Who let the dogs out?
Who, who, who, who, who?
Who let the dogs out?
—Baha Men
This is about what our local election may teach us about what we need to do to address a reality we have for too long ignored. And with Trump’s re-election we can no longer ignore the reality that faces us.
We need to make sense of the political moment we find ourselves in. It is, at present, especially in big cities across the nation, a confused amalgam of dis-information, de-organization, and confusion.
We must make sense of what happened this year, in the context of the last decade or so, because the Harris campaign collapse was not a result of the wrong decisions made this year but the result of major changes in the nations (and San Francisco’s) economy that shapes the relationship between people—changes which have been ignored not only by the Democratic AND Republican Party but by many left-liberal political organizations including local ones we may, ourselves, belong to.
Since the Great Recession of 2009 (and accelerated by the COVID pandemic) our politics, both nationally and locally, have simply ignored the reality of the changes underway in our economy and nation. Since the failure of the Obama Administration to understand that the financial crisis of 2009 was symptomatic of forces put in motion by the end of the cold war and far more profound than a “banking crisis,” our politics have been mis-directed.
Instead of being focused on the ever increasing share of the economy being controlled by fewer and fewer people and, enhanced by the end of the counter weight of a nuclear armed Soviet Union that required those in power to form a “united front” with the working class to keep them loyal, political action has been centered, instead, on issues that divide us, not unite us, in ways that materially benefit interests that have taken most of the economic gains made by technology and human creativity over the last 50 years.
The rise of an oligarchy in the US has been the result, and here, in the most economically unequal city in the most economically unequal nation in the world, a full-blown oligarchy has moved from merely making money to seeking domination of our local government.
We beat it, this time. What about the next time?
What Happened?
This November’s election showed how divided San Francisco has become, just like the USA.
In the most costly national and local election in history, negative messages dominated. The Harris and Trump campaigns spent hundreds of millions on negative ads. The same is true in San Francisco.
In the most expensive campaign for mayor in the city’s history, the three best-funded candidates spent millions attacking each other. Proposition D, the stalking horse for the establishment of an even more anti-democratic and elite empowering San Francisco, funded by its billionaire creator, spent millions on ads ridiculing citizen participation and legislative oversight in government, masking its true intent to empower an already stultifying bureaucracy and place it under a strengthened Mayor’s Office.
As all who view campaigns know, a well-funded negative ad campaign actually decreases voter participation, with many voters simply repelled by the half-truths and sneering.
Given the fact that both local and state Democratic parties are controlled by corporate wing of the Democratic Party, both were uninterested, indeed, opposed, to greater public participation in elections—resulting in no effort to increase voter registration and mount an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort at the precinct level, both hallmarks of the party when it was controlled by the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
For five years, we have seen massive spending by tech and real estate interests, first recalling the district attorney, then recalling the School Board, then ginning up a failed campaign to oust incumbent judges and funding a takeover of the local Democratic Party, and this year, backing both a massive change in the structure of government (Proposition D) and the election of the most right-wing candidate for mayor since John Barbagelata in 1975 (look him up, folks).
These obscenely rich interests have pitted one section of San Francisco against the other, claiming that our local government has been captured by one set of San Franciscans (the “progressives”) with the intent of making the life of other San Franciscans (called “moderates”) hostage to ill-conceived and dangerous policies— “woke” public safety and education policies, “non-profit” manipulation of health and human services, and a “doom loop” set of development policies that stifle private enterprise and prohibit the needed development of housing and small businesses.
In each case, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been pumped into dis-information campaigns and the development of new astroturf organizations aimed at “taking back” the city from the dark forces of progressivism.
These interests have spent more than $300 million in the last few years in various attempts to pit San Franciscan against San Franciscan—with little or nothing to show for it except a divided and confused electorate.
