Campaign Trail

Some surprising political analysis from the local election results

By
Tim Redmond
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This map shows that Jackie Fielder, who ran against state Sen. Scott Wiener, got support not just in the more progressive parts of town.

The voter turnout is up to 55 percent in San Francisco now, and will exceed 60 percent once the last 54,000 ballots are counted. That’s what today’s results show – and there are only a few changes from yesterday.

But a close analysis of winners and losers shows some fascinating political trends.

This map shows that Jackie Fielder, who ran against state Sen. Scott Wiener, got support not just in the more progressive parts of town.

The progressive slate is not only dominating the Democratic Party Central Committee voting; its looking possible that Mary Jung, the former party chair who is a lobbyist for the real-estate industry and has been on the panel for years, might not retain her seat.

Jung is in tenth place for ten seats, only 541 votes ahead of School Board member Faauuga Moliga, who has been picking up votes as the count continues.

The vacancy-tax measure is passing by an even-larger margin as the final votes come in, and the limits on office development is far enough ahead that it’s safe to say that one is over.

One judicial race remains close; the latest total puts former prosecutor Rani Singh 75 votes ahead of tenant lawyer Carolyn Gold – a gap of 0.03 percent. Gold was ahead in the last count, so the votes seem to be breaking for Singh – but it’s still way too tight to make any predictions.

So the progressive movement as a whole is a big winner – nearly every candidate and ballot measure that had strong progressive support did well. Some of this may be due to the Sanders-Warren bump – between the two presidential candidates, they got 55 percent of the local vote, so progressives showed up in significant numbers to support them. Biden narrowly edged Warren; the mayor’s candidate, Mike Bloomberg, got only 12 percent of the vote, and that from the richest areas in town.

Still, the DCCC results are interesting.

Joe Fitz at the Examiner points out that two of the leading moderate Dems – Sup. Ahsha Safai and former Sup. Vallie Brown – lost badly in a race that is typically defined by name recognition:

Supervisor Ahsha Safai and former supervisor Vallie Brown both ran for this tiny Democratic Party board, and both are getting their clocks cleaned by newcomers with little-to-no name recognition, and by future potential opponents as well.

Safai, in particular, netted incredibly low results compared to his rumored rival, former supervisor John Avalos, in the upcoming 2020 November election to defend his District 11 seat.

As of Wednesday’s newest Department of Elections count, Avalos had received 27,586 votes, while Safai earned just 10,200. If the vote pattern holds, Safai will lose this tiny little election where ten seats were up for grabs.

That’s absolutely bonkers for a sitting member of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco.

Let’s look a little deeper.

It’s no surprise that the top five candidates in Assembly District 17 are widely known politicians with deep roots: Jane Kim, David Campos, John Avalos, Hillary Ronen, and Matt Haney were well ahead of everyone else.

But next on the list are Frances Hsieh, Honey Mahogany, and Annabel Ibanez. Hsieh is a DCCC incumbent, but Mahogany and Ibanez are newcomers who have never held or run for local office before.

Then comes Shanell Williams, a City College trustee who was elected in a citywide race, and Peter Gallotta.

In 11thplace? Sup. Rafael Mandelman. Sup. Shamann Walton is even further down the list, in 20thplace, just two slots ahead of Brown, who had less than half the votes of Kim, Campos, Ronen and Haney.

On the west side of town, where ten DCCC members will be elected, Safai was in 14thplace.

The Social Justice Democrats, who will now dominate the party panel, had money and a solid slate, and since a lot of voters don’t know most of the candidates, the organized slate made a huge difference.

But if this race is a glance at the popularity of elected officials and their allies, it appears that Safai, at least, is potentially in political trouble.

The D11 votes show the incumbent supervisor got 2,536 votes and Avalos got 1,561. But that’s misleading since D11 is split between two Assembly districts, and most of the vote is in D19, where Safai ran.

This map shows the split in D11 between two Assembly districts.

There are 33 D11 precincts in AD 19, and 12 in AD 17. So if we adjust for that difference (Avalos was running in just 25 percent of the district), Avalos actually beat Safai in the district by more than 2-1. (Kind of geeky math, but multiply the Avalos vote by four and the Safai vote by 1.33, and you get Avalos 6,244 and Safai 3,062.)

That’s not a great sign for the incumbent.

