not healthy” and “should be reformed,” but Rosen said focusing on wealthy individuals while ignoring labor unions and nonprofits was a mistake. “San Francisco has many narrow interests with deep pockets. These include the organized interests who receive funding from the city and county’s $16 billion operating budget.”
Labor unions were key in several supervisor races, namely Districts 1 and 11, where they bankrolled progressives Connie Chan and Chyanne Chen to victory. But among the top 20 donors in November’s election, only three were unions or labor-backed PACs, giving about $3.3 million of $27 million.
The rest were wealthy individuals and tech companies.
Next up: Charter reform
For many, the long game seems to coalesce around charter reform.
The current city charter was adopted by San Francisco voters in 1995, and has been amended numerous times since. Most recently, in November, TogetherSF and billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz attempted to expand mayoral power and cut the number of city commissions, but had a disastrous showing at the ballot box; their Prop. D lost, 55-45, despite almost $10 million in spending.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, meanwhile, put forward his own commission charter reform measure, Prop. E, which directly competed against TogetherSF’s proposition. With just $70,000 behind it, Peskin’s measure won, 53-47.
Most public pressure groups and wealthy political donors, including Lurie, supported Prop. D’s attempt to bolster executive power, and to various degrees subscribe to the belief that the mayor’s lack of authority is to blame for San Francisco’s dysfunction.
Objectively, however, San Francisco’s mayor has tremendous power. During the last budget, Breed controlled 80 times as much money as the Board of Supervisors. And it’s not just a budgeting issue: A 2013 city report found that the mayor has virtually “unchecked” and unilateral power to make appointments when filling vacancies, far more than most any other mayor in California. Former mayoral staffers, who served more than 30 years and were privy to hundreds of mayoral decisions, told Mission Local they could not once recall someone asking, “We need to talk to a commission about this.”
Still, if only the mayor could act more like the CEO of a company, without overbearing commissioners and supervisors, the city would be far more responsive to its citizens, or so the thinking goes.
“Anybody who’s run a company,” Larsen says, “if you don’t have hiring and firing, what’s the point?”
Breed, for her part, largely agrees. While she said firing isn’t a problem — “I don’t have to [fire anyone], because any of the people that work for me, if I ask them to leave, they would leave,” she said in a recent exit interview — the hiring is.
“The challenge comes from what happens after they leave, and that I don’t get to directly pick a person to take over that responsibility,” she said. City commissions must often provide the mayor a list of nominees from which she can choose an appointee, which some consider too tight a constraint.
Future reform would, as a result, likely expand executive power by amending the charter. Moritz and TogetherSF, for instance, have focused more on structural changes than other groups and, in internal documents, laid out a multi-year plan for such reform, including bringing back citywide supervisors. Kanishka Cheng, for her part, said cutting commissions would continue to be a top focus.
Most said future moves would be more piecemeal than what TogetherSF and Moritz set out to do in November, however. Already, a lesson from that failed effort has been: Do not tie charter reform too closely to one candidate, as it was tied to Farrell.
Another lesson: Make it simple. Prop. D, a 75-page document, had multiple parts: Expanding the mayor’s power, cutting commissions, curtailing police oversight, and more. “If we’re moving forward with reform, it has to be more digestible … that’s a learning lesson for us,” said Jay Cheng of Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, which put $950,000 behind Prop. D.
And a third: Reform may work best when it comes from a relatively neutral body, like the think tank SPUR which, in August, published a report spelling out possible changes to the charter. David of the Abundance Network, Kanishka Cheng of TogetherSF, and Larsen all pointed to the SPUR report as a blueprint for change, and Lurie has already adopted some of its recommendations by adding “policy chiefs” to the mayor’s office.
“What happened in this election was, we disagreed about the first step,” said Steven Buss Bacio, a cofounder of GrowSF, referring to Prop. D. “But what we’re going to end up with, a year or two years from now, is a nonpartisan, objective study on what we can do, and I hope that we can all find the collaborative spirit to follow through on those recommendations.”
Rosen, the ex-Pantheon CEO, echoed Buss. “Our coalition has come a long way since the recall elections of 2022. But, like any successful coalition, it has plenty of substantive internal disagreements,” he said. “The test of our coalition is whether we can sustainably, over decades, operate in a ‘greater than the sum of the parts’ fashion.”
Structural change is not the only priority. More immediately, all four groups said they will oppose the recall of Joel Engardio in District 4, a TogetherSF and GrowSF ally who is being targeted for his support of Prop. K to permanently close a stretch of the Great Highway to traffic, which was backed by the Abundance Network.
His ouster would send a chilling message to politicians thinking of streetscape changes in the future, or to those attempting changes in communities that are deeply opposed, as was true for the Westside and Prop. K.