The result has been an endless series of failures and absurdities committed by the post re-call School Board that has brought the school district to its knees, the election of a conservative district attorney so underwhelming in moving the needle on crime that the favorite tech/real estate candidate for mayor ran on a platform of “cleaning up” crime as if the same interests never recalled the old DA, a failed attack on sitting judges resulting in the defeat of the tech bros hand-picked candidates, the election of the most ineffective Democratic County Committee in recent memory with little or no new voter registration (a whopping 1,200 new registrations between 2020 and 2024) resulting in the lowest turnout in a national election since 2012, and the massively failed attempt to create a less democratic more controllable city government structure favoring the few over the many.
In the process, the billionaires’ lavish spending and fevered political maneuvering dumped a sitting “moderate” mayor who had done all she was ever asked to do for them and split the “moderate” movement with Yimby and the tech bros backing opposing candidates for mayor, supervisor, and a key ballot measure (Prop. K).
First, the “big picture” of the election: who voted and where. By comparing registration and vote by each district between 2020 and 2024 two key facts emerge.
CHART 1
First, like most other deep-blue cities, San Francisco saw a decline in turnout: Some 37,000 fewer votes were cast in 2024 than in 2020. But that decline was not equally distributed across all districts or all races. Three districts—5, 6 and 10—made up some 72 percent of that decline.
The decline was foreshadowed by the drop in registered voters in each of these districts: 8,093 fewer registered voters in D5 between 2020 and 2024, 8,719 in D6 and 1,471 in D 10. In the four districts having supervisor elections in which registration increased between 2020 and 2024—D1, D3, D9 and D11—progressive candidates beat YIMBY candidates in three.
Second, this decline in turnout reverberated throughout the ballot, playing a key role in both the mayor and the Board of Supes races. While much press attention was centered on the 54,567 fewer votes Harris got than Biden won four years ago, very little attention was given to the decline in votes Breed got in these three districts, districts in which she placed first in previous elections.
She lost some 30,468 votes between her 2019 and 2024 elections, with some 8,000 of those votes in these districts. Not that Breed did all that much better in districts where registration increased. In D1, D4 and D7, where registration increased and where she came in first in 2019, she got some 8,086 fewer votes this year, dropping from first to fourth place in D1 and D4.
The vote for Mayor
Here is the order of finish for mayor in the 11 Supervisor Districts:
Only one of the top four candidates, Breed, had ever run citywide before. Here are her previous votes, by district:
Breed’s greatest loss to Daniel Lurie was in districts that she had proposed for dramatic increase in market-priced residential density—Districts 1 and 4—where she slipped from first place in 2019 to fourth place in 2024.
Her advocacy for closing the Great Highway did not help win back any votes for her in these districts as they both voted No on Prop K by 64 percent.
Coupled with the low turnout in D5, D6, and D10, where she had won in the past, her re-election was doomed.
The fact that she had also lost a substantial portion of tech money to Mark Farrell meant that she could not run her usual paid media style campaign.
Breed, having failed to build any real ongoing organization in her five years in office, had no way to overcome both her policy shortcomings in the west and low voter interest in her re-election the east. Repeated DCCC slate mailers linking her to Harris did little to help and may well have hurt her.
Voters were almost evenly divided between the top three candidates.
None of the three—Breed, Lurie, and Sup. Aaron Peskin—came close to reaching a majority of first-place votes, with Lurie getting 26 percent first place votes, Breed 24 percent, and Peskin 23 percent. Ranked choice voting simply masks that essential political reality and creates ” a majority” by adding voters second choices to the winner. The simple fact is that Lurie enters office still in search of a popular majority. After a $20 million campaign, 70 percent of San Franciscan voters choose someone else first.
But it was the collapse of the Mark Farrell campaign that was the most instructive about the political confusion of the tech/real estate axis. That group has been long integrated with the various strains of Yimbyism in San Francisco (support for state Senator Scott Wiener and strong support for an un-regulated market-priced housing development policy with no demolition or tenant displacement regulations, and until this election, support for Breed, the Yimby favorite).
