San Francisco is a pricey town; the $3 the 49ers paid for an egg during the Gold Rush days translates into well over $100 in today’s money.
Money in politics has been prodigious for quite some time, too. But a Rubicon of sorts was crossed this year when crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, apparently proactively, dropped a $500,000 donation into a PAC supporting District 10 supervisor aspirant Theo Ellington, the mayor’s pick.
Ellington was already, far and away, the fundraising leader in this race. He is widely viewed as the prohibitive favorite. So that’s a bit of a head-scratcher. Or maybe not: A $500,000 donation for Larsen is the equivalent of a person with a net worth of $1 million giving $36.50.
So it wasn’t just the (staggering) size of the donation that caught politicians’ eyes, it was the casualness of it.
Yes, unions put $1 million into re-electing Supervisor Connie Chan in 2024 — but that was a broad consortium of organized labor in a months-long campaign. This was a single individual dropping half-a-mil the way folks pull out their wallets to buy a bacon-wrapped hot dog.
Larsen could do this again tomorrow if he felt like it — and the next day, and the next day, and all the way to election day.
“And here’s what no one likes to talk about,” says a city campaign strategist. Politicians “don’t do things because of money or they think they’ll get money. They do things because they’re worried money will be spent against them.”
Politics, it turns out, is one of the more affordable and efficient pastimes for free-spending billionaires. It’s cheaper than fast cars or art or even the incredible philanthropy that many of our biggest political donors engage in.
And here’s the thing: The ROI is significant. You can’t solve world hunger or homelessness or climate change, even with massive, ongoing philanthropic donations.
But you can, absolutely, politically remake a city for a small fraction of the price of a Van Gogh or a McLaren.
It’s election season again, and that means you can’t venture into the virtual world without stumbling into Mayor Daniel Lurie.
To wit: A San Francisco political strategist plays YouTube videos of chirping birds to either amuse, placate or torment his cat, Lucy. And, like clockwork, after five minutes of tweeting and flapping and squawking, there’s Lurie, imploring Lucy to vote for his Measures D, E and F to strengthen and consolidate mayoral power.
Higher-ups in organized labor confirm they are, perhaps monomaniacally, putting all of their blood and treasure behind Chan’s congressional race.
Lurie and his allies, meanwhile, have enough money in their collective couch cushions to pour $11 million into his ballot-measure campaign — more money raised than every other proposition on the ballot combined, largely financed by a cadre of millionaires and billionaires.
This means that there will be no significant opposition to the mayor’s measures, even though Prop. D would quadruple the signature-gathering requirements to place items on the ballot — a significant hurdle for labor unions, neighborhood types or anyone not wealthy enough to plaster ads between bird videos for cats.
Of note, $4.5 million has been spent to date to signature-gather for these ballot measures, one of which would make it harder for you to signature-gather items onto the ballot.
That’s a bad look; Lucy is unimpressed. But it’s hard to imagine the city’s human voters are going to spurn this mayor’s wishes. Certainly not without a coherent and decently funded opposition campaign.
There has always been a lot of money in San Francisco politics and there have always been rich and politically influential city figures — your Fishers, your Hellmans, your Bernsteins — going back to the days when Samuel Brannan shouted to all who’d hear, “Gold! Gold from the American River!”
In the present day, however, the city’s rich have never been richer, more brazen or faced with less pushback and less viable opposition. They are spending more and asking for more. Today’s big shots don’t just ask for more cops (and cameras) in their neighborhood, a sweetheart development deal or a tax cut (but they do want those things).
They also want structural change.
“In my lifetime, it seems unprecedented to me,” says historian and political scientist Rich DeLeon, the 84-year-old author of the seminal 1992 book “Left Coast City.”
Gray Brechin, a historian and the author of the 1999 book “Imperial San Francisco,” agrees.
“In the Gilded Age, with the Big Four and the Silver Kings and all the rest, there was pushback,” he says. “There was the Workingman’s Party and the Populist Party, and San Francisco was a strong union town, unlike Los Angeles. Now, I just don’t see that.”
“What do you buy after your super yacht and your mansions?” he continues. “You buy the government and you buy the media.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s three keys to success are “Money. Message. Mobilization.” Those who seek to counter this city’s billionaires are deficient in all three.
Does money alone win you a race? No. The vape giant Juul could tell you that. The backers of Prop. D of 2024 could tell you that.
But, in general, it’s better to be rich and famous than poor and unknown. And you still need “message” and “mobilization.”
