San Francisco Board of Supervisors president, mayoral candidate, and wildly prolific legislator Aaron Peskin lost the mayoral race to Daniel Lurie, a wealthy candidate with zero legislative experience.
But his three main ballot initiatives are winning and will, barring unforeseen lunacy, pass into legislation. Here’s the story of how they made it.
Prop. C, the inspector general
Creating a position for an inspector general with the power to investigate government and city-contractor fraud, waste, abuse or misconduct would seem like a tough measure to oppose. It didn’t require any new funding, every single member of the Board of Supervisors voted to put it on the ballot, and corruption scandals have been breaking at a steady clip for years. But GrowSF, TogetherSF Action and the San Francisco Democratic Party all came out against it.
It got 60 percent of the preliminary vote anyway. Partly, that’s because Peskin did a good job getting the word out, says Jim Stearns, a consultant to many progressive campaigns, including Peskin’s mayoral bid. Peskin is enough of a policy wonk that he had more plans for improving the functioning of city government than he could cram into any one appearance. His six-point plan to reduce homelessness was more like an 11-million-point plan. But he brought up the inspector general every time he made a campaign speech.
Their opposition to Prop. C speaks to a larger problem for TogetherSF, GrowSF, and the other groups that have been spending big on local elections, says Stearns. When they issue endorsements, they’re trying to mimic local progressive groups whose endorsements have real sway, like the Harvey Milk Democratic Club. But, unlike those groups, they don’t have a voting membership, and the process by which they make endorsements isn’t transparent and feels highly personal and idiosyncratic. Why paper the city with ads complaining about city corruption in support of Prop. D, but not support Prop. C? At any rate, says Stearns, the voters didn’t buy it; Prop. C is passing with ease, in spite of minimal funding.
Prop. E, commission reform
Prop. E was created by Peskin’s office in response to Prop. D — a ballot measure, created and lavishly funded by TogetherSF, that would have given the mayor power to eliminate entire advisory boards and commissions, as well as weakening civilian oversight of the Police Commission, under the guise of making city government more efficient. Michael Moritz, the local billionaire who poured at least $3.2 million of his money into Prop. D, described the measure as “the greatest gift anybody has given to a mayor in the recent history of San Francisco.”
Like Prop. D, Prop. E also proposed to streamline the city’s admittedly commission-heavy structure, but via an independent blue-ribbon panel that will make any changes within a system of public hearings. Supporters of Prop. E. had less than 1 percent of the money that Prop. D did, says Doug Engmann, former president of the Planning Commission. What they had instead was a network of good-government types who were horrified at the potential consequences of Prop. D, and who began working together to place op-eds in local publications explaining the risks posed by it. “We spread the network rapidly,” says Engmann. “You can see it in the ballot handbook. Within a month, we had more endorsements from prestigious organizations than they did.” No less than the San Francisco Bar Association came out against Prop. D.
The No on D Yes on E crowd was also aided by mayoral candidate Mark Farrell’s decision to create a PAC in support of Prop. D and commingle its funds with his mayoral committee, which resulted in a $108,000 ethics penalty announced the day before the election. That was the coup de grâce to a long slide downward in public opinion and, as Farrell struggled, he took Prop. D down with him. Think about it, says Engmannn: If you’ve got 16 flyers from Mark Farrell saying “Vote Yes on D,” and every day you read more about Mark Farrell and his ethics violations, Prop. D does not look good. “He did all of the advertising for us!” says Engmann.
Prop. E remains a close call; it is receiving a bit over 51 percent of the early vote, but its margins are growing with each subsequent ballot drop. But 55 percent of voters have said No on Prop. D, and it continues to drop. It was a new milestone for Stearns. ”I’ve never been out-spent $8 million to $80,000 and won,” he says, laughing. (The amount spent in support of D is, at last count, $9,522,242).
Prop. G, rental subsidies
This one was classic Peskin legislation: A tweak to the unintended consequences of encouraging housing nonprofits to buy SRO hotels full of elderly tenants to create permanently affordable housing. The problem was, many of those tenants were so poor that the nonprofits couldn’t afford to run or maintain the buildings on the rents they were paying. Prop. G creates a fund to help offset those costs. TogetherSF and GrowSF opposed this measure too, but it didn’t hold much sway against the legions of housing groups, anti-poverty groups, and churches that supported it. It got more than 56 percent of the vote.
So how is it that Peskin’s measures won, but the guy didn’t? Stearns was aware early on that the challenge with Peskin’s mayoral run was years of negative campaigning about Peskin the person, which kicked into gear the first time he was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2000. In those days, that campaigning came from old-school business lobbying groups like The Committee on Jobs. Today, it’s Neighbors for a Better San Francisco and TogetherSF, which openly pursued an “anyone but Peskin” strategy even as they struggled over who they wanted to see in Room 200.
A candidate with Peskin’s baked-in negatives wasn’t going to receive enough No. 2 votes to overcome Mayor London Breed. And it was difficult for a candidate raising money in $500 increments to make headway in the free-spending atmosphere created by mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, who put some $16 million into his campaign. Peskin, for his part, led in small-dollar donations.
