In the few remaining days before the Nov. 3 election, Mission Local will be posting “election extras” with updates from the campaign trail.
Today: A surprise rush of contributions to District 8 supervisor candidate Gary McCoy, and former congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti puts in more money to help Connie Chan.
Moderates put their money where their mouth is for Gary McCoy
Since Manny Yekutiel suspended his campaign in District 8 race after sexual assault allegations, Gary McCoy has been raking in thousands in contributions, his campaign reported.
Donors in just the last week include California Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis, current District 8 supervisor Rafael Mandelman, former District 8 supervisor Bevan Dufty, former District 4 supervisor Joel Engardio, political consultants Jeff Cretan and Maggie Muir, Abundance Network founder Zack Rosen, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman, and venture capitalist Ron Conway and three of his family members, among others.
All in all, it was the most successful fundraising week for McCoy’s campaign since the week he launched, according to a campaign spokesperson.
Many of these new donors — including Kounalakis, Mandelman, Dufty and Rosen — had originally backed Yekutiel. Others had not contributed or made an endorsement, but are associated with San Francisco’s moderate political camp, which had mostly lined up behind Yekutiel prior to him dropping out.
Most have since switched to McCoy. On Oct. 11, the moderate San Francisco Democratic Party, which had originally backed Yekutiel, endorsed McCoy, as did a host of other endorsers.
But not all moderates switched over. Last Monday, Grow SF endorsed Darshini Patel, tearing into McCoy’s history with drug addiction and criminal charges.
McCoy, who’s been sober for over 15 years, talks frequently and openly about his history on the campaign trail. Nevertheless, the attacks picked up steam online, and Grow SF committed to spending more against McCoy.
Criticism of McCoy’s past is part of what Cretan says motivated him to donate to McCoy for the first time.
“It made me so mad to see people twist what he went through,” said Cretan who worked alongside McCoy as an aide to then-Supervisor Scott Wiener.
“You have policy differences, you want to call that into question, I think it’s 100 percent fair game,” he added. “But if you want to say you believe in recovery and you want to bring up stuff he’s brought up publicly? That’s just offensive.”
Since getting sober, McCoy worked as an aide to many politicians, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi and supervisors Wiener, Julie Christensen and London Breed. He also worked at HealthRIGHT 360, where he advocated for harm reduction measures for drug users, which many moderates oppose.
People in recovery ought to be “given a chance to prove themselves and Gary has done that five times over,” Cretan said.
Other new donors said they were simply motivated by knowing McCoy for a long time.
Engardio said he was impressed by McCoy after hiring him to run his 2012 supervisor campaign. “We worked in the trenches on that campaign,” Engardio said. “I saw his potential very early on, his work ethic, his moral fortitude, so I thought I should give him a donation.”
Read more about the Grow SF’s opposition to McCoy here and here.
Saikat Chakrabarti spends more for Connie Chan in Congress race
After Saikat Chakrabarti didn’t make it through the primary for the congressional race, he’s been backing Connie Chan. He quickly endorsed her and then put $425,000 into supporting her campaign through doorknocking and phonebanking. He put in an additional $50,000 for Chan last week, and told Mission Local that more spending is likely to come.
Chakrabarti said his paid staff of about 100 have made 1.9 million calls and knocked on 64,000 doors for Chan since June, identifying 22,000 supporters. Their early effort mostly focused on persuading people who had pledged to vote for Chakrabarti in the primary to shift their loyalty to Chan.
Now, with the election just two weeks away, Chakrabarti’s staffers are working to get out the vote.
“The goal now is largely going to be to go back out to all the people we have identified as supporters and make sure they vote,” Chakrabarti said.
See what else Chakrabarti is financially backing this election cycle here.
The Richmond is a battleground in the congressional race
Both State Sen. Scott Wiener and Supervisor Connie Chan are courting voters in the Richmond, the neighborhood Chan represents on the Board of Supervisors.
Read more about how it’s playing out in Nicholas David’s article: Scott Wiener is coming for Connie Chan’s turf. Is it a numbers game, or ‘psychological warfare’?