The knock on this city’s left, for quite some time, is that its messaging has been muddled, if not nonexistent — clearly, look at the scary billionaires buying these elections isn’t working. Jack Torrance might have wanted to know who was buying his drinks, but local voters don’t seem to share that concern.
And “mobilization” is harder in a city that has priced its working- and middle class to the outer Bay Area and beyond.
Fewer and fewer members of most public-sector unions — which are now more or less the last remaining pillar of city progressivism — live here. They are less and less inclined to head to some remote corner of a city they don’t spend time in and talk to people, who are less and less inclined to want to listen.
Campaigners tell me that, post-pandemic, in-person, people-powered activities have lost ground to digital ads of the sort playing for Lucy the cat.
That’s hardly surprising. San Francisco’s demographics have undergone a sea change over the last few generations. And our demeanor and customs feel like they’ve transformed, too, in a much quicker time frame.
“Everywhere I go, everyone is hunched over their phones,” says Brechin. “Only in Irish pubs are they standing and having Guinnessess and talking to each other.”
Mayor Daniel Lurie remains popular. It’s not hard to see why: He is an affable, positive, friendly man whose affable positivity is broadcast continually in his many, many internet videos.
He continues to pay consultants and strategists who poll relentlessly — enabling him to essentially campaign 24/7/365 to the city’s phone-hunching demographic.
Say what you will about Lurie, he is well-meaning. You cannot say the same about some of the people in his orbit, however.
When asked if Lurie had misgivings about the sheer volume of money in San Francisco politics and the motives of some of his backers, the mayor’s office responded: “Our administration has proven every day that we work for the people of San Francisco and no one else. It doesn’t matter who gives how much to what campaign — we’re working every day to deliver results so people are safe, the streets are clean, and our comeback benefits every community in our city.”
That’s a more politic message than Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan delivered at a 2022 conference promoting Network States — essentially, tech-funded startup nations.
Tan and his allies, he told the crowd, were working to build “parallel education, nonprofits, media, unions” in an effort to create “the alternative tech political machine” to “reform” San Francisco.
“And if it works in [San Francisco],” said Tan, as recounted in “The Nerd Reich” by Gil Duran, “it will work everywhere.”
That’s another factor differentiating today’s wealthy San Francisco political movers and shakers from their predecessors: “We have a cult of radicalized billionaires who believe it is their destiny to rule the 21st century,” Duran tells me. “They know our system is for sale. And that’s the name of the game, not only in San Francisco, but in Washington.”
Whatever your criticisms of Lurie and the incredible sums of money he spent to obtain his office, he is not part of that crowd.
But they are supporting his measures. And Lurie will not be mayor forever. The normalization and acceleration of expending vulgar sums of political cash and the centralization of executive power will outlast him.
This city’s wealthiest are playing a long game.
They are winning it.
I wish we had a real mayor like Mamdani to get things done for those of us who aren’t in AI or part of the nouveau riche of poorly-socialized tech workers who can’t do their own laundry. This city deserves to fall apart under the current leadership who’s more focused on optics than metrics.
Want proof? Lurie had a big event signing the petition to save muni at the top of the Castro station. I wonder who might have a few hundred million lying around that was made off the backs of SF labor…money that could save muni/bart. It’s about a photo op. Service is about giving, and it’s sad that so many in this city have been duped to think this mayor and his administration give anything to anyone other than themselves and their cronies.
They can’t look people in the eyes.
I wish SF had progressives that were running a broad based universal non means tested affordability agenda that’s winning elections nationwide, instead of leeching off government grants and contracts, but here we are.
You’ll pry means testing from liberals’ cold, cold hands…
Sorry , Joe but Lurie is NOT affable or well meaning and yes he is part of that crowd.
Mayor Lurie is, we are told, “well-meaning” — as is everyone busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Rather than organizing for the overthrow of the capitalist system, the source of imperialist war and growing austerity, all of them — including the nicer ones — are focused on maximizing their own material interests and selling each other out in the “nicest” possible ways.
Sooner or later, reason or fear will force them to choose a side: the national ruling classes, with their drive to austerity, dictatorship and world war, or the international working class, for equality, democracy and the socialist transformation of society.
Sure let’s all starve under the glorious socialist systems that have been abject failures EVERY TIME for 150 years now …
Sally, stop accepting your social security check and never call 911! You wouldn’t want to support socialism! …
Please never ride Muni. Never set foot on a sidewalk in this city. You don’t deserve socialism. It’s too good for you.
Last I looked, the UK, Germany, Scandinavian countries et al. are still solvent.