And the supervisor races in 2026 will be high on the agenda. Five seats will be open on the Board of Supervisors, and three of them are occupied by moderate incumbents vying for re-election. “We could win every seat,” said David of the Abundance Network, which was instrumental in electing a new slate to the San Francisco Democratic Party in March. And, if they do, moderate supervisors would go from a minority to a supermajority in two years’ time.
That groundwork, those groups made clear, could only help Lurie enact a shared agenda.
New Deal liberalism? Or neoliberalism anew?
The changes sought by all four groups are, in many ways, an attempt to remake San Francisco’s flagging reputation, not just for tourists and national tabloids, but for the very idea of Democratic governance.
“In the second Trump administration, the greatest act of resistance is a well-functioning, Democratic-run city,” Cheng of TogetherSF said. “The failures of Democratic-run cities were a big failure nationally that hurt us in the presidential election.”
The Abundance Network, for instance, is part of a larger national effort to build an “abundance agenda,” and has chapters in Oakland and Santa Monica. The movement has been criticized as “neoliberalism’s rebrand;” it focuses on building more housing, reducing bureaucracy, and making public spaces “safe and vibrant,” among other things. The New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who is publishing a book titled “Abundance” and is one of the movement’s luminaries, has put it in New Deal-era terms: “We need a liberalism that builds.”
The thesis is familiar to many national Democrats on the party’s center and center-right wing, who have, in the shadow of Trump’s victory, crowed about the need to return to basics: Clean streets, bustling small businesses, safe cities.
Larsen, who counts himself as an outsider who operates better on his own, says San Francisco is ahead of the rest of the state in this arena, adding that the city’s pressure groups are “pretty remarkable,” despite what he viewed as a lack of coordination this year.
“Most people around left-coast cities would say San Francisco is leading the way. Probably L.A. is next. Oakland can get up there, too. But then, California needs a lot of reform,” he said, pointing to rolling back criminal-justice reforms like Prop. 47, which was partially undone by Prop. 36 in November. The measure reintroduced felony convictions for certain drug and theft crimes.
Such shifts, Larsen said, should be a model for statewide change.
“You would hope that the groups that have been focusing in San Francisco and emerging in L.A. [would] start focusing on the state.”
Locally, Larsen, like others, sees “super basic” immediate priorities for the Lurie administration, and lists the campaign promises of nearly everyone running to unseat Breed: Public safety and clean streets. “And then, you got to get businesses back.” Those two basics will help, but then, he adds, “you need a reason for people to come to downtown.” Other cities, he says, have done it. “We were in New York recently, and it’s just booming, right? The idea that, ‘Oh, yeah, retail is just dead because of the internet’ is such bullshit. It’s booming in Las Vegas. It’s booming in New York. It’s booming in Miami. It’s not booming here.”
He blames that on the politics and “the lackadaisical attitude of so many of the leaders and the workers in this city is just … ” He trails off, as if there are no words to describe them. “That has to end.”
Additional reporting by Kelly Waldron.
Chris Larsen: “We, the over-rich, fucked up. We only spent gobs of money trying to buy complete control of the city. If we had spent 10 gobs of money, we would have owned the whole thing.”
That kind of “Democrat” is why the Democratic Party doesn’t really care that much that Trump won. More for the rich, no regulation, “free speech” for the powerful, poverty, disenfranchisement and chaos for the everyone else.
Cue the London Breed switch to the GOP.
sheesh, glad all these outside my district know what is best for my community and family. Last I check (today) election results in the Mission resoundingly rejected the efforts of all of this big tech / investment groups. SF was way more scary and dangerous in the 80′ s and 90’s than now, stop pearl clutching for the big cash. Thanks Lurie for the ‘ we owe them nothing’ stance.
How ignorant do they think people are? They are unabashedly trying to bankroll a plutocracy. My question is, Are enough people misguided and resigned enough to let that happen?
Answer : YIMBY
GrowSF, TogetherSF, Abundance SF and any similar, moneyed ‘we know what’s best’ groups hoping to pull the levers in the city can collectively F themselves. They pretend to be a lot of things, but they are 100% in it for their own selfish reasons.
How about they all go back to wherever they came from and just get out of SF?
Jimmy Carter said the US is an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery”. Sort of sums up the state of the country and the city at the end of 2024.
They undermined and insulted the intelligence of SF voters. Did they really think we would go for their propaganda? Prop D failed because it was a bad idea. Don’t blame Mark Farrell for that. Their supe candidates lost because they are disconnected puppets. If they really cared about the state of the city and residents, they’d put that money to better use by donating to orgs that do actual direct service or the number of struggling small businesses who keep our communities vibrant. Instead, they made it more than clear they have an agenda that serves them and only them under the guise of wanting a better city. These TakeoverSF groups can go straight back to hell.
