What a wild night. The Democrats have lost the House, but may keep the Senate. We didn’t see a “red wave;” Trump’s candidate for Senate lost in Pennsylvania, and his candidate for governor lost in New York, and there’s a good chance that his candidate for Senate in Georgia will lose in a December runoff.
The measure to enshrine reproductive rights in the California constitution is going to get close to 70 percent of the vote, sending a powerful national message.
Both sports gambling measures, after more than half a billion dollars in spending, are going down handily.
And in San Francisco, the results amount to a split decision for the competing progressive and moderate (conservative neoliberal) camps. Mayor London Breed fought against Prop. H, which would move mayoral elections to the same year as presidential elections; that won handily. The Breed/Yimby backed housing measure, Prop. D, is losing narrowly, but that’s still up in the air.
The tax on vacant apartments, Prop. M is winning, which means Sup. Dean Preston, who authored both Prop. H and Prop. M, is having a great night.
All of the City College Board incumbents are losing as a reform slate seems prepared to take control—but the tax measure to fund City College is losing. The School Board incumbents are winning.
And in the two swing supes districts, although there are a lot of votes (the majority of votes) still to count, the mayor’s candidates are winning.
How do we unpack this? It’s tricky, and a lot of things could change in the next few days. The vote counting is unusually slow, probably because a huge number of voters dropped off or mailed their ballots at the last minute.
But it looks as if Matt Haney’s decision to run for state Assembly against David Campos was a disaster for the progressives he once claimed to represent; he not only kept a real progressive out of state office, he gave up what was once a progressive supe seat to a much more conservative candidate.
The mayor’s allies succeeded in their gerrymandering of the supes districts, making D4 and D6 more conservative.
The Muni measure, Prop. L, is still alive, and may very well pass—a testament to a smart campaign strategy that focused on paramedics and street repairs, not on Breed.
And now that it’s likely Nancy Pelosi will retire, city politics are going to be upended again.
More tomorrow.