Last I looked, none of those countries are socialist. They are capitalist countries with strong social safety nets which are funded by consumption, payroll, and income taxes on low wage and middle wage workers that are dramatically higher than those in the US.
Truth be told, I find little to be thankful for in San Francisco these days, my 16th year living in the city. But at the very least I am thankful that we somehow still have people like Joe, who has made a career of telling the truth.
Thank you for writing this and connecting these dots.
Thanks Joe, this was helpful. Unfortunately too many believe the “pleasant” messages from the oligarch/God Complex crowd. It is hard to see how Lurie’s hands are clean here.
rather than this continuation of blaming XXX for everything, if we stick to political science and political history, what we see here is a shift of power to the executive by removing checks and balances from the people/supervisors. Now, the most efficient form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. “A good king”. And that can be a good thing. The problem is when that king dies or is removed, taking that new authority away is EXTREMELY hard, so if the next person in the position is NOT a good king, you’re looking at someone who can seriously harm the city. Now, with the way SF politics (and nationally) are moving, you pretty much have to be in the rich class and have rich friends, so we’re looking at a very limited pool of “the next guy” and the chances of them having even the slightest clue what you go through in your daily life is simply nil.
Anyway… not to be a debbie downer, but it’s better to step away from blaming parties and factions and just look at history and logic when you decide how many checks and balances you take away and consider how difficult it will be to get them back in place in the event of “bad things”. I’m not talking about getting some evil dictator in here, I’m talking about getting someone *incapable* in there. Being able to understand and work the legal system and the political infrastructure of city government is a skill and when you’re good at it, you can get things you want done and things you don’t want stopped. When you suck at it, you insist it is impossible to do anything unless you get rid of the things you are incapable of working with.
Anyway. Don’t make it a left/right political agenda. Don’t look at it as good and evil. just look at it as a “system” and decide if everything will be OK if it is run by a bunch of incapable morons.
Funny that the impact of union money is so easily dismissed when the board of supervisors must approve every union contract.
The union money comes from the working class out of the employees paycheck which is being replaced with hiring of non- union city workers to cheaper outsourced contractors without benefits health retirement to help the mayors budget to placate the oligarchs supporting the mayor for the bottom line savings. Union workers are qualified Apprentices , Journeyman, and Foreman that have the requisite training and hours served to make them very knowledgeable and competent to serve the city.
Union money are involuntarily taken out of working class employees’ paychecks.
About half of SEIU SF employee members have opted out of paying union political fees.
The time to win elections is between campaigns, not during election season.
Public sector labor and city funded nonprofits exiles residents from the progressive coalition in the late 2000s. This disconnect means that there are no possible vectors to connect with residents, as if the commuter labor and nonprofit bosses had anything to say to San Franciscans other than “give is more money.”
Running successive revenue measures during Preston’s terms to feed labor and the nonprofits antagonized the conservatives without delivering much in the way of outcomes to residents. Does anyone think that we’re getting 5K more city workers worth of public services over the past decade? Had throwing more money at homelessness made a dent in apparent public squalor?
Nope, labor and the nonprofits have one speed, scare the shit out of people to get more money while drawing the exclusion criteria closer and closer.
Labor and the nonprofits were just fine with the status quo. San Franciscans were not. Labor and the nonprofits precluded the expansion of the progressive agenda to address defects in the status quo. Lurie pounced on the nonresponsiveness and public sector/nonprofit bloat.
Labor and the nonprofits can take solace in the fact that they shot the messenger who warned them that they were putting together a losing political package, so they’ve got that going for them.
We are going to have to wait for labor and the nonprofits to be further weakened by a vindictive Lurie until residents can have latitude to begin to rebuild resident centered politics anew without facing relentless government funded cooption and sabotage.
It is never your opponent’s fault when you lose a political contest.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing about the money when the real problem is the message, or rather the policies that the messages are trying to sell. Billionaire-backed stuff routinely loses when it’s unpopular.
Progressives like to slam national Democrats for not having a message or a policy platform, but the problem is even worse here – progressives have a platform, people know what it is, and the platform is broadly unpopular.
Interestingly, money seems to be the core, consistent and unifying message nowadays. And despite it repeatedly not working and voters preferring to hear arguments on the merits, the progressives keep going back to it.
Actually, progressive issues – e.g., higher and inflation-indexed minimum wage, universal health care, audit the Pentagon, less military spending, no foreign meddling, progressive income taxes, protect the environment – all poll well when framed neutrally.
