There are, believe it or not, still thousands of votes to tally up in San Francisco’s general election. Imagine, if you will, a platoon of Elections Department workers in the basement of City Hall, making their hanging-chad faces over the heaps of remaining provisional ballots.
Late spending reports (and future ethics penalties) will roll in after the last few votes. But, barring unforeseen lunacy, we know how things will shake out. There are winners and losers and trends to examine.
San Francisco is a city founded on lust for gold, and sustained on lust for everything else. We are no stranger to wealthy people making civic contributions (if you like them) or investing in politicians (if you don’t). Money in politics is nothing new. But the sheer level of dollars dropped into this year’s local elections remains staggering. All told, at least $62.3 million was spent in this year’s local election in San Francisco, a city with 522,265 registered voters.
Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie benefited from more than $16 million dollars in money raised by both his campaign and a PAC supporting him, including $8.7 million of his own money. Proposition D, crafted and pushed by the political pressure group TogetherSF, was backed by some $9.5 million.
Lurie, a political novice who not only never held a City Hall job but has had little in the way of conventional employment, triumphed in the mayor’s race — and it wasn’t exceedingly close. Prop. D, lashed to candidate Mark Farrell like Ahab to the whale, did about as well as the chocolate-flavored toothpaste you might find on consignment in the Dollar Tree (which you should not buy).
It’s better to be rich and famous than poor and unknown; neither Lurie nor Prop. D would’ve been on the ballot without copious amounts of money. But the dichotomy in their respective outcomes illustrates that, for all the things it can get you, money can’t buy you competence. And competence matters.
Yujie Zhou’s Wednesday writeup on how Lurie handily won the coveted Chinese-American vote goes a long way toward explaining why he won, period. Lurie hired the best organizers and operatives, and gave them essentially unlimited resources. His Chinese field team had, at its peak, 23 paid canvassers and dedicated teams for each heavily Chinese neighborhood.
So, that’s 23 more paid canvassers than Mayor London Breed had. The mayoral campaigns Lurie ran off the road are happy to point out that he paid more in payroll taxes than they paid in payroll. A winning electoral strategy that relies upon battalions of paid canvassers, like a stress-relief strategy that relies upon driving a Porsche 911 on the Pacific Coast Highway, is something you can’t do without significant wealth.
Lurie also spent more on polling than all the other candidates combined. But polling also reveals that voters don’t mind if a candidate is rich. They mind if he’s a rich jerk. Lurie’s opponents have plenty to say about his free-spending campaign and his lack of relevant experience. But nobody has ever said he’s anything other than a nice and decent man who wants what he thinks is best for San Francisco. He worked hard and ran an extremely disciplined campaign. Voters had clearly had enough of the incumbent and rewarded the likeable newcomer with the ubiquitous ads.
Maybe you’ve blotted out this year’s World Series; the Giants, alas, did not win. It featured the New York Yankees and the (World Effin’ Champion) Los Angeles Dodgers, which happen to flaunt the No. 2 and 3 payrolls in baseball. So, you’d pretty much expect them to be there. But, most years, it doesn’t work that way.
All of which is to say: It is hard to overstate how badly big-spending political pressure group TogetherSF, its precious ballot measure Prop. D, and its preferred candidate, Mark Farrell, underperformed. Honestly, it feels like something straight out of “Brewster’s Millions.”
In that film, Richard Pryor’s character is given the opportunity to fecklessly blow through $30 million in 30 days in order to secretly inherit a sum an order of magnitude larger. Hilarity, as they say, ensues, with disastrous hi-jinks and fantastic quantities of money wasted.
All told, Prop. D, which would have halved the nebulous total of San Francisco city and county commissions and further empowered the city’s strong-mayor system, had $9.5 million behind it. Prop. E, a countermeasure tossed on to the ballot by Aaron Peskin, split perhaps $69,000 with two other Peskin good-government measures. At last count, Prop. D was barely able to crack 45 percent while Prop. E had over 52 percent.