For Brown, who is talking about running against Sup. Dean Preston for her old seat, the outcome can’t be encouraging either. Brown got 4,148 votes in her home district; Hillary Ronen, a big Preston supporter, got 5,518 votes in D5. David Campos, also a Preston supporter, got 5,861 votes in D5.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, of course, is well ahead, as we all expected; he’s got 56 percent of the vote. But that’s low for a powerful well-funded incumbent running against a person who has never held or run for office before.

And it’s interesting to look at where Jackie Fielder, his opponent, won votes. She clearly was popular in the most progressive districts – but also ran strongly in some parts of the west and southwest, suggesting that Wiener’s housing proposals (and that’s what this race was and will be about) are unpopular in more than just the liberal precincts.

The other message that came out of this election is that the endorsement of Mayor London Breed is not terribly helpful right now. Breed backed Bloomberg, who tanked, and that may have nothing to do with the mayor; he was going to tank in San Francisco anyway.

But the candidates aligned with the mayor overall did badly.

That’s not unusual – San Francisco mayors traditionally have limited coattails. But to the extent that this election was a plebiscite on how the current administration and the people who are part of its political agenda are seen by the voters, Breed is in trouble.

A little perspective on the Democratic primaries

By
Tim Redmond
-
Super Tuesday put Sanders and Joe Biden in a virtual tie.

Let’s put the Democratic presidential primaries in a little perspective.

Yes, the moderates and the party establishment, who clearly don’t want Bernie Sanders to be the nominee (and the party establishment clearly doesn’t want him to be president), have decided to coalesce around one candidate. But we all knew that was likely to happen.

Super Tuesday put Sanders and Joe Biden in a virtual tie.

Yes, that one candidate, Joe Biden, did well on Tuesday night.

But the idea that Biden “won” more states than Sanders is a bit misleading. This is not the Electoral College; all of the states allocate convention delegates based on rules that take into account who won which regions. If Biden got more votes in Texas, but Sanders won by an even bigger margin in California, then Sanders “won” those two states.

So what we have now is what a lot of us figured would happen after Super Tuesday: The race is down to two candidates, who have very different agendas. And at this point, as the final delegates are being allocated in California, they are pretty close to tied.

The future debates will likely feature just Biden and Sanders (Elizabeth Warren is “considering her options” and will probably drop out.) There’s a chance – if the moderators aren’t the kind of disaster we have seen in the past – to get beyond personalities and talk about what the actual issues are.

“What’s important is our records and our vision for the future,” Sanders said tonight on the Rachel Maddow show. “I hope very much we will have a straight-up debate about where this country will go.”

Sanders also said that he believes the person with the most delegates should get the nomination – even if that person just has a plurality, not a majority, and even if that person is Joe Biden. Which suggests that Sanders agrees the Democratic Party’s worst nightmare – a brokered convention that defies the will of the primary electorate – is a terrible idea.

The Hill says that the upcoming states favor Biden. Maybe – but the race at this point is so fluid that nobody really knows.

That’s where the race really is after Super Tuesday.

Wednesday results: Not much has changed

By
Tim Redmond
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Winning Social Justice Democrats celebrate a major progressive sweep.

I’ve been seeing a lot of social media comments about low turnout in the primary in San Francisco. That’s understandable – the early returns suggested that only about 30 percent of the voters went to the polls.

Winning Social Justice Democrats celebrate a major progressive sweep.

But this is San Francisco, and the vote-by-mail trend is not dominant, and a lot of people waited until the last minute to vote. So turnout is going to be much higher, well about 50 percent, when the Department of Elections finishes processing 112,000 ballots that were dropped off at polling places on Election Day, postmarked on Election Day, or were provisionals.

Every day at 4pm, we will get an update.

Today’s numbers pretty much confirm what we concluded last night: The progressives mostly ran the table in local races.

The two public defenders running for judge clearly have won; the 35,000 additional votes counted today changed nothing. Carolyn Gold, a career tenant lawyer, and Rani Singh, a former prosecutor, are now in a virtual tie, and the VBM ballots seem to be favoring Singh. So that one’s up in the air.

But the DCCC is done, and the progressives have won a dominant victory. Prop. E is clearly going to win. The VBM ballots have not diminished the lead of Prop. D, which looks to be winning more than the two-thirds it needs.

We will keep you posted every day.

