Westside Forward, a new progressive group led by former District 4 Supervisor Gordon Mar, met Wednesday for an evening billed to “Stop the Billionaire Takeover,” an initial foray for progressives into the more moderate Sunset.
“We need workers rights. We need our fair share. We don’t need no billionaire,” sang some 50 people gathered at the Ortega branch library in the Outer Sunset, enthusiastically repeating the chorus of “No Billionaires” by Minneapolis musician and activist Sarina Partridge.
It was one of the first events of the new group, which Mar said wants to bring together residents in the Sunset and Richmond who “care about affordability, democracy, labor rights and climate change.”
The goal, the group’s vision statement reads, is to make the Westside “a power hub for progressive change.”
Mar told the audience at Wednesday evening’s forum that he wants to “challenge the stereotype that Westside neighborhoods are politically conservative.”
There is some truth to that stereotype though. In District 4, 24 percent of voters cast their ballot to re-elect Donald Trump in 2024, the second highest percentage in the city after District 11, the district covering the Excelsior, Oceanview and Outer Mission.
District 11, despite seeing some support for Trump, also narrowly elected Supervisor Chyanne Chen, a labor organizer that same year. The Sunset, too, can skew progressive. Mar, a progressive candidate, made history when he won the supervisor seat back in 2018.
There may be an “undercurrent” of progressive forces in the Sunset, said Jenne Ristau, a Sunset resident who attended the forum. “But I don’t think they have political power,” Ristau said.
That could soon change. Natalie Gee, a progressive candidate backed by labor, is running to challenge the incumbent Supervisor Alan Wong in District 4. If she wins, it would boost the city’s progressives’ efforts to gain power in City Hall.
Events like the Westside Forward gathering on Wednesday, Lane said, are the “real game changer.”
“The idea that there’s billionaire money to tell District 4 what to do,” he said, “gets resentment that could create a sense of neighborhood that people can coalesce around.”
Resentment in the Sunset has been building since the fight over the Great Highway closure. Residents who preferred the road over the coastal park blamed Supervisor Joel Engardio, and city government as a whole, for not listening to them.
The mayor’s upzoning plan, the controversy over the short-lived appointment of former Supervisor Beya Alcaraz and the ensuing vacancy only intensified frustration with City Hall.
“The lack of organizing [before] has meant that we don’t know what the politics of the Sunset is,” said Lane. “That made it easier for moderate money to say, ‘this is who you are, and here’s someone to represent you.’”
But it also meant hope, Lane said. “There is a lot more up for grabs than people think,” Lane said. “That’s why we are organizing.”
He pointed to the Westside Resistance Festival, the first event that the new group helped organize. It was one of a series of “No Kings” protests, but it was located on the Great Highway and geared towards local people who live in the Sunset and Richmond.
“There were thousands of people that wanted to sing and chant progressive slogans on the beach with their neighbors,” Lane said.
The Wednesday forum, moderated by Julie Pitta, the president of Phoenix Project, focused on money flowing into local elections from corporate real estate, local tech billionaires, business coalitions and law enforcement PACs. That money has been mostly funneled through political pressure groups like GrowSF, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, the now-defunct Together SF and Abundance Network.
In a 30-minute presentation, Jeremy Mack, executive director of Phoenix Project, recounted the wins of those groups in recent years, including the Chesa Boudin recall and Brooke Jenkins taking office, the moderates’ new majority on the San Francisco Democratic Party and ouster of Dean Preston in District 5. Though in the past two years, he said, the doom loop narrative that helped elect some of the candidates backed by those groups, has died.
Mack went on to address contributions and spending in all the June races from what he called “astroturf” groups and networks.
He pointed to the $4.1 million spent on Prop. C to counter the overpaid CEO tax measure. The lion’s share of that money came from billionaires Chris Larsen and Michael Moritz. He also referenced the millions in the war chest of congressional candidates Scott Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti in contrast to the labor-backed candidate Connie Chan.
Mack also highlighted money in the District 4 supervisor race: Wong has benefited from $746,000 in third-party PAC spending from mostly Mayor Lurie’s allies, including a quarter-million from WhatsApp billionaire and MAGA donor Jan Koum.
“Lurie is now increasingly becoming kind of a kingmaker in San Francisco politics and selecting his people,” Mack said. “And he has the money to back it up.”
The forum ended with a pointed question from the audience: What do we think about DSA California’s endorsement of Tom Steyer, a billionaire who’s running for governor?
“That just brings up the thorny issue of, what do you do when a billionaire has the best platform?” Pitta said, laughing.
“Never in a million years did I think I would be sitting in front of people talking about something like this,” added Sydney Simpson, one of the panelists from the Working Families Party. “I did not expect him to be able to talk like a normal person. But he does strike me as a bit of a salt-of-the-earth type.”
“We are going to have this problem until we get big money out of politics. All the candidates are going to keep being billionaires because they’re the only ones who can afford to run,” Simpson concluded. “Do I wish Chakrabarti had just given Connie his money? That would be fantastic. I wish Tom Steyer would just give some working class candidate his money. They never do that.”