So, barring a “Brewster’s Millions”-type situation, it’s hard to fail this handily when running a measure addressing San Francisco’s admittedly ridiculous commission system, buoyed by a nearly nine-digit war chest and facing opposition all but requiring a bake sale to mount any sort of campaign. But fail Prop. D did — hard. And, again, Prop. E passed.
We told you all the way back in February that TogetherSF had, only somewhat humorously, been tabbed as the “Mark Farrell administration in exile.” Farrell earning the group’s mayoral endorsement was as surprising as Pepsi winning the Pepsi Challenge. But surprises did come: Lurie and Breed were secondary endorsements for TogetherSF, and yet the group savaged them in campaign communiqués. This was a credibility-destroying move: Who would compete for TogetherSF’s No. 2 or No. 3 endorsement in the future, knowing they’d be subject to treatment like this?
Voters might have noticed that every last argument in favor of Prop. D in the voter guide was paid for by TogetherSF. They might have noticed the good-government advocates and groups inveighing against it. They might, in the end, actually like the idea of civilian oversight. But voters certainly noticed the tight overlap of Prop. D and Farrell, who sent flier after flier to voters’ homes in which he carved out the role of Prop. D’s No. 1 pitchman.
The candidate established his own $2.6 million ballot-measure committee to raise funds for Prop. D while pushing his mayoral campaign — and, on Election Day Eve, he agreed to pay a stunning $108,000 ethics fine for commingling funds from the ballot measure committee with his mayoral committee.
That was merely the coup de grâce: Farrell’s series of alleged ethical missteps served as a political death by 1,000 cuts. Lurie also spent freely to burn him, and Farrell turned out to be a rather incendiary target. Prop. D was supposed to pull Farrell over the finish line, but, in the end, he appeared to pull it — under the waves.
Now, it’s hard to get into voters’ heads. Again and again, we’re told that voters just want a city that works — as if past voters wanted to sugar the city’s gas tank; as if past voters wandered into the voting booth muttering, now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.
Did voters want change? When it came to Lurie and a couple of supervisor’s races, you could say they did. But not when it came to other supe races, or Prop. D, or any number of good government/Aaron Peskin/let’s spend money-type measures.
And it certainly wasn’t the case with polarizing District 1 supervisor Connie Chan.
After eking out a win by 125 votes over Marjan Philhour in 2020, several conservative-voting areas, such as Sea Cliff, were grafted into District 1 via the politically fraught redistricting process.
The conventional wisdom was that Chan was in dire straits, but District 5 supervisor Dean Preston would hold off Bilal Mahmood and other challengers. The opposite worked out to be true.
One of the reasons for this was that perception is not reality: The big-spending third-party groups that vastly altered these races did not realize their assessments were flawed until too late. The tech- and real-estate-funded groups backing Philhour thought she was on her way to a cakewalk and focused heavily — if not monomaniacally — on Preston, their bête noire. And the labor groups that executed a costly “all hands on deck” onslaught for Chan in District 1 did not perceive Preston as being vulnerable enough to get heavily involved when it could’ve made a difference.
Third-party expenditures accounted for more than $1.56 million in District 1, mostly from labor groups, and nearly $600,000 in District 5, the majority from the political pressure group GrowSF.
“Fix our City SF,” a PAC representing a coalition of unions, spent more than $1 million in the District 1 election, supporting Chan and opposing Philhour, but only expended $134,178 in District 5, opposing Mahmood.
Conversely, GrowSF spent heavily against Preston but far less against Chan: It put $377,685 into “Dumping Dean” but only $66,437 into “Clearing Out Connie.”
Preston, it turns out, was vulnerable: He even lost his own precinct. This was not a favorable political environment for the democratic socialist targeted, for years, by tech- and real-estate-funded political action committees. A state proposition allowing cities to expand rent control lost handily in San Francisco. A state proposition ramping up penalties for property crime and diverting drug criminals to services it simultaneously defunded won handily in San Francisco.