Results show strong night for local progressives

By
Tim Redmond
-
Supporters of Jackie Fielder and Yes on D were getting a lot of car-horns honking when I passed them on the street.

It’s a good night for progressives in San Francisco.

With the final Election-Day results in, we can say that two public defenders and a tenant lawyer look to be headed for the Superior Court. The progressive slate is going to dominate the local Democratic Party. The most important land-use ballot measure in decades – a move to link new office development to affordable housing – is going to pass handily. A new tax on vacant storefronts is going to pass with more than two-thirds of the vote.

Supporters of Jackie Fielder and Yes on D were getting a lot of car-horns honking when I passed them on the street.

State Sen. Scott Wiener is not looking strong. While the other incumbent Legislators, Assemblymembers Phil Ting and David Chiu, are cruising to re-election essentially unopposed, Wiener is at 54 percent – a pretty low number for an incumbent whose opponents are an unknown Republican and an underfunded progressive challenger who has been in the race only a few months and has never held any elective office before.

Jackie Fielder has 32 percent of the vote – a sign of significant discontent with the incumbent, particularly over housing issues.

Under the state’s top-two primary law, Wiener will face Fielder again in the fall.

The Department of Elections still has to count a vast number of vote-by-mail ballots turned in on Election Day; we don’t have numbers yet, but it could be 100,000, and could take a week to get the final results. Cary Gold’s lead over Rani Singh for Superior Court Seat 21 is only 3,400 votes, and that could change.

But the data we have now looks very good for the local progressives.

Coverage brought to you by the 48hills Election Night team: Isabella Albaisa, Ali Aldrees, Juan Miguel Arcayena, Molly Bryant, Savannah Dewberry, Callie Fausey, Matthew Kerfoot, Gabriela Lanza, Isabel Maschmedt,Bridget McGreevy, Dillon McNeil, Kayla Quintero, Cathrine Roque, Clara Rosandich, Josh Safier, Anna Schmid, Alexander Segovia, and Melanie Velasquez.

More results: Public defenders winning for judge

By
Tim Redmond
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Michelle Tong celebrates her apparent victory in the judge's race.

More results – only 22,000 Election Day votes, but we can seem some trends.

All of the ballot measures are now passing; the tax and bond measures are getting more than the two-thirds votes needed. In fact, Prop. D is getting 74 percent of the Election Day vote, and Prop. E is getting 60 percent.

The Social Justice Democrats still are leading for 20 of the 24 seats on the DCCC.

Michelle Tong celebrates her apparent victory in the judge’s race.

Jackie Fielder is still well behind Scott Wiener in the state Senate race, but has picked up more votes; she’s now at 30 percent. She’s also won 41 percent of the Election-Day vote – meaning this race is likely to get closer.

Shahid Buttar is now ahead of the Republican in the Congressional race, but is still at less than 12 percent of the vote.

Two public defenders are in line to get elected judge.

Michelle Tong, is in the lead to win Superior Court Judge Seat 18. Tong’s opponent, Dorothy Chou Proudfoot, a former deputy district attorney in Marin County, has 37,686 ballots cast while Michelle Tong has 46,421; that puts Tong at 55 percent.

Maria Evangelista is far ahead of Pang Ly, leading 62 percent to 37 percent. Ly spent $240,000 of her own money on the race.

The race between Rani Singh and Carolyn Gold is a close one. Singh has a small lead of 42,170 votes while Gold has 41,697 votes in her favor.

At her campaign party, Tong talked about the importance of having public defenders on the bench:
“they do not want us there because they do not want to equalize the perspective that i bring to the bench”

Coverage brought to you by the 48hills Election Night team: Isabella Albaisa, Ali Aldrees, Juan Miguel Arcayena, Molly Bryant, Savannah Dewberry, Callie Fausey, Matthew Kerfoot, Gabriela Lanza, Isabel Maschmedt,Bridget McGreevy, Dillon McNeil, Kayla Quintero,

Last-minute campaign intelligence — and Election Night Parties

By
Tim Redmond
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Ron T., who describes himself as an Asian American Army veteran, worked at Bernie Sanders SF headquarters this weekend.

I haven’t seen a campaign mailer from Rep. Nancy Pelosi in at least 20 years. She doesn’t make a habit of coming back to town before elections, either; she’s usually too busy raising money for other Democrats all over the country.

