Former supe sees plenty of local support one day after announcing run
By Tim Redmond
MARCH 31, 2015 – It took former Sup. Aaron Peskin less than 24 hours to raise the first $10,000 for his challenge against Sup. Julie Christensen – and so far, nearly all of his money is local.
That’s a lot of cash to raise in the first day of a campaign for supervisor, and it’s a sign that he will be able to compete financially against a candidate who will be flooded with tech and developer money.
Peskin is planning to accept public financing, which means he’s eligible to get matching funds for local contributions – and he has to agree to limit his total campaign spending to $250,000.
Which is a lot of money for a district election – but it’s almost certain that Christensen will spend more. Retaining her on the board is a high priority for the mayor, who at this point doesn’t have to spend a lot of time raising money for his own re-election, since he has no major opponents.
And I would be shocked if Ron Conway, the mayor’s sugar daddy and the biggest power broker at City Hall these days, didn’t create his own independent expenditure committee to keep Peskin off the board.
Still, in a district where Peskin is well known, turnout is likely to be low (it’s an off-year election with at this point no contested mayoral race), and news media attention will be high, the race won’t necessarily go to the candidate with the most money.
As long as Peskin has enough to run a serious campaign and make his case – and it now appears that won’t be a problem – it won’t matter if he’s outspent.
The race could easily be determined by absentee voters – and that will be a matter more of organizing on the ground than an expensive mail and media campaign. Nate Allbee, who is running Peskin’s campaign, also managed the Assembly campaign of David Campos, and is acutely aware of the role absentee votes played in that contest.
I think it’s safe to say that Peskin will have plenty of volunteers. Not sure about Christensen – although the leader of SFBARF, the group that wants to build housing everywhere with no limits, is already posting on Reddit trying to line up help for Christensen.