Chan, however, appears to have been tossed a lifeline by Prop. K, the measure to close off portions of the Great Highway. She opposed it, vehemently — hardly a “progressive” position, but one a Westside politician running against varsity opposition pretty much needed to espouse, lest they be immolated by voters’ great vengeance and furious anger. The Prop. K map formed a physical and metaphysical divide — the west was against it, while the eastern half of the city largely came out for it.
Philhour, this election season, wanted to talk about public safety — to the point of dressing up as a cop with a robber in the back of her pedicab for Halloween. But Richmond District voters, by Election Day, seemed more focused on where the rubber meets the road. Literally.
Chan, you may recall, in 2023 annoyed a swath of city progressives by siding with parking-obsessed Geary merchants over the SFMTA and its transit lanes. Say what you will about Preston, he’s ideologically consistent. Voters, it seems, value ideological consistency. Until you disagree with them. And then you’re on your own.
Finally, it warrants mentioning that Mayor London Breed only won a single precinct in the Richmond District. This boded poorly for Philhour. She was a former fundraiser and senior adviser for the mayor, which Chan or her third-party boosters were happy to remind voters of.
Breed is a lifelong District 5 resident. She did not weigh down Mahmood, who could make claims to be an outsider. Philhour could not.
This was a profoundly mixed election for San Francisco’s big-money players. But the outcome brings to mind the old Doritos pitch: Crunch all you want. We’ll make more.
There are lessons to be learned and strategies to be adopted. But, in the end, they can raise the money; that’s no problem.
Additional reporting by Kelly Waldron.
A couple other broad observations. Spending did not correlate with outcomes much – San Francisco voters are quite well informed and voted for the measures and candidates that reflected their views on the merits and voted against those that do not. A big lesson from K is that decades of saying “no” to any residential construction on the west side means that the voter center of gravity has moved east. The west side used to be able to call the shots on citywide measures but they simply don’t have the numbers anymore.
Looking at the majority vote maps in Yujie Zhou’s ‘how’d he do it’ article, it’s hard to discount the electoral influence of the west side.
It’s common to hear a dismissal of spending when the preferred outcome goes one’s way. Again to Zhou’s article, political analyst David Ho expressing shock is something I can’t recall. He prides himself on reading the tea leaves. The Lurie strategy Zhou outlined was backed by cash money.
” A big lesson from K is that decades of saying “no” to any residential construction on the west side means that the voter center of gravity has moved east.”
What if some west side Billionaire dropped millions on converting Chinatown, or North Beach, Dogpatch, Castro etc, into a yuppies-only construction zone that frees up building literally any monstrous thing under the guise of it being a “green” project? Non-funded, dishonestly achieved, district voting disregarded entirely, and Billionaire-SuperPac-nonprofit dark money funded? The people who wanted K don’t live in the neighborhoods affected – there’s a problem with that kind of “leadership” and Engardio’s downtown Google lawyer constituency will soon find that out – in court.
Not buying it. San Francisco lost 50000+ residents during and since the pandemic. It stands to reason those were largely over on the East Side: On the West Side, there’s not much residential RE sitting empty, due to the popularity of SFHs over condos.
Prop K’s margin was not sufficiently wide to claim that construction disparities between east and west side provided the balance of votes.
Prop K is yet another in a series of land grabs by self styled urbanists that present as progressive or liberal proposals but are only advanced to set the stage for more real estate speculation.
One good way to put the initiative process at risk is for split decisions like this to be made for one part of the city by another part of the city. Reducing opportunities for public participation in politics, self determination through ballot measure, is a subsidiary goal of the alt right urbanists who hate cities and existing urban residents and the crypto swindlers funding so much of this.
Exactly. Engardio even repeated his lies about it “decarbonizing” the west side for “environmental” gains. These people have no shame.
Note to self: skip the chocolate flavored toothpaste sold at Dollar Tree. Thanks Joe Eskenazi and Mission Local for always keeping it real and excellent.
$120 per voter is a lot of money to many SF residents.
Maybe next time, these wealthy PACs can just offer us a check and leave us to research our ballot measures ourselves?
Call me an environmentalist (all those non-recyclable flyers) and an introvert (being accosted by election people everywhere I went for months), I just want to be left alone to make my own choices.
