In San Francisco, votes are expensive — but Chinese votes come at a premium.
For media ads in Chinese outlets alone, political campaigns have spent $989,905 for the two elections this year, amounting to over $13-per-person for the perhaps 76,000 Chinese voters in the city, according to campaign filings.
Sing Tao Daily, the Chinese-language newspaper with the largest circulation, has sold at least $403,506 worth of campaign ads on both its daily newspaper and its radio station as of Oct. 30, according to campaign filings.
World Journal, another Chinese-language daily with a smaller circulation than Sing Tao, has pocketed $133,794. The four-year-old bilingual Wind Newspaper has made $76,103.
Two major Chinese-language TV stations, KTSF and Sky Link TV, each pocketed $320,774 and $55,729.
Top buyers of Chinese-language media ads include mayoral candidates Daniel Lurie, who has spent $264,324 advertising himself to Chinese voters; and London Breed, who has spent $186,704. Other top spenders include PACs for two recent bonds: The affordable housing bond Prop. A in March, and the health and infrastructure bond Prop. B in November.
Other big buyers of Chinese media: District 1 supervisor candidates Connie Chan and Marjan Philhour; City Attorney David Chiu; and John Jersin, who’s running for the school board.
As a result, readers of Chinese media can sometimes find themselves overwhelmed by campaign ads, instead of the news itself. The cover of Wind Newspaper’s Oct. 20 issue was fully saturated by candidates’ ads, squeezing a single news article about new school district superintendent Maria Su into a corner.
Readers who click into any article on Wind Newspaper’s website are welcomed by at least 10 campaign ads, often taking up much more space than the news article itself.
English-language media is also dominated by Lurie, who has poured more than $8 million of his own cash into his campaign.
More than 70 percent of the $228,568 ads purchased on the San Francisco Chronicle were purchased by Lurie, for instance. Lurie also bought 49 percent of the $1,584,740 ads on KGO, 50 percent of the $1,522,297 ads on KTVU-TV, and 53 percent of the $1,321,342 ads on KPIX.
Farrell and the Yes on D campaign are also big spenders on English-language TV ads.
An ad for Mark Farrell, which took up half a page of Sing Tao Daily on Sep. 30, was a first-person essay from Farrell titled “Why do I want to be mayor?” In the upper-right corner, Farrell describes himself as "Mayor Mark Farrell." 
An ad for Lurie that takes up two pages in Wind Newspaper’s latest issue and features a bilingual letter from former San Francisco Police Department Commander Paul Yep. 
In one ad, District 11 supervisor candidate Michael Lai committed to “change the $950 rule,” referencing the threshold for felony theft. Changing that threshold is not within a city supervisor’s power. 
In three of the past four days, World Journal printed a political ad for presidential candidate Donald Trump on its front page in which every line offered a nugget of misinformation.
Chinese media ads, in contrast to those on English newspapers, often take on a less formal, more personal tone. An ad for Lurie that takes up two pages in Wind Newspaper’s latest issue, for example, and features a bilingual letter from former San Francisco Police Department Commander Paul Yep. “I’m writing to urge you to join me in supporting DANIEL LURIE FOR MAYOR,” Yep writes.
Another ad for Mark Farrell, which took up half a page of Sing Tao Daily on Sep. 30, was a first-person essay from Farrell titled, “Why do I want to be mayor?”
“January 2018 was a memorable day for me,” Farrell wrote. “Just three weeks before that, we were overwhelmed by the sudden death of Mayor Ed Lee. San Francisco had suddenly lost its leader, and as a supervisor in District 2, I stood up courageously and was elected by the Board of Supervisors to serve as acting mayor.”
Information that’s inaccurate, or sometimes questionable, is not uncommon. In one ad, District 11 supervisor candidate Michael Lai committed to “change the $950 rule,” referencing the threshold for felony theft. Changing that threshold is not within a city supervisor’s power.
As a candidate who was an interim mayor for six months, Farrell has been repeatedly described in his ad in Sing Tao Daily as “Mayor Mark Farrell.”
In three of the past four days, World Journal printed a political ad for presidential candidate Donald Trump on its front page in which every line offered a nugget of misinformation. The ad was rife with grammatical errors, and lacked disclosures identifying the committee that paid for it.