That changed with parts of the axis dumping Breed and endorsing Farrell. Michael Moritz and his Together SF hirelings went all in for Farrell, claiming Breed had no real chance of winning. Moreover, it seems they came up with the genius plan to integrate Moritz’s brainchild, Proposition D, including fundraising, fully into the Farrell campaign.
Farrell would become the face of the Yes on D campaign and the campaign would be promoting Farrell for mayor. Sharing personnel, offices, fundraising, and campaign messaging was a perfect solution—except that funds donated to Prop D were used and co-ordinated with Farrell’s campaign, which led to the largest fine in the history of the SF Ethics Commission.
This was just one (though the most serious) of a series ethics problems revealed during the course of the campaign. There was Farrell’s ballot handbook description of himself as a “small business owner” while he had previously presented himself as a “venture capitalist” and the question of an unreported loan used to finance his family home.
Only the Yimbys stuck by Breed, endorsing her alone, while Moritz integrated the D and Farrell campaign and funded both. Like Grow SF, Together SF formally endorsed Farrell, Lurie, and Breed (“in any order”) a move that was objectively harmful to Breed’s chances of victory. She returned the favor by coming out against Prop. D .
Who was divided?
As Aaron Peskin correctly told a rally towards the end of the campaign, at the start of 2024 the claim was that progressives were divided, and the “moderates” were united—but by November it was the progressives that were united and the moderates that were at each other’s throats.
The ranked choice system underestimated the extraordinary success of Peskin’s far too brief campaign. Had he entered the race earlier, he might well have prevailed. He had never run citywide, was not either the stooge of billionaires nor himself a billionaire, and entered a race dominated by both stooges and billionaires.
He raised less money yet got more votes than Farrell. His was the most efficient campaign in the dollar-per-vote measurement, getting more votes per dollar spent than the other three top vote getters for mayor. He raised more than $1million (perhaps the most any progressive candidate has ever raised in San Francisco) faster than any other campaign. And his ability to marshal support, citywide, for workable solutions to key city problems, was shown in the wide scale success of the three ballot measures he put on the ballot.
The supervisor races
Lurie will not be alone at City Hall in needing to build a majority as he will be joined by a Board of Supervisors that will be looking for a new majority after the loss of three experienced and skilled legislators: Aaron Peskin , Hillary Ronen and Dean Preston It will include four first time members (to be five when D2 Supervisor Stefani assumes her office in the State Assembly in January giving Mayor Breed an appointment) and perhaps even six should the recall of Supervisor Engardio in D 4 is re-called over his support for closing the Great Highway when the closure was opposed by over 60 percent of the D4 voters..
There were three significant races for the Board of Supervisor decided in the November election. One was the unexpectedly large victory of Supervisor Chan in D1, and another was the narrow victory of Chyanne Chen in D11. In both cases, organized labor played a significant if not crucial role in winning these elections.
The third significant race was in D5 between Preston and the united forces of tech and big real estate backing three different candidates aimed at removing Preston from office. In the most creative ranked choice strategy so far used in San Francisco, three candidates, Scotty Jacobs (calling himself a “private sector businessperson”), Autumn Looijen a self styled “leader” of the School Board recall effort) and Bilal Mahmood (who, this cycle, identified himself as a “Climate Non-profit Director” whatever that may be) actually ran as an unannounced team with the aim of using ranked choice to beat a candidate none of the three could beat one on one.
The system was successfully gamed with the use of unprecedented spending on the part of the tech/real estate alliance. Jacobs and Looijen were able to cover the district in late mailers just before the election attacking Preston. Neither had a chance of winning, but both could attract anti- Preston second-place voters. Once the final campaign spending reports are made, it will be interesting to see where the money for the late mailers came from.
In a “winner take all” election, three moderate-to-conservative candidates running in a progressive district would simply split the anti- progressive vote allowing a progressive victory. Which is exactly what happened: Preston got more first place votes than any of the three.
But in a ranked-choice election, second choices can determine the outcome. If there are enough “moderate” candidates that share the same hostility to the progressive one of them has a chance to win based upon second votes of all three.
