Many of San Francisco’s Democrats are increasingly using Trump-style language and tactics, especially since tech billionaires took over the local Democratic Party ahead of the 2024 election. Though San Francisco leaders pride themselves on not being Republicans, the distinction between them is growing dimmer.
While mainstream Democrats have long-embraced it, the left has been wary about tech since the first dot-com boom. Mainstream and corporate democrats fought hard for tax breaks to big tech, and stood in opposition to new taxes on the wealthiest and funding affordable housing. They joined the chorus of now-exposed corporate and Republican money to create the doom-loop, claiming that San Francisco was destroyed somehow by progressive policies, including “defunding the police,” which never even happened in San Francisco.
Now, with virtually no difference in crime statistics (crime remains at historical lows despite the manufactured crime hysteria about San Francisco) and rents only getting more expensive, newspaper outlets are claiming that San Francisco is on the road to recovery, conveniently after tech and conservatives spent record amounts on their picks for the 2024 election.
In the month since I left office, for example, while homelessness and crime have stayed the same, my district lost a grocery store, two neighborhood pharmacies, a bank, and a major protected bike lane has been significantly delayed – but hallelujah, common sense has restored it to glory. At every turn, corporate politicians tell us that it’s not the facts that matter, it’s how people feel about the facts, which is convenient since those feelings can be manipulated with enough billionaire-backed disinformation.
Against this backdrop, the game of “Who said it – Trump or an SF Democrat?” is getting far more difficult to play.
While Trump is firing inspectors general who exercise independent oversight, San Francisco’s mayor is seeking to remove an independent whistleblower from the Police Commission, which provides oversight of the police department. The mayor is removing Commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone in the middle of his term—not for any misconduct, but because of his independence.
While Trump impounds funds authorized by Congress, this tactic was a hallmark of the neoliberal Breed administration, refusing to spend approved funding for purely political reasons to punish critics or win political endorsements. Breed refused to spend SRO elevator repair funds, refused to release funds for a homeless drop in site, and delayed spending community land trust funds for years. Breed even froze approved funding for public housing tenant outreach, jeopardizing the entire program, and so far, Mayor Lurie has done the same.
Meanwhile, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, a Democrat backed by Republican billionaires, is publicly blaming “far left leaning judges” who take an “ideological activist position” for allegedly undermining prosecutions, as Trump and Musk blast judges using nearly identical language. The statements have outraged the legal community, including a retired judge who remarked, “Never before has a San Francisco district attorney engaged in that kind of cheap political attacks.”
While Trump slanders immigrants and calls for mass deportations, San Francisco’s new mayor has opened a “police-friendly” detention site for homeless people caught using drugs and from there, “wants to bus more homeless people out of the city.” City leaders have been pushing misleading statistics and fearmongering to justify increased criminalization and sweeps of those who are unhoused. San Francisco even joined with right wing groups to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to strip homeless people of constitutional rights so they could be prosecuted for being homeless. The city “won” that case – meaning human decency lost.
Meanwhile, Trump’s plans to address urban homelessness and his attacks on the evidence-based Housing First approach, sound strikingly similar to the plans and rhetoric advanced by local leaders and billionaire-backed PACs here in San Francisco.
You cannot defeat fascism by acting like the fascists. San Francisco should take a stand for truth, human rights, and decency. Pretending to be tough by acting like Trump at the local level is the opposite.
Dean Preston is a housing advocate, a democratic socialist, and a former San Francisco Supervisor
