As we dive into Election Day results, let’s stop and ask ourselves some quick questions:
- Is it moderate or progressive to close JFK Drive to cars?
- Is it moderate or progressive to reject 500 homes on a valet parking lot that would have added 130 affordable units to the city?
- Is it moderate or progressive to demand a fix to a payroll fiasco screwing up teachers’ wages and benefits?
- Is it moderate or progressive to compel a handful of people into care who would otherwise die on the street, or perhaps harm others?
Now pick a supervisor, or any candidate for SF public office in 2022, and there’s a good chance they won’t easily fit into one of these boxes.
After a few hours’ sleep and plenty more coffee, the election results are offering deeper insights than “Is this good for the mayor?” (It’s something I asked last night.)
In San Francisco, this was an election that, for starters, underscored the power of incumbency; a relative dearth of serious talent to mount challenges; and, most important, exposure of the false “moderate vs. progressive” narrative that wastes so much time and energy in our debates.
Take the races that got little attention: three supervisor districts that were never really in play. One supe (D2’s Catherine Stefani) ran unopposed. Two others (Rafael Mandelman in D8 and Shamann Walton in D10) never felt much of a challenge. This came in a year when local voters were venting left and right about the dismal state of city affairs. The Board of Supervisors’ rating was even worse than the mayor’s in more than one poll. Yet the board president and two others skated to victory.
In the other two supes’ races, incumbent Gordon Mar could be the sole outlier. His race against perennial candidate Joel Engardio won’t be decided until at least Thursday. A Mar loss would be a shocker. According to the SF Chronicle, no elected incumbent supervisor has failed in re-election in 20 years.
Mayoral appointees facing voters for the first time are a different story, but probably not for Matt Dorsey. In District 6, incumbent Dorsey — one of Mayor London Breed’s six appointees to elected office this year — has a sizable lead over Honey Mahogany, who was expected to be a tough match with the blessing of her old boss, former D6 Sup. Matt Haney, and a similar pro-housing bent that catapulted Haney into Sacramento.
Hey mayor, pick me a winner
Breed’s other selections were District Attorney Brooke Jenkins (who has claimed victory even with 104,000 ballots to count), the three incumbent school board members (also with leads), and a community college board member. If all those leads hold up, it’s a clean sweep for incumbents.
Sure, they were Breed’s picks, but making this about her power or her well-heeled backers misses the point. Consider DA Jenkins: In her brief tenure in office, she accumulated so much baggage that her middle name could have been Samsonite. Like a sour cherry on a melting sundae, Mission Local reported before the election that Jenkins might have committed a crime for the express purpose of ousting her old boss, Chesa Boudin, and taking his place.
Then consider the answers to Jenkins: a guy flashing his locally famous middle name for recognition (Alioto, not Samsonite) and a guy so, um, politically skilled that he had to erase thousands of past tweets and hope casual observers wouldn’t notice. We’ve all got tweets we regret, but thousands?
Over at the school board, one of three incumbents stepped in a pile of her own making soon after Breed tabbed her for the post. Ann Hsu insulted Black and brown families on a candidate questionnaire. She apologized and accepted a rebuke from her colleagues, but with the Affaire d’Alison Collins still lingering in everyone’s nostrils — and the new board’s explicit promise to tone things down and get on with real business — Hsu seemed ripe for a one-and-done.
That may yet happen, but only one challenger, Alida Fisher, has an outside shot of a victory for the third seat; again, we won’t know for sure until at least Thursday. Fisher is deeply involved in the school district as a parent and a special-education advocate, and is thoughtful, knowledgeable, and energetic. (We’re disappointed she didn’t participate in our candidate Q&A.) She’s run before and missed the cut, most recently in 2020.
The other two challengers are far behind. This includes Gabriela López, the recalled board president and Collins apologist, whose revival attempt included no mention of the landslide vote (72 percent) that booted her in February.
Whatever your political persuasion, it’s safe to say that San Francisco could use a deeper bench.
A moderate agenda, really?
Assuming the results stay in place, Engardio defeating Mar would nominally make the Board of Supervisors more moderate, but several officials don’t always hew to whatever “progressive” and “moderate” are supposed to mean.
The slate of ballot measures, most of which were decided last night, also defies neat categorization. Breed campaigned against two propositions that look like winners: Prop C, which adds oversight to her homelessness department, and Prop M, a tax on empty homes whose backers oversold its potential effect on the housing shortage.
If SF just got more moderate, it did so by approving a spate of taxes and spending. In addition to Prop M (assuming it wins), we’re also:
- Giving a modest bump to the public school budget, earmarked for academics, mental health and other services (Prop G).
- Extending an existing sales tax to guarantee more funding for Muni (Prop L).
- Boosting public pensions for cost of living (Prop A) and gave libraries more money (Prop F). (Editor’s note: We were secretly hoping to see campaign posters that said “f**k around with librarians and find out.”)
It wasn’t all yes to spending. Voters soundly rejected a property tax hike to give more money to City College (Prop O), which has been through harsh budget cuts. With the same swipe of the marker, however, SF then voted out incumbent trustees who enacted those budget cuts, except for Breed’s appointment Murrell Green. Candidates who oppose the cuts seem on track to win.
Voters also rejected a measure (Prop E) that would streamline affordable housing and retain the supervisors’ control of the approval process, project by project. It remains to be seen if the mayor’s version (Prop D), currently underwater by 1,275 votes, can win the day. (Our explainer is here.)
Is pushing for fewer cars and greener spaces when the planet is rapidly warming a moderate or progressive thing? SF just voted to approve a permanently car-free JFK Drive (Prop J) and rejected the de Young Museum’s $770,000 campaign to bring cars back not just to JFK but also to the Great Highway (Prop I). SF also acknowledged that some folks on limited budgets need to drive to Golden Gate Park, giving the city authority to set flexible rates in the underground garage (Prop N).
Moderate, progressive — save it for the pundit class that is sometimes clever and often wrong. With fewer labels, perhaps San Francisco can compel more people to run for office based not on tribalism but on good ideas.
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