The problem is how the policies are framed, not the policies themselves.
And this framing is very intentional.
For example, the mainstream media almost invariably refers to “Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” or Russia’s “brutal war” against the same country, but we never hear about Israel’s “full-scale invasion” of or “brutal war” against Palestine, despite the fact that Gaza has been subjected to unprecedented bombing, turning it into a complete wasteland, while most of eastern Ukraine is unscathed.
Likewise, the government of every country our ruling class wants to topple is always called a “regime,” yet we never hear any rightwing government (iow, a US ally) referred to as a “regime.”
The problem is that what passes for the “left” in the US has let the media control the narrative and paint them as sneering pink-haired, nose-ringed elitists, and not as rolled-up-sleeves, neighbor-next-door allies of the working class. Some of what passes for the left in the US embrace this post-class identification, and the rest either don’t care or lack the language, let alone strategy, to address it.
It’s hard to compare Gaza, which is approximately twice the size of San Francisco, to Eastern Ukraine with the Donbas alone at over 20k square miles. But eastern Ukraine has endured widespread destruction, not to mention an astronomical death toll. Despite western anti-Russia propaganda, “brutal” is a fair description while “unscathed” is inaccurate at best.
That said, 100% agreed that framing is a key way for media to shape a narrative while sticking to ostensible hard reporting.
“loses when it’s unpopular” is a tautology. The point is that ‘some’ amount of popularity can be bought, otherwise smart people wouldn’t spend millions on it.
Joe is being consistent in defending a certain idea of democracy here. It’s short sighted to support that much concentration of political influence just because at the moment the oligarchs are backing things you like.
The first step towards pushing back on wealthy donors should be rejecting Prop. D.
But we should also be aware of the main print news who too often vote in support of some the initiatives that harm poor people. I speak as a victim of our main newspaper’s urging readers to vote no on a measure that I wrote. Part of my 2018 measure said San Francisco should oppose any professional sports team trying to dine and dash on a public debt. This was in response to the Golden State Warriors move back to San Francisco. The owners of the team tried to stiff Oakland and Alameda County for $40 million in rent that our State Supreme Court also rejected their silly claim. The team had to pay up.
But why would the San Francisco Chronicle not support my ballot measure? (June 2018 special election Prop. I) My guess? The wealthy news organizations like to help their wealthy brothers and sisters as much as they can get away with helping them.
No No. No more!The decades long attempt to encase San Francisco in amber clearly failed. The rich are still getting richer and there are less moderate rent paying working people here to do anything about it. Mostly I believe because we voted to keep growth to a minimum. The wealthy seem to be gravitating to growing housing stock here. I am not voting against that right now.
The unions must coalesce and unite to the on the table as bargaining that is occurring now, not aquacise or be complacent to the mayors budget to save the city money on employee salaries. The unions fought hard for rights, fair wages, and safe workplace. I see many of the newly hired and younger union members not attending meetings. This is your future. Don’t let it slip away and easily degrade and take it for granted.
All this comment section has done is show me that SF has zero soul left and is run by someone who is a perfect representative of what its citizens think they are…billionaires.
Except you clods are one medical emergency away from being homeless, even you AI lunks. Hahahahaha
I believe this is a misprint
A $500,000 donation for Larsen is the equivalent of a person with a net worth of $1 million giving $36.50.
It should be $1 Billion
Rick —
No, that’s not correct. If you have a net worth of $1 million and you give $36.50, you’re feeling the pinch someone with Larsen’s net worth feels when giving $500K.
Best,
JE
It’s wild to be so confident and so provably bad at mathematics.
Everything is under control. Remember one thing Ordo ab Chao.
Joe,
I agree that Daniel is a really nice guy who wishes nothing but the best for all and I am also totally devoted to not just this town but to all mankind and especially, my dog.
I know that you are too.
I also know that he had a major victory at 16th and Mission on Saturday and that by yesterday/Sunday it was back to being a seamy and squalid mess.
Why did you not bring the vendors back on Sunday, Daniel ?!!?
They had a picture booth with a serious pro photographer and a legal vendor was selling a wide setting of jewelry and a big ole grim vissaged Security guy standing nearbly watching closely and they were all under tents !!!
Must have been ten of them and there were plenty of people gathered around who weren’t addicts or dealers or sloppy drunks !
And, there was live music !!
My buddy, Kenny the Clown was in from Berzerekely !!
Couldn’t believe my eyes at all of the tents that not just me, but plenty of people all the way back to when BART was new were calling for these vendor tents and drawing them into campaign promises and architectural suggestions and the like.
