The first round of Election-Day vote-by-mail ballots have shown a shift to the conservative side. It’s not as pronounced as the first-round VBM, but the 16,000 votes counted today have put Sup. Vallie Brown on top in D5 and given interim DA Suzy Loftus more of a lead in the district attorney’s race.
With the ranked-choice voting algorithm, Brown is now ahead of Preston by 88 votes. The second-place votes of the other two candidates continue to break in Preston’s favor, but Brown is getting more first-place votes.
Chesa Boudin still leads in the first-place votes – a remarkable statement from local voters who clearly want major criminal-justice reform. But the RCV count puts Loftus ahead by 2,205 votes.
It’s worth noting that while Mayor Breed, according to the Chron and KQED, breezed to a powerful victory, only about 60 percent of the people who went to the polls voted for her. More than 15,000 people voted in the election but didn’t vote for anyone for mayor. Given that she had no credible opposition and nobody with any serious money or campaign against her, 60 percent doesn’t seem like a huge mandate.
The votes that were counted today, according to the Department of Elections, were ballots that arrived in the mail this morning. That meant they were dropped in mailboxes a day or two ago.
It’s not clear at this point where the remaining 57,000 VBM ballots and 13,000 provisional ballots come from and whether they will be more like the Election Day voters or like the most recent VBMs.
But we will need at least another day or two before we can say what the final results will look like.
Now then: I don’t want to dignify this with its own story, since it’s not a story, but because the Chron, the Ex, and KQED are making a big deal of it, let me just say:
The reports on Sup. Sandra Lee Fewer’s Fuck the POA chant are a big deal about nothing. (And why does the Chron still use F—? As if anyone under 50 even reads that paper. Note to editors: We have all seen the word Fuck before.)
The reports on this non-story just got the POA leadership all agitated and gave them a chance to attack Fewer (who has been married for 35 years to an SF cop).
Fewer released a statement today which reads:
Dear Rank-and-File Members of the San Francisco Police Department,
It has been brought to my attention that the comments that I made last night, directed at the leadership of the Police Officers Association, were construed as an insult and an attack on the members of the San Francisco Police Department.
As this was not at all my intent, I would like to issue an apology to the 2,000 officers of the San Francisco Police Department; I am sorry for any offense that my comments may have caused.
As most of you may know, my husband served for 35 years as a San Francisco police officer and is a five-time Medal of Valor recipient. I deeply respect the work that he and his fellow officers have done and continue to do on a daily basis. The job that police officers perform is honorable, respected and necessary. I want to take this moment to thank and appreciate each of you for what you do every day to keep San Francisco safe. I apologize if my comments were misinterpreted to be an attack on you, as individual officers. That could not be further from the truth. I know and understand how difficult the job is and am deeply appreciative of your service.
That said, I cannot apologize for my comments last night directed at the leadership of the Police Officers Association (POA).
The leadership of the POA— which is referred to as a union although not recognized as such by the AFL-CIO— has had a long and sordid history of opposing police reforms, publishing explicitly racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric, and directly threatening their critics, including my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, myself and my husband, and its own members. This organization has and continues to incite fear in our city— contrary to the mission and goals of our own police department.
As a family who has paid POA membership dues for 35 years, I cannot stay silent and condone the behavior of the organization’s leadership. Their latest campaign materials against a DistrictAttorney candidate are just the most recent example of the organization’s tone-deaf and poisonous rhetoric attempting to influence city elections. There is simply no room for this type of Trumpian bullying and fearmongering in San Francisco politics.
Yes, I used profanity in my comments about the POA, but quite frankly, I don’t think it is language that we have not heard before. However, if that language has offended you, the members of the San Francisco Police Department, I deeply apologize.
This is a story?
The real story, Fewer told me tonight, is that “progressives are alive and well” and San Francisco voters have given a stunning amount of support to a public defender running for DA on a platform of profound criminal-justice reform.
I await the Chronicle story on that.