But this week a slick three-fold flier arrived in my mailbox with a “Fighting for the People” headline. Inside it lists some of her accomplishments (not all of which I would have personally listed if I were her, including “Keeping Hunters Point Safe …. Nancy has secured more than $1 billion in funding to keep the Bayview-Hunters Point community safe.” That isn’t working out so well.)

This mailer arrived at my door

But the point isn’t so much what she says but the fact that she feels she needs to say it. Pelosi has thus far publicly ignored her Democratic primary opponent, Shahid Buttar, but if she’s actively campaigning, then there’s at least some indication that she thinks Buttar has some political traction.

Buttar’s goal is not necessarily to come in first in the primary March 3, but to run close enough that he beats any Republicans and will be able to face Pelosi again in November. With every single house seat up and Pelosi desperate to keep Democratic control, I’m sure she doesn’t want the distraction of having to fight to keep her own seat.

And everyone knows Buttar’s campaign is a longshot.

But he’s raised more than $500,000 from 12,000 donors, and he apparently has Pelosi at least a little worried.

I’ve explained what the race for Superior Court judge is all about. And of course, candidates for judge always complain about raising money (from people who might show up in their courtroom some day).

But Pang Ly, who is a Superior Court commissioner (a job that pays well, but not exceptionally well) has found another way to fund her campaign: She’s put up $241,000 of her own money.

That’s a huge amount for any local race.

Late disclosures also show that Ly received $1,000 from Andrew Zachs, who is one of the most notorious eviction lawyers in the city.

Dorothy Chou Proudfoot, another judicial candidate, put up $10,000 of her own money for her campaign. But nobody else in the race has the anywhere near the kind of cash that Ly does, and it’s mostly from her own bank account.

I’m all in favor of vote-by-mail, which increases turnout, and it’s often a good idea to vote the day your ballot arrives, so you don’t forget or lose it. But in the case of the presidential primaries, waiting seemed to be a better strategy:

Pete Buttigieg just dropped out of the race, two days before Super Tuesday. That means all those Californians who voted for him and mailed that ballot in early wasted their votes. There is no ranked-choice voting for president; now that he is out of the race, it’s unlikely Buttigieg will get any delegates at all from the 14 states, which means even on a second ballot he will have no influence.

If you’re a voter in a state that has its primary after Super Tuesday, holding off may still be critical — my the end of this week, the field may have narrowed a lot more.

With Biden winning South Carolina, a lot of insiders are saying that the other moderates will vanish soon to presented a united front against Bernie Sanders.

So what do they do if Biden tanks on Super Tuesday?

The March 3 primary is all about how the Democratic voters in 14 states, including California and Texas, will respond to Joe Biden’s win in South Carolina – and which candidates will still be in the race on March 4.

But there are key local issues on the ballot, too, and a lot of San Francisco activists will be celebrating victories (or accepting losses) somewhere other than the presidential campaign headquarters.

Not every campaign has given me information on Election Night parties, but I’m listing all the ones I have. I will update this as I get more info.

Presidential

The only candidate with a San Francisco office is Bernie Sanders, and his supporters will be working the phones then watching the results at 2235 Mission Street.

UPDATE: Correction, Elizabeth Warren is at 302 Valencia.

Ron T., who describes himself as an Asian American Army veteran, worked at Bernie Sanders SF headquarters this weekend: “I am tired of seeing my brothers and sisters who fought for this country homeless and broke and unable to get medical care.”

Congress

Shahid Buttar will be at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia.

State Senate

Jackie Fielder will be at Barrel Proof, 2331 Mission.

Scott Wiener will be at the Cadillac Bar, 44 9th Street.

Judges

Carolyn Gold’s party is at El Rio, 3150 Mission.

Dorothy Proudfoot and her supporters will be at the Cadillac Bar, 44 9th Street.

Michelle Tong will be following the results at Lava Lounge, 527 Bryant.

Rani Singh and supporters will gather at Hole in the Wall Pizza, 1825 Irving.

DCCC

I would guess the biggest party of the evening will probably be the Social Justice Democrats, the progressive slate of candidates for Democratic County Central Committee. They’ll be at Piano Fight, 144 Taylor.

Ballot measures

Yes on E, the measure to link new office buildings to affordable housing, will be at Lupulandia (I hear: free tacos), 2243 Mission (which is right near the Bernie Sanders HQ).

