As of this writing, most of San Francisco’s primary election races have been settled. If you prefer to view the city through the lens of moderate and progressive ideas fighting for the upper hand, Tuesday’s results show moderates ascendant.
But as I’ve written before, that reductive view makes discussion of ideas and solutions all the more difficult, and it is bad for the city. Here are two related observations about this week’s results.
(Note: a few local races are still to be determined. The next batch of ballot results comes later this afternoon.)
If it feels broken, do something
Despite strong arguments against Props. E and F, they passed with room to spare. A Chronicle investigation, released one week before the election, made clear that a main element of E — giving police more leeway to chase nonviolent suspects — could lead to bystander harm and death.
As for F, multiple health experts testified it was bad public policy. The new law requires people receiving SF’s cash assistance to submit to drug screens and possible treatment — or risk having their cash payments taken away.
F’s spokesperson acknowledged to our reporter that there was no evidence this more punitive approach would work, but he said the status quo — an overdose epidemic that continues unabated — isn’t working either. (Policies that aren’t working include arresting public drug users.)
San Franciscans agreed. When people see something not working, “anything but the status quo” becomes more of a viable option.
You might say the same about Prop. C, a developer tax break to encourage conversions of empty offices into homes. As we reported, the city controller was skeptical of the measure and projected it might put even more of a dent in city revenues.
This added fuel to opponents’ charges of “developer giveaway” and “tax cuts for the rich.” But so far, 54 percent of voters saw something else: an answer (however imperfect) to a lonely downtown and a housing crisis.
Prop. E’s grab-bag of changes give SF police more power and less oversight. Crime, as well documented, is a complicated subject. The short of it: for years, violent crime in SF has been low, or dropping, but property crimes have been on the rise.
Just before the election, Mayor London Breed touted a year-over-year drop from 2022 to 2023 in the overall numbers and patted herself on the back. As campaign rivals try to outflank her on crime, she’s well aware that, no matter the numbers, residents don’t feel safe.
If you look at the data, it’s not clear how broken things are. But if your bike is stolen, or your favorite cafe’s window is smashed for the third time in a year, data goes out the window as fast as a laptop left in the back seat of car.
Does this mean SF has lurched rightward in lockstep, toward a police state, greedy development, and hating the poor? No.
Going big for affordable homes
Here’s Exhibit A. More than 70 percent of SF voted for California Prop. 1, a $6.5 billion bond to expand mental health and substance abuse treatment capacity, and to emphasize more housing for the chronically homeless. SF would be a major beneficiary.
The details get complicated, and the ACLU and other groups stumped against Prop. 1 on civil-rights grounds, but the bottom line: 7 of 10 SF voters saw a boatload more public money for mental health and homelessness and said yes. Meanwhile, state voters have so far said yes only by the slimmest margin. The measure may yet not pass, but not for lack of SF’s enthusiasm.
Does the electorate mindlessly stagger, like zombies toward succulent human flesh, toward whatever rich people are spending their money on?
Another counterexample to the narrative of a rightward march: SF’s Prop. A — $300 million for affordable housing — is winning too. These money votes are as “progressive,” if you want to use that term, as it gets: approving huge sums of public money for problems that public money has not yet fixed.
If city hearts and minds had been commandeered by tech bros, libertarians, profiteers, and tough-love promoters, these votes would have been much more in doubt.
‘Billionaire money’ works, or not
Much has been written about big money that backed the winning Prop. C, E, and F campaigns , or that fought successfully against the “cop tax” (Prop. B), which got crushed.
Contributions also tilted heavily toward moderates running for the city’s official Democratic Party Committee, which has seen years of progressive control. Again, final results aren’t in, but moderates seem poised to win a large majority of the contested 24 seats.
But consider this: The two SF county judges up for reelection were pilloried by lurid “soft on crime” attack ads fueled by rich moderates and conservatives. One of the judges won handily, and the second holds a healthy lead.
And this: Prop. A’s affordable housing bond, which some supporters said was getting a cold shoulder — or worse — from the moderate side (even from Breed, who put it on the ballot), remains on track to squeeze out a victory.
Pre-election analysis said big-money backing of E and F would attract the kind of voters twho would shun the $300 million bond. If true, it’s not been a deal killer so far.
So: a right-wing billionaire “hostile takeover”? That’s the premise of a progressive group that formed a few months ago to shine light on all the spending. The group’s director lost her columnist job after tearing down a coffee-shop campaign flier of a moderate she didn’t like. The group also admitted it was using the same kind of “dark money” organizational structure it was investigating — and like those, it doesn’t have to disclose its donors.
Rich folks are going to spend their money. Does the electorate mindlessly stagger, like zombies toward succulent human flesh, to whatever they’re spending it on? Nope.
Mission Local, which has spent a lot of time following the money in this election cycle and those past, included this note Tuesday night about the DCCC returns: “Past moderate slates [in 2016 and 2020] were lavishly backed by tech money and old money and outspent opponents prodigiously — and failed dramatically.”
Vigilance about money is important. But in SF, perhaps ideas and candidates matter more. Let’s rewind to November 2022, one of the densest ballots in city history, for a couple examples.
Money spent for and against the closure of JFK to cars was in the same ballpark. (Anticar spending was $955,000, pro-car spending from the DeYoung Museum camp, in large part Dede Wilsey, was $800,000.) Both sides had plenty of resources to get their points across. Voters said “ban cars” by a two-thirds vote.
Meanwhile, the best-funded candidate for the hot-button Board of Education race was Ann Hsu. She raised nearly 50 percent more than the next-highest. Hsu was also the only incumbent who lost. Voters had several months to see how she conducted herself, and they said no thank you.
Voters might not follow the advice of journalists or experts. As we’ve just seen, they can give questionable ideas the nod, and they’ll continue to do so no matter which side of the political aisle is promoting them. But to suggest that voters are captured simply by an outpouring of campaign money is to sell them — and our electoral system — short.