What a time to be alive! Of course Ezra Klein is cheerleading yet another billionaire grift. Who knows what disruptive (i.e. “dystopian’) boondoggle will drop next from our anarcho-capitalist, cyber-libertarian oligarchs?! One thing is certain, whatever it is, it will be an old way, dressed up in new “tech” clothes, to transfer wealth from the workers who create all wealth, to the .001% at the top who absorb and horde it. “Abundance” is right, if you’re a tech-“founder” parasite.
Some additional thoughts.
2026 could be a tough year for these monied groups. Many of their ideological similarities with the GOP will come into focus with Trump in the White House. Meanwhile, I believe San Francisco communities will be hungry for left-wing opposition to Trump. For example, I doubt a bunch of moderates are able to do a rally in favor of Grant’s Pass or whatever, with Trump in the White House making the very same arguments.
Meanwhile, in 2026 the even-numbered Supe districts are up for re-election. They’re all occupied by corporate-friendly, “moderate” candidates. So these groups have basically nothing to gain, but everything to lose!
Meanwhile, a lot of the scare-tactics these groups use to push charter reform are going to look VERY Trumpy after Jan 20, 2025, which will put them behind from the jump. Without those scare tactics it’s pretty tough to argue for the sweeping changes they seek.
Perhaps if there’s budget armageddon they can shoehorn that into propaganda for their cause, but I think that’s going to be tough. The people will just want to tax the rich, cut police, and continue funding public programs.
Going to be a wild ride!
PS – Chris Larsen is forgetting one thing about why Labor has power. Labor has people. The only thing Chris Larsen has is money. That can buy you a lot of media and influence, but only people hit the streets and organize around ideas, candidates, and policy. Labor will always have more.
Any billionaire such as Chris Larsen that calls workers in this city “lackadaisical” can fuck off.
Instead, I agree with this statement from GrowSF and hope these groups follow through on this goal: “But what we’re going to end up with, a year or two years from now, is a nonpartisan, objective study on what we can do, and I hope that we can all find the collaborative spirit to follow through on those recommendations.”
Yea, the tell from this Larsen character is the second part of that lackadaisical clause … “AND the workers”.
Because of course it’s You workers are the reason why downtown retail is not geared towards cheap tourist glitterati. Streams of residents from San Mateo County aren’t driving up to Market Street because of these LACK of daisy-cal reasons.
Sounds like Yerba Buena table pounding and clue-less-ness all over again to me. People telling themselves they know better about “reform” and “renewal” while self-dealing and making money. The patricians are so pompous they don’t ever realize it, destroying inchoate vibrance under the illusion that intelligent design can reconstruct something similar.
It is a good point that a lot of the effort that went into unseating Breed was a waste. And a risk if Peskin had been a better candidate for the left.
But the supervisors results were OK for moderates. Not just that the moderates have a 6-5 majority. But also there is now only one “hard left” Supe, Fielder.
Historically there have usually been at least 2, such as Britt and Bierman, Ammiano and Gonzalez, Daly and Mirkarimi, Campos and Avalos, Ronen and Preston.
The other “progressive” Supes are pragmatists and not ideologues. Fielder is going to be lonely.
LOL Ezra Klein. “A liberalism that builds”…. private wealth? public austerity? Good luck with the rebrand. Neolibs are stuck in the same purgatory of ideas that the GOP was in before they became the party of Trump. They have no solutions to the city’s problems (lack of AFFORDABLE housing, homelessness, transit issues, etc.) because these problems are directly related to their ideology of unfettered capitalism and wealth consolidation/inequality.
Too bad some of this money couldn’t have gone into the SF Small Sites Program.
That would be a good way to make the City a better place to live. And would be a more productive use of all this spent money.
Happy New Year.
One would think that most of the effort for the time being would be put into Washington politics by the tech and business communities. Not much of import is going to happen in SF compared to what may come out of DC. Nothing SF does will come close to the damage they may see elsewhere.
Great article. However, one major donor only mentioned once. What does Mimi Haas want for her million?
“perceived urban lawlessness”. I’ll admit it, I did not read beyond this. Joe, you got to be walking around town with blinders on. Why do you think merchandise across town has gone into locked cabinets, Safeway at Duboce Triangle has changed hours, Whole Foods mid market shut down altogether? Not interested in the big corporate angle? Ask David Pesusic why he closed Bayside Market after 35 years in business or any (former) bike shop owner around town.
More billion dollar bike lands and subways to nowhere please!