The Yes on D campaign, which is looking to enact a tax on vacant storefronts, will be at Tosca, 242 Columbus, along with the Yes on B campaign.

48hills will be doing live Election Night coverage — stick with this site for the latest results and analysis.

 

The Democratic convention delegates might matter — here’s how to apply

By
Tim Redmond
-

Let’s make a huge leap here – even before the California primary, and I will explain why in a moment – and look at what might happen in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in July.

It’s possible that one candidate (and right now, that looks like Bernie Sanders) will win enough delegates to be the nominee on the first ballot.

What if nobody has a majority — but Sanders and Warren together have enough delegates to choose the nominee?

But it’s entirely possible, given the primary schedule, the way delegates are awarded, and the number of viable candidates who have the money and organization to stay in the race for the next few months, that nobody will arrive at the convention with a 50-plus-one majority.

At that point, the delegates will be free to vote for anyone they want, including a candidate who wasn’t even in the primaries. At that point, the superdelegates become a major factor.

And at that point, if (for example) Sanders is pretty close, but not quite there, and Elizabeth Warren has enough delegates that between the two, they could chose the candidate – then the Sanders and Warren delegates will have to make some difficult political choices that will be critical to the future of the country and the planet.

There will be deal-making. It might not be pretty.

If the outcome is that the party splits badly, the convention is a train wreck, and the final candidate is someone who can’t inspire the voters, then Trump could be re-elected.

I’m saying this because, for the first time since the 1950s, it might really matter who the delegates are. In a brokered convention, you need people who have both political integrity and political sense.

We will vote March 3 for a candidate – but what we are really voting for is convention delegates pledged to that candidate. If nobody gets a majority on the first ballot, we are electing delegates who will be the main players in a massive political crisis.

Most people have no idea who those delegates are or how they get chosen.

Here’s the simple answer: Any registered Democrat who wants to be a convention delegate needs to fill out an application before March 3 (the same date as the primary). Then in April, the local party (this is done by Congressional district) will hold a caucus and select the winners who get to go to the convention.

In the past, it didn’t matter much, since the Democrats were just choosing people who would have the chance to go to a big party and vote as they were told.

This year it might matter a whole lot.

If you want to be considered as a delegate – for any candidate – you can fill out the form here. And if you care who the delegates are, you can go to the caucus April 19, with your supporters (who have to be registered Democrats) and try to get elected.

The state will send 271 district delegates to the convention. If one candidate already has the votes, then it’s just for fun. If not, it’s for all the marbles. And the deadline to file is the same day as the primary.

If the Democrats want to elect Trump, just have more debates like this one

By
Tim Redmond
-
At this point, all the Democrats are doing is trashing each other and helping Trump.

Much of the almost-unwatchable, atrociously badly moderated debate, was about trashing Bernie Sanders, and much of what some candidates said was that he would lose to Trump.

Those candidates just helped Trump, a lot.

At this point, all the Democrats are doing is trashing each other and helping Trump.

Elizabeth Warren said that  she and Bernie agree on a lot, but she would make a better president because her plans are more specific and she would be more effective at getting things done (which means working with Republicans and moderate Democrats). Fair point, fair argument.

But the rest of them? Saying Sanders is not the person to be president of the United States?

If – and at this point it appears at least possible if not likely – Sanders wins the nomination, those are clips that will be used by the Trump campaign in the fall. Over and over.

At this point, the debates don’t matter much. The primaries are going to be won on the ground.

All that the likes of Bloomberg, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg are doing is giving ammunition to the Trump campaign and making it harder for the party to come together in the fall.

Don’t these folks realize that they have a common purpose in defeating the incumbent, and that they have policy differences that are worth discussing, but that one of them will be the nominee and need the support of everyone else?

Or is this blind ambition – the presidential race isn’t about issues, it’s about ME – so overwhelming that nobody has any sense anymore?

Hillary Clinton lost in part because her main campaign issue was that she should be president. Didn’t work. Won’t work.

I have always believed that the true test of someone who is running for office is simple: Is it about the issues you care about and a movement you are a part of — or is it about you?

Bernie Sanders might be the nominee; that’s the reality. And the more the other candidates do to trash him, in a way that doesn’t even help them at the polls, the more they help Trump.

‘Families first’ public defender enters D7 race

By
Tim Redmond
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Vilaska Nguyen announced his D7 candidacy at St. Thomas More school, where he coaches girls' basketball.