In reality it really does and did work.
I doubt the whole scene cost the City damn near nothing and the transformation of the place was amazing to see.
Why don’t they do this every day and put one permanent cop rotating hourly cause one would do it with a scene like this cause, except for the area directly around the bus stop the place was smooth and enjoyable.
Not everybody got the message.
I enthusiastically pulled out my camera and started doing a fast video of the scene for Tony to post and crossed 16th from north with film rolling over to southwest corner which has the beautiful collanade facade hiding trash cans when it should be a Cop Box with small stage …
Of course I almost got into a fight.
As I scanned the scene I caught the action around the bus stop of grimy junkies on the ground surrounded by others crippled by fentanyl and as I moved quickly on one of the girls in the group called out a message to me about not filming her and she’s probably right about that but I honestly don’t know or care but her boyfriend did.
Came hurrying behind me and I quickly put the camera in my pocket while, luckily getting a clear shot of him (video now posted on youtube under h. brown videos) and to talk hime down.
I whined and apologized and played the senior citizens card and all the time keeping moving toward the safe island of the Photographer’s tent and he had a few regular people engaged in conversation with lighting equipment on stands and stuff all over and that slowed the gangster behind me down and the majority of this part of the action is all audio as I had the camera in my pocket and had forgotten to turn it off so it is all audio and whatever the inside of my pocket looks like which is a matter of taste and opinion cause the 11 minute thing had the feel of ?
“New York.”
That’s what my publisher, Tony De Renzo said.
Anyway, I do believe that AI is going to give us Abundance and total health soon.
Others say it will wipe us out.
Both agree that it is coming soon.
What did the man in the old cartoon’s sign say ?
“The end is near”
go Niners !!
h.
I guess Joe never heard of Walter Shorenstein.
Come on, man.
JE
I was surprised by how easily wong defeated Natalie gee. Bc she has experience and personality and he’s a stiff. Tells me this is an era people prefer stability to protecting personal
Liberties.
But the willow tree is always swaying; I think the obvious evil of lack of flock oversight will swing people back
Lurie yuck. Weiner yuck. So sick of their ads.
Wish we had someone like Mamdani.
I’m voting no on most all of the propositions. Every time I look into the ad funders, it’s some member of the broligarchy.
I personally think drug addicts, vagrants and their enablers, have had way too much undeserved control of San Francisco for years now! I welcome smart capable people having more control.
Baby Danno was smart when he told the stork where to drop him off, that’s for sure.
We watched as the “progressives” , and non-profits , and the unions who expected to benefit accomplished nothing except spending our tax dollars (on themselves). Nothing was changed, nothing improved.
Let’s see what people with their own money can accomplish – certainly will not be hard to do better .
Those were NeoLiberals. Privatization led to these non-profit services instead of keeping government services in-house. Progressives didn’t build this.
Progressives in San Francisco most certainly sought refuge in government funded nonprofit sinecures starting in the 1970s and cast their lot with neoliberal capitalism with the proviso that they defend the arrangement.
Funny how San Francisco’s self-proclaimed socialists are suddenly upset now that voters are showing them the door. You had nearly two decades to prove your ideas worked. What did we get? Rising crime, endless diversion programs, a nonprofit industrial complex swimming in taxpayer money, and policies that seemed to make drug use easier than recovery.
Small businesses were crushed, taxpayers picked up the tab, and anyone who questioned the results was labeled the problem. Were there meaningful requirements for treatment, recovery, or accountability? Not much evidence of it.
Now that voters are demanding a different approach, the same people who spent years dismissing criticism are shocked that people have had enough. Apparently democracy only works when the voters agree with them.
The progressive Board majority established in 2001 had been extinguished by 2006, 20 year ago, and every mayor has been a conservative Democrat.
“The progressive Board majority established in 2001 had been extinguished by 2006, 20 year ago, and every mayor has been a conservative Democrat.”
Yet, ever since then, the (so-called) progressives keep trying to foist their ideas on the majority of the electorate and keep failing to win a majority. I wonder why that keeps happening?
1 socialist. That’s what San Francisco BOS had. ONE.
And he was more in touch with his constituents than any of the others. Preston STILL shows up on picket lines.
My D5 friends tell a different story about Preston being responsive to anyone but organized labor and city funded nonprofits.
Local picket lines are all well and good. But few San Francisco voters are unionized. Where’s San Francisco progressives’ broad based, universal non-means tested affordability agenda that’s winning elections for the left nationwide?