That’s what happened in D5. Mahmood got 2,883 second place votes to Preston’s 1,065. The fact that, after nearly 20 years of ranked choice voting for supervisor, 4,628 D5 voters failed to cast a second-place vote shows that the system has yet to fully embraced by voters. But it has by well-funded conservative forces that can bankroll multiple “moderate candidates” to simply overwhelm a single progressive candidate.
Two of the new supervisors (Jackie Fielder, D9 and Chyanne Chen, D11) are progressives (climate activist and labor organizer) and two (Danny Saunter, D 3 and Mahmood, D5) are Yimby/tech “moderates.”
But it is also true that the Preston campaign tried to run the same campaign he had run in the past built around the tenant vote. No other district had a greater fall off in votes cast between 2020 and 2024 than did D5 with over 12,000 fewer votes cast. The indication was there in looking at registration numbers: some 9,000 fewer registered voters in D5 in 2024 than were register in 2020. The overwhelming majority of the folks not registered and not voting appears to be tenants.
But there is even a more perplexing aspect of the Preston campaign: his failure to equal or exceed votes cast for Proposition 33, the state proposition for local option for rent control. Here is a table showing the three incumbent Supervisors -Chan in D1, Melgar in D7 and Preston in D5- vote and the yes vote for Prop 33.
Lurie will not be alone at City Hall in needing to build a majority as he will be joined by a Board of Supervisors that will be looking for a new majority after the loss of three experienced and skilled legislators: Peskin, Hillary Ronen, and Dean Preston.
It will include four first-time members (soon to be five when D2 as Supervisor Catherine Stefani has assumed her office in the State Assembly giving Breed an appointment) and perhaps even six should the recall of Supervisor Engardio succeed.
There were three significant races for the Board of Supervisor decided in the November election. One was the unexpectedly large victory of Supervisor Chan in D1, and another was the narrow victory of Chyanne Chen in D11. In both cases, organized labor played a significant if not crucial role in winning these elections.
The third significant race was in D5 between Preston and the united forces of tech and big real estate backing three different candidates aimed at removing Preston from office. In the most creative ranked choice strategy so far used in San Francisco, three candidates, Scotty Jacobs (calling himself a “private sector businessperson”), Autumn Looijen a self styled “leader” of the School Board recall effort) and Bilal Mahmood (who, this cycle, identified himself as a “Climate Non-profit Director” whatever that may be) actually ran as an unannounced team with the aim of using ranked choice to beat a candidate none of the three could beat one on one.
The system was successfully gamed with the use of unprecedented spending on the part of the tech/real estate alliance. Jacobs and Looijen were able to cover the district in late mailers just before the election attacking Preston. Neither had a chance of winning, but both could attract anti- Preston second-place voters. Once the final campaign spending reports are made, it will be interesting to see where the money for the late mailers came from.
In a “winner take all” election, three moderate-to-conservative candidates running in a progressive district would simply split the anti- progressive vote allowing a progressive victory. Which is exactly what happened: Preston got more first place votes than any of the three.
But in a ranked-choice election, second choices can determine the outcome. If there are enough “moderate” candidates that share the same hostility to the progressive one of them has a chance to win based upon second votes of all three.
That’s what happened in D5. Mahmood got 2,883 second place votes to Preston’s 1,065. The fact that, after nearly 20 years of ranked choice voting for supervisor, 4,628 D5 voters failed to cast a second-place vote shows that the system has yet to fully embraced by voters. But it has by well-funded conservative forces that can bankroll multiple “moderate candidates” to simply overwhelm a single progressive candidate.
Two of the new supervisors (Jackie Fielder, D9 and Chyanne Chen, D11) are progressives (climate activist and labor organizer) and two (Danny Saunter, D 3 and Mahmood, D5) are Yimby/tech “moderates.”
