Vanquished San Francisco congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti has disbursed $400,000 to support several measures on the San Francisco November ballot, according to a new filing published on Wednesday.
Chakrabarti made three contributions: $150,000 to support Proposition B, the public bank measure; $150,000 to support Proposition I, which would route existing tax dollars into affordable and “social” housing; and $100,000 to support the regional transit sales tax measure.
Chakrabarti, who came third in June in the congressional primary, is a centimillionaire, former Stripe engineer and co-founder of Justice Democrats, a political PAC working to elect progressive members to congress. He made his millions as one of Stripe’s early employees.
Chakrabarti did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Most of the major donors in the November election have given to Mayor Daniel Lurie’s package of charter reform measures to consolidate mayoral power and to Prop. H, the Muni parcel-tax measure. As of Friday, some 16 major donors, who, for the most part, work in tech and finance, had contributed more than $13 million, largely to those four measures.
In the last couple of weeks, however, more large sums have trickled in for Props I and J.
Dean Preston, a democratic socialist and former District 5 supervisor, has contributed nearly $118,000 to support Prop. I, which would cement his proposition to tax sellers of big real estate properties that voters passed in 2020 — which was also, cosmically, called Prop. I.
The Service Employees International Union, one of the city’s largest unions, contributed $100,000 to Prop. J, a separate measure that would remove a transfer-tax exemption for foreclosures, earlier this month.
Still, those propositions have raised far less than the charter-reform and Muni measures. The charter-reform measures have raised some $9.7 million, and the Muni measure some $4 million. Meanwhile, both Props I and J have raised far less: About $550,000 and $150,000, respectively.
It is not surprising to see Chakrabarti spending on the local measures. The former candidate has put massive sums toward his political ambitions. Chakrabarti spent at least $8.9 million funding his run for congress, far outpacing his opponents, Scott Wiener and Connie Chan.
Following the primary, Chakrabarti repurposed his candidate committee, making it a new PAC — “SF Solidarity PAC” — to support Chan.
Chakrabarti also contributed $50,000 to Proposition J.
My king is never washed
The biggest issue I had with Chakrabarti was that, after being here for a decade with a hundred million bucks in the bank, he did practically nothing the entire time. Even his supposedly uber powerful economics website was totally vibe-coded (source code of claude.ai files was on public github).
But, now… maybe he decided to step up. It would have been a LOT better if he put a big chunk of that money to the actual services that really need funding, but at least he’s stepping up.
It’s wonderful to see Saikat giving back and supporting grassroots measures that will make working San Franciscans’ lives better. Yes on B and I!