These were not factors in Peskin’s many victorious runs for supervisor. Negative campaigning couldn’t sink Peskin in District 3, says Stearns. Too many people there knew him, or knew people who did. But it’s tough to scale up the kind of voter outreach a grassroots campaign can do in North Beach and Chinatown — two of the most densely populated, closely knit, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods — to a city of more than 800,000.
Peskin’s mayoral bid could not overcome the political headwinds. But his policies sailed through, regardless. “The city likes Aaron,” says Stearns. “Aaron the legislator.”
Aaron Peskin is a master of writing sound legislation. He is a policy wonk with deep knowledge of the City Charter and our local democracy and system of government. Like Peskin, Dean Preston crafts strong and good policy and EVERY SINGLE ONE of his ballot measures has won +60% of votes in citywide elections. It’s no wonder Tech and real estate billionaires and oligarchs targeted them. Both are effective and brilliant legislators. And now that Trump and his mob of fascists, misogynists, racists, and anti LGBTQ creeps are in, we need electeds like Preston and Peskin to lead us through the darkness. Now more than ever.
Strong AND good.
As of just now (11/9/2024 12pm) Lurie got 75,695 of the Round 1 votes, and 132,019 votes by Round 14.
If Lurie funded $16 million of his campaign as is stated above, that equals $211 per Round 1 vote and $121 per vote for all rounds. How can anyone compete with that?
Still, it is great that Peskin’s ballot measures passed, against the odds because of financing by carpetbagger oligarchs trying to rob us San Franciscans of democracy.
Aaron Peskin for Inspector General!
Campers,
Peskin for Chief of Staff.
He’d be an excellent goalie for the inexperienced, Lurie.
From Day 1 no one could take advantage of the Daniel.
lolith
You’re gonna laugh but it’s important that they both have strong Jewish mothers (are there any other kind ?) because Aaron will understand and ease the new Mayor through all of the various Holidays for all of the City’s Faithful be it of their own creed or others.
Also, Daniel is taller than Aaron so he won’t be getting a crick in his neck from looking up all day.
Plus, is it me or did Aaron’s wardrobe take a Next Level leap over the course of the race ?
Did I leave anything out again ?
Go Niners !!
h.
Glad we’ll see no self reflection from our progressive power groups. Just more of the same = it’s maga/tech/republicans/yuppies/billionaires that are ruining SF!
Maybe it’s time to self reflect and adjust platform to meet the voters. It’s been 4 elections now progressives have lost with nothing more to say than “damn billionaires!”
Ehhhhh, the premise is flawed. If you look at the undervotes on the measures he passed versus the mayoral, you can see a bit more what happened. About 20K people opted to vote for mayor who didn’t bother to figure out what his measures were about. I’m fact all his measures were so wonky that it scared off around 10K voters compared to more straightforward and less opaque measures like gay marriage and school bonds. This seems much more like, the people who are more informed and more entrenched in local politics either used the local guides or actually read through the legislation tend to be more progressive. But about 20K people who aren’t that decided to also vote for mayor, specifically for Daniel Lurie.
Gosh, you all love Peskin.
Here’s the thing — some of his ideas are good.
Others are anti-housing, NIMBY ideas that don’t help to move the city forward. He reads more as a populist than a progressive, to me.
I’ll vote for an individual good idea when it comes by. I’m not going to vote for an individual who is such a mixed bag.
“Others are anti-housing, NIMBY ideas that don’t help to move the city forward.”
That’s not a very nuanced statement considering the limits of unfettered development vs solving the housing crisis on a local, state, and federal level. Dense housing does not make sense in every single place in the world. I’m sorry if you think it’s that simple and Peskin is just an obstacle to progress, but that type of thinking is exactly the problem and not a solution to anything. Market rate SF condo tower housing does not solve the housing crisis and the people who say it does are heavily leveraged in that industry, or paid by it to say so.
“I’m not going to vote for an individual who is such a mixed bag.”
Breed voter? Oy vey.
You don’t need to be nuanced about it – its obvious from the insane housing prices that SF needs hundreds of thousands of additional units of housing.
I agree that condo towers are one of the worst types of housing but the bottom line is that we need more projects getting built. There shouldn’t be more than a handful of single family houses in San Francisco.
All the candidates were mixed bags – at best. I never agreed with Peskin at times when he suggested that views mattered more than building needed housing. I ended up supporting him because I disagreed with the other candidates about things that are bigger problems.
Aaron Peskin may be great at writing policy but he is a bully in his human interactions. I remember him chewing out a fire chief for no reason who was in the middle of fighting a North Beach fire, or getting drunk and screaming at Rec & Parks director Phil Ginsberg on a public Zoom meeting. He treats this city like his daddy owns it. Had he been elected mayor he would have been a real tyrant.
Not true. These are tired, old exaggerations that conservatives and yimbies keep spreading year after year.
Even if they can’t win the mayor’s race, progressives will cause mischief and make the city a worse place to live whenever they can.