The board and the budget
The impressive re-election of Supervisor Chan in D1 and the re-election of D7’s Myrna Melgar means that the board will have the entire Budget and Finance and Budget and Appropriations Committee (minus Peskin, a big loss) return giving the board far more experience in dealing with the massive $800 million projected budget deficit than Mayor Lurie and his brand-new staff. The question will be if Lurie is smart enough to work with the more experienced supervisors or attempt to “solve” the deficit by himself.
The new board will elect a new president. Melgar and Rafael Mandelman from D8 have announced their desire for the office. Depending on how close the election is it might create new fissures on the board or, if a blowout for either candidate, a point of unity. There is also the possibility of a third candidate running in which case it would be almost certain to create fissures on the new board.
The dirty secret of San Francisco budget politics is that it is the departments that essentially shape the budget when they submit their initial budgets in February. It is the departments that have the real deep understanding of the budget and how they deal with a new mayor (and how the new amyor deals with them) will determine the outlines of the budget battle.
Lurie would be very smart to rely on Chan, who has chaired the Budget Committee, Mandelman and Walton, all of whom have been through the budget multiple times. None of the three endorsed Lurie for mayor and it is unclear if they have any working relationship with him.
Just who will devise a plan to address what will certainly be attacks on the city from the Trump Administration is totally up in the air. What is certain is that there will be a need for a plan no matter what “work around” is reached on the budget for the attack is certain to happen and it is equally certain that Governor Gavin Newsom will have no practical plan to help his hometown.
The votes on ballot measures
Without doubt the most sobering set of votes cast this November in San Francisco was on the state ballot measures. Here are the results, by supervisor district:
The first two, state Props. 5 and 32, were not surprising and followed the historic pattern of San Francisco votes on state measure: more progressive than the rest of the state. But it’s the final two measures—Prop 33 and Prop 36—that are the most eye-popping.
These votes show the impact of the tech/real estate campaign here in San Francisco. Their astroturf front groups—Grow SF, Together SF and Abundant SF—have for the last four years mounted a sustained attack on “crime” in San Francisco. With main line media total cooperation, the image was created that the city was locked in a “doom loop” of drug addiction and petty theft. While crime statistics showed little or no growth and an actual decline in some categories, the national media image of San Francisco as another “failed blue city” found wide scale supporter here in the City of St. Francis.
The Yimbys and their sometimes tech allies agreed on both measures, the one point of true unity between the otherwise fractured “moderate” forces. The fact that the only political agreement both could reach was on the two most reactionary measures on the ballot revealed their true conservatism undermining the “liberal” face both groups seek to project. But it was the wide scale rejection of rent control by San Franciscan voters and the alarming support of Prop. 36 even in the progressive heartland of the city, district 5 and 9 and the Asian, Black and Brown support shown in Districts 10 and 11 that was the most sobering, indicating the scale of political work that must be done by those on the left in San Francisco.
The local ballot measures told a far different story than did the vote on state measures. Voters behaved generally as would be expected of from a liberal city. All revenue measures passed (A, B, L and M), perennial city employee favorites—firefighters and nurses‑—got additional benefits ( H, I and N), and cops got turned down for even more befits (F). All in all, a rather usual and expected outcome and a refreshingly re-assertion of the city’s progressive character.
But the most significant take away from the vote on local ballot measures was the dominance showed by Peskin’s three ballot measures and the stunning defeat of the billionaires “coup by ballot,” Proposition D.
Two of the Peskin ballot measures, C and E, could be seen as an alternative to D as they cover issues, corruption, and the proper organization of the city’s citizen commissions, which were used by Moritz and his allies to mask D’s actual intentions, which was the creation of unchecked executive power in the Mayor’s Office. That Moritz saw it that way as well is made clear by the amount of money raised to oppose Proposition E: a cool $6 m, the second most spent on any ballot measure except for Moritz spending $8.4 million to pass D (according to Mission Local ). Nearly $14 million was spent by the billionaires to defeat E and pass D, more than was spent in the entire mayor’s races in 2018 and 2019 combined.
