Ballots have dropped, voting has started, and the candidates and propositions are now starting to focus on getting out the votes. That doesn’t mean the employees of the United States Postal Service are getting a break: The final weeks of the campaigns will also be the most intense for direct mail, particularly for hit pieces.
Ron Conway, the plutocrat who is close to Mayor London Breed, just dropped $100,000 into a committee opposing Sup. Aaron Peskin’s mayoral bid (which suggests if nothing else that Breed thinks Peskin has a chance to finishing ahead of her). Interestingly, Conway has also given $150,000 to the Yes on D campaign, which has become a vehicle for the Farrell for Mayor effort.
Mission Local has a good breakdown of the money here.
Much of that will go into mail. The poor letter carriers: Under Trump’s postmaster general, who Biden has never fired, the Post Office is badly understaffed, and too few people are trying to deliver way too many political hit pieces in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, progressives are way outspent, with $53 million, much in billionaire and corporate money, going into the fall election.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: This event will be held in the Golden Gate Panhandle, at Fell and Baker, not at Dolores Park.
But sometimes elections are won not on the air and in the mail but on the ground, and most of the candidates who are running as progressives are holding a unity rally Saturday/26. Among those who will be there:
Sup. Aaron Peskin, Sup. Dean Preston, D3 candidates Sharon Lai and Moe Jamil, D9 candidates Jackie Fielder and Stephen Torres, Sup. Connie Chan, D11 candidates EJ Jones and Chyanne Chen, and School Board candidate Matt Alexander.
The event is sponsored by groups that include the National Union of Healthcare Workers, the California Nurses Association, and the United Educators of San Francisco, along with the Harvey Milk Club, Bernal Heights Democratic Club, SF Berniecrats, and SF Rising.
The event starts at 11am.
The news that a wealthy venture capitalist, using a series of front-group corporations, was buying a lot of real estate on Fillmore Street, and evicting popular local businesses, has created strong opposition in what’s usually a politically quiet, upper-class neighborhood.
Sup. Aaron Peskin has introduced a measure that would require a conditional use authorization from the Planning Commission for the replacement of a legacy business in neighborhood commercial districts. The interim controls would be in place for 18 months.
I suspect it’s going to hard for any of the supes, who love to talk about the importance of local small businesses, to vote against the measure, which comes before the Land Use and Transportation Committee Monday/21.
But there’s a much larger issue here.
Mayor Breed and her Yimby allies are moving to upzone all of the neighborhood commercial districts to eight stories. The theory is that more, denser housing will bring down prices.
But most of those districts, like Upper Fillmore, are already fully developed; there’s no way to build higher and denser without demolishing existing buildings. Those buildings often contain small, neighborhood-serving businesses. Those businesses will be evicted when the building is demolished, and many will never come back.
The speculator in Upper Fillmore wants to get rid of restaurants and bring in high-end retail. That’s because high-end retail can pay more rent than most local restaurants.
Developers who tear down three-story buildings to put up eight-story buildings will be doing expensive work: Above about six stories in San Francisco, the building codes call for higher-end frames (which make sense in an earthquake zone). They will want to make as much return as possible for investors.
The small businesses that occupy that space will, of course, have to leave during construction. Most of these outfits are linked to neighborhood communities, and can’t just go somewhere else. Many of them won’t be able to afford the new, higher rent.
Then there are the residential tenants in the buildings. Many of them have also been around for years, and thanks to rent control, are paying well below market rent.
They, too, will have to leave for the demolition and rebuild, and while they have some legal protection, new buildings are not subject to rent control. So the tenants will have to move, some will never come back, and the new rents will be much higher.
So this is a test case, in a sense, for how willing the supes are to limit what speculators can do in the name of “improving” neighborhoods. That meeting starts at 1:30pm.
Full disclosure: Both of my kids work on the Peskin for Mayor campaign.