This superb article shows why it is so dangerous to have no extant paper left in our fragile, increasingly gentrified city. Journalists give voice to the People. Rigorous journalists remind politicians that they are being watched (and written about)! Patient journalists painstakingly notify politicians that these officials owe much to those whom they represent, and yet, all too often, take less than seriously.
When President Biden met Xi Jinping in San Francisco, there were only 5 articles on google about this seriously important event. These shallow, online articles were from SFGate and Fox News. They were subtly layered with xenophobia and racism– because Communism threatens: 1) the “winner takes all” economic ethos burdening America; and 2) the worship of money so prevalent even among the Erudite in the States.
Without a boisterous, ubiquitous, local, alternative newspaper we lack any potent voice to burst through the conditioning that the for-profit media drowns us in. We struggle to think, let alone know.
Personally, I live in the outer Richmond, and I believe it is important that Connie Chan was understandably favored, not merely by those alarmed with run-away gentrification but also by the large, Chinese-American population residing here. People do favor those who seem to be like themselves, as psychological studies show. (People ordinarily show more empathy for those whom they deem similar to themselves).
Identity politics are part of our nation’s history even while this nation struggles with and benefits most from its very diverse populace: For we all grow encountering those different from us –whether as regards age, gender, ethnicity, religion or class . Consciously or unconsciously, we grow precisely because it is complicated and challenging; it inspires us to be better than our ordinary selves.
Money invested in these recent local elections was significant, for Chan, Preston and Lurie. We all witnessed it, although our feelings about it might differ. The fact that Lurie won, however, by having paid staff go door-to-door was significant and strategic: We all should reflect upon this. (Lurie also went door-to-door.) But it is important to recognize that unions, The SF Tenants’ Union, The Richmond Democratic Club and others, however, did not merely pay for glossy flyers. They strategized, held meetings, and worked hard for better outcomes for the 99%. They do inspire us and we might learn from them or any organized, disciplined group trying to better our society. They symbolize people working together for a greater, impersonal goal. Such groups have been volunteering for those who could not, or would not, advocate for themselves.
While the majority of us may lack monies to significantly influence any election, we need to remember that we hold certain extraordinary powers:
1. We can empathize with others –-regardless of whether we agree with them or not (remembering that empathy can melt hardened hearts).
2. We can choose 1 subject and learn about it, studying sufficiently until we can think, speak or write about it regularly and rigorously. This allows us to stand up and participate meaningfully–whether at school board meetings, at city hall, over the radio, via the internet, or in our immediate neighborhoods. It may be messy, but it will be creative and life-changing for us whenever we enter the fray.
3. We can choose not to succumb to hatred of others, or even fear of the unknown (as many White men–both indigent and wealthy–do and naively have done when voting for Trump).
4. We can mobilize.
But for this to work, many many more of us must remember to use our super powers! And make a commitment to do so at this important time.
What about the role of Prop K in other races such as district 7? I got the feeling that Boschetto did a Farrell with K. His family put so much money into K hoping that would in-grace him with the Asian voters of D7. That did not happened. For the looks at the D7 map Boschetto won the low density prescints while Myrna got the east side when most of the voters live.
The UGH needs to be closed so RPD can stage (paid) event there and bring in bike and scooter rentals and food tents and trucks, fake art (think JFK Drive), etc.
As with the Arboretum and other spots, it will be a diminished place to get away from things. Because the commercialism will prevent that.
We will see if Lurie is a disaster or not. Threatening the unhoused with arrest if they do not accept (unsuitable) ‘housing” is not a solution! It will be interesting to see how he deals with this (largely ignored) deficit.
The YIMBYs are very effective. They now will control three supervisors (or more) and (likely) some school board members and CCSF trustees. They host indoctrination meetings which tell people how to vote. And they use garbage pickups to harvest email and other addresses for their database.
Chan stood up for merchants against the SFMTA and tried to investigate the corruption involved with Parks Alliance and the Ferris wheel.