A public defender who coaches girls’ basketball at a Catholic school and has lived in D7 for ten years announced today that’s he’s running for supervisor.

With about 100 supporters lined up in front of St. Thomas More church and school, Vilaska Nguyen said he wants to put “families first.”

Vilaska Nguyen announced his D7 candidacy at St. Thomas More school, where he coaches girls’ basketball.

He told the crowd that when he came up with that slogan, “a lot of people said it sounded conservative. But that’s because the far right has taken control of that language.”

Nguyen, who has two kids, said that “families need protecting” and that this city has become “hostile to families, elders, children.”

Nguyen, the son of Vietnamese immigrants, is running in one of the city’s most conservative districts with the support of some of the most progressive members of the Board of Supes, including Hillary Ronen, Dean Preston, and Matt Haney.

“Every day I hear from families in our community about how our city is letting them down,” Vilaska said at the kickoff. “We all hear it. The rents just keep rising, homelessness keeps getting worse, petty crime is on the rise, and now we’re hearing about corruption scandals in City Hall from the very people who have failed to keep the streets clean. It feels like there’s a lack of accountability, a lack of consequences, and worst of all a lack of common sense.”

Nguyen told the crowd that “the rumors about me are true: I am a public defender.” He said that “I am against crime,” and that the justice system works best when the prosecution, the defense, and the judiciary all do their jobs to work for justice.

Sup. Norman Yee will leave office due to term limits, and the D7 seat will be a crucial battleground: Yee has often worked with the progressives, who now have a super-majority on the board.

But allies of the mayor clearly see this as a district they can shift.

Among the candidates in the crowded race are Joel Engardio, a journalist who owns a home with his husband at Park Merced and who is active in an anti-crime group and with SF Moderates and has the past support of the Yimbys; and Myrna Melgar, executive director of the Jamestown Community Center who was president of the Planning Commission but is stepping down to run for office.

Melgar has a long record of community activism. She was appointed to the commission by London Breed when Breed was Board of Supes president, and she oversaw, and recently applauded, the choice of Rich Hillis as planning director.

I asked Nguyen what he thought about Mayor Breed’s new planning director, and he told me that the decision was “abhorrent. I don’t think it reflects the values of D7.”

He said that he would be independent of the mayor, and that the current direction of the Planning Department “is far from what our constituents need.”

He told me that if the mayor wants to allow private developers to build 50,000 units of new housing that’s mostly market-rate, it would be “unacceptable.”

But he said he’s not opposed to density in his neighborhood: if the new development is community-based affordable housing for “teachers, nurses, firefighters, the middle-class of San Francisco,” he would welcome it in D7.

And that will be one framing issue in the election.

Firefighters want no part of dark-money lawsuit

By
Tim Redmond
-

The San Francisco Firefighters Union is asking the political consultant who is suing to overturn the city’s dark money law to immediately stop referring to the Prop B bond campaign in his legal materials.

Firefighters Local 798, which is running the main campaign in favor of the earthquake preparedness bond, sent a cease and desist letter Feb. 11 to Todd David, who has his own individual Yes on B committee.

Union President Shon Buford writes that he was shocked “to learn that you decided to use the Proposition B name to file a lawsuit against the people of San Francisco in order to nullify Proposition F, a campaign advertising disclosure law that was passed in 2019 by 77 percent of San Francisco voters. … We are deeply concerned that any perceived association with your lawsuit could undermine support for Proposition B among voters.”

The letter leaves David further isolated in his effort to attack the new disclosure law, which was designed to prevent dark-money groups from hiding the funding of ballot measures and independent-expenditure campaigns.

The Firefighters Union has been involved in the past in some of these dark-money efforts. Money from Big Tech donors was funneled through union coffers to fund an IE campaign for Mayor London Breed in 2018.

But in this case, the union doesn’t want anything to do with the rules that would have limited the ability of tech lords to move money through a union PAC.

That, I suspect, is because Prop. B needs a two-thirds vote – and David, along with political consultants Maggie Muir and Nicole Derse, who signed declarations in the lawsuit, could hurt its chances.

I still don’t understand why David, who has been a downtown operative for years, decided to form his own Yes on B organization, when the firefighters already had a well-funded campaign.

Unless, of course, he was looking for a vehicle to sue over the disclosure law.

I reached out to David, and he told me he had no comment.

The letter is here:

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