Prop. D was just not defeated, it was smashed in every district except District 2.
Proposition G created an $8 million set-aside in the budget for building and or subsidizing housing for seniors, families and persons with disabilities earning no more than $35,000 a year. The set aside could be reduced to $4 million if the city’s budget deficit exceeds $250 million, which it will this year. More about this below.
Two more measures of interest is the vote on Proposition K and L. Here is the district vote:
Prop. K closed the Great Highway to car traffic and Proposition L taxed ride share (Uber and Lyft) companies $25 million a year to pauy for Muni. Prop. L,while winning at the ballot, failed to go into effect with the passage of Prop M, an alternative business tax plan which would, by 2027, yield an additional $50 million a year in business taxes while lowering them on small businesses. Language in Prop M required any new tax on November ballot would have to get more yes votes than M. Both measures passed but M got 238,000 votes while L got 210,000, thus L did not go into effect. Once again the “moderates” split on L with the Yimbys urging a yes vote and Grow SF and Together SF (Moritz) going no.
Prop K shows what a broken city Lurie and the new board face. On a 55-45 vote, the city split along the historic East-West divide, with the districts most dependent on the Great Highway voting against the closure and districts in which residents rarely using the road voting to close it. Yimbys who strongly supported the measure shot themselves in the foot by undermining Yimby candidates in D 1 and D11, both of whom lost.
The SF Labor Council, which solidly backed both Chen in D11 and Chan in D1, opposed Prop. K as did voters in both districts while electing both of labor’s candidates (see the endorsement). But the harm is not yet at all done to the Yimbys around Prop. K. Their adopted D4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, is now facing a recall campaign in D4 over his support for Prop. K.
What Next?
First, let’s start with where we left off at this election. Two measures—Prop E and Prop 36‚ will take effect and require immediate attention.
Prop. E created a commission revision process that is on a fairly short timeline. The report is due to be submitted to the supes on February 1, 2026. The task force has the power to draft legislation to eliminate or change any non-Charter commission, which will automatically go into effect unless a supermajority of at least eight members of the Board of Supervisors object.
If the task force seeks to change or eliminate a Charter commission, the recommendation has to go to the voters to decide. Note the mayor plays no significant role in this process, as it was intended to counter the empowerment of the mayor at the heart of defeated Prop. D. Unfortunately no role is explicitly given the public either. There is no requirement that the task force hold any public meetings nor have a public hearing on its proposed recommendations. This process needs close attention, and it needs to start as soon as the task force is created.
State Proposition 36 imposed new penalties for drug use and shoplifting. One of its mandates is for involuntary drug treatment. Since drug treatment is mainly provided at the county level, and since Prop. 36 did not increase state funding for this new requirement, how is San Francisco, facing the largest budget deficit in its modern history, to pay for this new, unfunded, state mandate?
Prop. 36 passed in EVERY DISTRICT in San Francisco. Will the new board and mayor defund existing voluntary treatment programs to implement involuntary treatment? Will the police budget be used to fund these services? This issue must be addressed and needs the clear-sighted attention of community advocates.
Building a progressive governing coalition in San Francisco while under attack
With a new first-time mayor, a new first time board president and five new first time supervisors, the horrendous city deficit will dominate City Hall politics in the first half of 2025 and may establish battle lines between the Board and Lurie that last much longer.
How will Lurie address the budget shortfall and who will rise as the new consensus builder on the board to help him given the “moderate” split that revealed itself in the election.?
Neither Melgar nor Mandelman, two mainstream media picks for board president, are known for their skill at coalition building and a fight between the two will simply deepen the existing gulf between the moderates. Will Lurie have a durable majority on a board in which few if any even favored him as a second or third choice for Mayor?
He ran against City Hall as an “outsider” and now can only govern if he makes friends with at least six supervisors or attempts to govern through the veto in which case he need only four sure votes at the Board since it need eight votes to override a veto.