That did not go unnoticed. The real questions are why these conservative candidates hold such appeal and why would you not want to expand rent control. The voters are really undereducated on most issues.
Absolutely spot on.
Lurie was able to purchase competence, in bulk.
What was happening wasn’t competent, money didn’t buy you that but it spent your money like it was going out of style.
Money cannot buy competence but what did any elected career politician did really deliver for the city in the last (pick a number) years ? ok i admit rent control but besides that? 38 years of living in the city and basically nothing really has changed. So close to Silicone valley, to technology (!), so much money around, gigantic budgets, so much money spent and what are the real obvious results? the basics like roads, wires (overhead), public transportation, cleanliness, services are appalling. I know we got used to failure, to subpar, to average..etc but go to many other places in the world to see how they take care of “basics” : they took care of basics a long long time ago. Instead, every year, we “discover” that we got scandals and corruption at the highest level of city hall and overpaid people. No surprise if we got this person as a new mayor.
upzone the west side, punish the suburbs.
“Punish”. Right, that’s the spirit. Careful what you wish for, prop K energized a crowd that might be out for payback themselves. A few ideas for future ballot measures come to mind:
Now that Caltrain is electrified, what with banning tech shuttles from picking up and dropping off within city limits?
Or making the current collection of slow streets permanent, with all curbside parking removed (except for existing disabled spots)?
That’ll teach’ em.
The “bicyclists vs everyone” narrative needs to be run over. You are greenwashing a yuppie developer agenda without merit.
I do wonder what some of these divisive issues will do for coalition building when it’s needed down the line – i.e. if we’re nuking goodwill, is it on the issues that matter most or will we regret it down the line when folks are soured to a whole category like ped/bike improvements (because they view it as zero sum)? Been pondering that due to the presidency – i.e. did we splinter our tent due to an aggressive tone on issues that, in the grand scheme of things, would’ve ranked low compared to control of 3 branches of govt?
Yuppies gonna yuppie.
Daniel, that would be great actually.
I here I thought “eeking” was spelled with two “e”s. As always, informative and entertaining. By the way, re “World Effin’ dodgers” (sic), Indeed. (And I always spell “dodgers” in lower-case letters.) Go Giants!
Walter —
Did I lower-case Dodgers? If so that was unintentional. Hey, they won fair and square.
JE
Different strokes,
I lower-case my name to honor e.e. cummings.
Yet, lower-casing dodgers is an insult.
And, far as I’ve read these last years you’ve never mentioned the ‘man behind the curtain’ for the Moderates and Swells.
Jim Sutton has been the lawyer of record for these folks since before Willie Brown was Mayor and closed his law firm last year to spend his efforts solely on doing to SF what Trump is doing to Old Glory.
Let’s see Manny host an interview with Sutton moderated by you ?
And, am I the only person offended by Philhour’s seemingly favorite dress which features what must look like a Japanese imperial battle flag covering all above the waist ?
I can’t imagine that playing well with the senior Chinese voters in D-1.
Peskin for Chief of Staff !
And, as always …
Go Niners !!
h.
Hmmm. Curios what message is being sent with posting a picture of him hugging a young Asian woman? It’s cropped from a picture that included supporters from various backgrounds, including Joanne Hayes white, Vicky Hennessy, Jon Moscone and the Latinx woman community leader wearing glasses with her face turned to the side. Conspiracy theory aside, a picture is better than a thousand words. A friend who is a photo editor for news outlets is well versed in this kind of picture cropping technique. Clever or cunning?
Lyl —
Give us a break, dude.
JE
Great analysis on most everything except for the reasons for Preston’s loss. The debacle we call the redistricting gifted him with a neighborhood that should have been his natural ally and staunch supporter but two years into this and he failed to rally their support. Tenderloin is the most impoverished and demonized neighborhood in the City and Preston could have garnered their support and won this election by helping his new constituents with legislations to better maintain SROs and protect tenants.
