Welcome back to our “Meet the Candidates” series, where District 6 supervisor candidates respond to a question in 100 words or fewer. Answers are published every Tuesday.
District 6 includes SoMa, Mission Bay, Treasure Island and Yerba Buena. Its current supervisor, Matt Dorsey, was appointed by Mayor London Breed on May 9, 2022. He is up for re-election this November against one challenger, Alex Behrend.
Mission Local previously excluded Behrend from this series because he did not meet our candidate-coverage guidelines. He has since qualified for Meet the Candidates coverage after receiving endorsements from former District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston and Juanita More, an activist and drag queen.
San Francisco caps the amount of money an individual can give directly to a supervisorial candidate at $500. But federal court rulings make it possible for political committees, or PACs, to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to support a particular candidate — as long as they don’t coordinate with that candidate’s campaign directly.
The scale of that disparity drew attention last month, when cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen gave $500,000 to a political committee supporting District 10 supervisor candidate Theo Ellington, likely the largest individual contribution ever made to support a San Francisco supervisorial candidate. Larsen later added another $40,000.
Critics argue that such outside spending gives a small number of wealthy donors an outsized ability to shape the political debate. Historian and political scientist Rich DeLeon told Mission Local that the current influence of the city’s wealthiest donors “seems unprecedented” in his lifetime.
In 2024, independent political committees accounted for 45 percent of spending in San Francisco’s mayoral race and 32 percent across all supervisor races. Total spending by independent committees in that election reached nearly $19 million — the highest amount recorded by the Ethics Commission.
San Francisco cannot simply cap independent political spending. A federal court blocked the city from enforcing limits on contributions to committees supporting or opposing local candidates in 2007. Subsequent federal rulings, including 2010’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, have further restricted governments’ ability to limit this kind of spending.
The city can, however, strengthen tools to curb their influence. San Francisco provides public financing to qualifying candidates, regulates coordination between candidates and outside groups and requires political advertisements to disclose their source of funding. This April, the S.F. Ethics Commission approved tightening the rules in several ways, such as limiting to $500 the amount a political committee can spend on re-publishing candidate-produced campaign material.
So, this week, we asked the District 6 candidates: Should San Francisco curb the influence of unlimited outside spending in local elections? If so, how?
Mission Local color codes the answers to yes/no questions. A blue background means the candidate answered yes, an orange background means no and a yellow background means that the candidate answered ambiguously.
Alex Behrend
- Job: No current job, formerly a voter organizer for Dean Preston’s 2024 campaign, a Safeway checker and a housekeeper at the San Francisco Zen Center
- Age: 54
- Residency: Renter living in District 6 since April 2026, and in San Francisco since 2011, with a previous stint in 1990-91 while attending the University of San Francisco
- Transportation: Public transit, walking
- Education: Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego
- Languages: English
- Website: Alex for All
SF must end unlimited contributions to politicians seeking leadership positions with local partisan organizations.
This would have prevented Supervisor Dorsey taking $25K from the same crypto billionaire that both dropped $500K in our neighboring Supervisorial district and had his firm give millions to Trump’s Ballroom & Inauguration.
[Larsen’s $25,000 contribution did not go to his supervisorial campaign or to an independent committee supporting it, but to an account that Dorsey can use for work related to his role as an elected member of the local Democratic party committee (aka the DCCC). S.F. Ethics Commission officials have warned that allowing unlimited donations to these accounts can undermine the purpose of the city’s candidate-contribution limits, but state law prohibits San Francisco from imposing its own contribution limits on DCCC candidates or elected members.
Larsen is a co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple, a cryptocurrency company. Ripple donated approximately $4.9 million to Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee and is listed as a donor to the White House ballroom project, although the amount of its ballroom donation has not been disclosed. Mission Local could not verify that Larsen personally directed either contribution.]
The head of the SF Ethics Commission warns this loophole functions as a “slush fund.” [Mission Local could not verify that Ethics Commission Executive Director Patrick Ford has used the phrase “slush fund” to describe DCCC officeholder accounts, but he has called unlimited DCCC contributions a “huge problem.”]
San Francisco must also use its power and resources to incorporate a “Corporate Power Reset” into our City Charter and State Constitution – a move states like HI, OR and MT are taking to render the despised Citizens United irrelevant. [“Corporate Power Reset” is a state-level legal strategy that would use states’ authority over corporations to restrict corporate political spending. It would not apply to individuals making political contributions in their own name, such as Larsen. San Francisco could advocate for such a statewide change, but a City Charter amendment could not by itself implement the strategy, nor can the city amend the California Constitution.]
Endorsed by: Former Supervisor Dean Preston, Juanita More, Arab Resource and Organizing Center Action
Matt Dorsey
- Job: Current District 6 Supervisor
- Age: 61
- Residency: Renter, living in District 6 since 2008, has lived in San Francisco since 1990 (except for four years in Washington, D.C.).
- Transportation: Public transit, walking, biking
- Education: Bachelor’s degree from Emerson College
- Languages: English
- Website: Reelect Matt Dorsey 2026
Yes. I’d support amending the U.S. Constitution to overturn Citizens United. Short of that, however, we legally can’t limit outside spending in local elections. What we can do is level the playing field for candidates and individual donors. Independent expenditure committees are increasingly dominating local elections, with outside groups accounting for nearly half of all spending in the 2024 mayor’s race. San Francisco’s current $500 contribution limit for candidates originated back in 1973. Adjusted for inflation, that’d be about $3,700 today. Modernizing contribution limits and strengthening public financing would give candidates a stronger voice in their own elections.
Endorsed by: Mayor Daniel Lurie, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, Senator Scott Wiener … read more here.
Answers may be lightly edited for formatting, spelling and grammar. If you have questions for the candidates, please let us know at sarah@missionlocal.com // io@missionlocal.com.
You can register to vote via the sf.gov website.