Does he have the skill to use the budget process as a way of building the relationships on the board that he needs? There are at least six Supervisors (Mandelman, Melgar, Shamann Walton, Jackie Fielder, Chyanne Chen, and Chan) that have sought and or recieved labor support with two members—Chan and Chen—who owe their recent election victories mainly to the assistance of labor, especially the city employee unions, that will not accept a Lurie budget that devastates public employees.
Labor clearly has the most potential influence on the board and the best chance to broker a working majority with Lurie if both wish to. Not one major labor organization supported Lurie, with most endorsing Peskin and some Farrell. But the big question for labor is what other than their member salaries and benefits will they push for. Will they join with the hundreds of health and human service nonprofits who, in fact, deliver key public services to the city’s poorest of the poor?
Lurie’s contradictory position of being a foundation funder of service non-profits as well as a campaign attacker of them as part of the “City Hall status quo” is about to meet the reality of San Francisco politics and budget: drug treatment, homeless health and housing services, childcare and senior services are mainly delivered not by city departments in which union members work, but by nonprofits These are exactly the areas Lurie claims he seeks to address but he can’t do that without the help of nonprofits.
Labor unions can help if they widen their scope. Lurie needs their help even if he doesn’t yet realize it. Labor can be part of the solution if they cast their net to include them or part of the problem if they dig in only protecting their members.
And what of community-based organizations and advocates? It is an odd fact of San Francisco politics that community-based organizations often have a better grasp on how the city works and what needs to happen than do elected officials. It is especially true with a new mayor and an essentially new Board of Supervisors.
The “muscle memory” of San Francisco politics resides in these community organizations, which have gone through many budgets, written legislation and have unique insights into their own communities. Yimbys and the billionaires pretend to be community based but simply lack the knowledge and insight of actual community members. Their goal is to move their agenda, not to solve actual real-world problems of real-world people who live in San Francisco now. Indeed, their agenda is to remove existing residents, not provide services to them.
This election shows how divided we have become. That division is multiplying as Yimbys split from the billionaires on ballot measures and candidates. But it also shows a way forward to a more united and effective set of progressive players if we have the skill and desire to create that entity.
Three issues have presented themselves in this election: the need to fight for Muni, which is threatened at a profound level; the need to defend and expand a local governmental structure that gives us the ability to insulate us from the ravages of a local set of billionaires aimed at creating a gentrified, right wing “cone zone” safe for only them and a federal government run by incompetents aimed at revenge and a state government given over to corporate special interests run by a governor more interested in his own political future than our future as a caring and prosperous city; and a finally a battle for a city budget that both meets our needs and begins to address the income inequality that will tear us all apart.
The last four years have been devastating for left progressives in that we have quite organizing. COVID and Zoom have so broken popular forces that we must start afresh. We must do the hard work of organizing, not writing “talking points,” “mobilizing,” and defining a “media strategy” that no media gives a fig about. In San Francisco, that means finding out ways to talk with folks that don’t talk like us, who don’t look like us, and don’t think the same way we do on every issue.
Progressive solutions to issues confronting us have the possibility of uniting a divided city. Bad Muni service effects everyone and dramatically reducing Muni service, which is on the table, is not only bad for riders but also the businesses at which they shop and work. Structuring the city budget so that it reduces income inequality by providing health care and housing assistance to poor and working people actually builds cross racial and cross gender alliances which respects the dignity of all. Supporting the need to organize and defend workers, especially those facing assaults because of their immigration status, brings union and community members together, fighting for the working class together.
Billionaires, Yimbys, and their front groups cannot unite people but, instead, practice a politic that divide people, pitting one against each other. The San Francisco Democratic Party, bought by the billionaires in March, didn’t even try to register new voters, instead, sought division and fostered negative campaigns seeking to polarize and divide a progressive electorate in order to win a majority on the Board of Supervisors and create an all-powerful Mayors Office. They failed, in part because they couldn’t even agree among themselves but also because they underestimated San Franciscans.
But that was this time. Money has a way of staying around and we can be sure that they will be back. The question is will we.