What’s the point of electing a progressive when the progressive cannot introduce and pass legislations to help the disadvantaged and low-income folks in his district? The only folks he chose to work with were the DSA and ADC operatives. The leftists like me who were active in his election 5 years ago were shunned when we approached his office for ideas to protect tenants against “renoviction”. Early on, his senior aide told me if I had any ideas, I had to go thru ADC to bring them up to his attention!
And opposing Prop K was not a conservative or progressive issue even though great majority of the opposition were of conservative persuasion. Given Wiener’s recent attempts to remove our coast line from the Coastal Commission’s jurisdiction, the progressives were alarmed and viewed the Great Highway closure as a prelude for building high-rises there. Despite all the rosy talk about replacing the road with a beautiful park, there’s no budget or plan for doing so in a city with major budget deficit problems and that is a sure sign that the real reason behind this proposition is redevelopment of the land to benefit the developers. As Aaron Peskin said aptly, we don’t want Ocean Beach to become Miami Beach and that’s why the progressives were against Prop K.
Ozzie,
League of Pissed Off Voters was pro Prop K. Tim Redmond, SF Bay Guardian was against. I am a progressive and I voted for it. There are at least 900 miles of streets in San Francisco. How many are closed to cars? Are we in a climate emergency? I think the bigger split is between motorists and cyclists and people who like to have car free spaces. Such resistance over 2 miles of rather out of the way road that is often closed anyway.
How does closing one road at all help the “climate emergency”?
Think.
” There are at least 900 miles of streets in San Francisco. How many are closed to cars?”
Put another way, what if Billionaires dropped dark money on a lie that it was environmentally friendly to turn the Castro into a golf course? Would you support that lie also, believing the greenwashing BS? Engardio and Wiener salivate at the thought of confusing low-information voters who can be convinced of simple falsehoods.
So when there will be a pedestrian fatality between the Lower Great and Sunset, actually I predict three in ten years, that’s ok? When they closed the GH, the Uber driver took the 46th Av detour and his passenger was struck and killed by a hit and run vehicle. During the pandemic, look it up and now there is a stop sign up in his memory.
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Police in San Francisco are asking for the public’s help in their search for a male suspect in connection with a fatal hit-and-run collision Saturday evening involving a stolen vehicle in the Outer Sunset.
Police said on Saturday shortly after 7:30 p.m., officers responded to the report of a hit-and-run collision in the area of 46th and Lincoln Avenues. The two cars involved were a “red/orange” Honda SUV and a black Audi SUV, police said.
Two people in the Honda were injured in the collision. The driver was transported to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. A male passenger suffering from life-threatening injuries was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.
Sotaro,
It’s true that the opposition to Prop K was mostly voiced by the conservative forces who turned it into an issue of cars vs. pedestrians but the real reason behind this proposition was not lost on the progressive land use activists who saw this as a land grab to benefit developers for the future Miamification of Ocean Beach. Yes, many progressives endorsed it and voted for it because it was presented as an anti-car and pro-environment issue but those progressives who pay attention to who was behind this proposition and who the future beneficiaries of this closure are didn’t fall for this narrative and voted against it. Admittedly, the majority of progressives probably voted for it (even Dean Preston supported Prop K!). But as I said, the conservatives took the center stage in the opposition front and no wonder that their points didn’t resonate with the majority of progressives.
What is ADC?
Gatekeeping by private organizations is a perennial problem with progressive supervisors whose allegiance is to certain constituencies rather than their constituents.
The basic deal of supervisoring is that outside of the containment zone, you risk the seat if you don’t keep your constituents happy by putting them first. That taken care of, you can afford to spend time working on putting out citywide fires and broader structural reforms.
Giving constituents the hand in the containment zone will see the nonprofit cartel watching your back so long as you sell out your constituents to keep the nonprofiteers rolling in city cash. This is how human potted plants who abandoned their district like Campos and Ronen got two terms.
Huh, Ronen finally solves the intractable problem of prostitution on Capp St and she gets called a potted plant? Ungrateful constituents.
Ronen solved prostitution on Capp? NOPE. She sent it 1 block away. That’s the London Breed definition of “solved” perhaps…