View the San Francisco for Wednesday, October 23, 2024
, at least according to travel website TimeOut, but it’s also one of The City’s most hotly contested political battlegrounds this election cycle — and o, funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into a race for supervisor they see as pivotal to determining the ideological balance of the board beginning next year.
Supervisor Connie Chan speaking during the announcement of a new Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Performance Center at 65-67 Langton St. in San Francisco on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. When Supervisor Connie Chan won this seat in 2020, it was by the narrowest of margins: After six rounds of ranked-choice vote counting, only 125 votes separated the victorious Chan from the other top contender — Marjan Philhour, a moderate Democrat who ran to the right of her progressive opponent.in an election brawl that has showcased the ideological divide running through San Francisco politics. The moderate and progressive candidates are attempting to win over voters with widely differing visions of how to deal with the neighborhood’s challenges with public safety, street conditions and housing affordability., introducing many new voters thought to lean more conservative. Meanwhile, voter sentiment throughout The City has shifted as well in recent years, amid a post-pandemic malaise that has fueled a widespread sense of crisis. Now, moderate political organizers see a rare opportunity to defeat an incumbent and flip a district that has been led by progressive supervisors for decades.in District 4 over progressive incumbent Gordon Mar, the moderates say another win now in District 1 could bring them within reach of a long-sought majority on San Francisco’s top legislative body. “District 1 has the potential to be the largest pickup on the Board of Supervisors,” said Todd David, a political consultant for Abundant SF. The moderate-leaning group’s own political-action committee has chipped in more than $200,000 in support of Philhour’s election bid. Meanwhile, though, progressives are mounting a fierce defense, with a number of their PACs spending many hundreds of thousands of dollars as well. All told, independent committees and the candidates’ campaigns themselves have together spent more than $1.5 million on the race. It’s a sum comparable to the spending in the race four years ago, when campaign committees for two other candidates in the race — David Lee and Veronica Shinzato — combined to spend more than $400,000. This year, Jen Nossokoff and Jeremiah Boehner have combined to spend a little more than $25,000.Raising the stakes that much higher for the political showdown playing out in San Francisco’s northwestern suburbs, Chan and Philhour’s rival platforms couldn’t be more different, the candidates and their supporters say. “The Richmond district race has probably the clearest choice between the two candidates who are frontrunners,” said Philhour, a longtime Richmond resident who ran unsuccessfully in the district in 2016 as well. She is casting her opponent as just the latest out-of-touch progressive ideologue to lead the district astray. On at least one point, Chan can agree with Philhour: The difference “is just too obvious between me and my opponent,” said Chan, whose long career in local government has seen her work as an aide to Board President Aaron Peskin and former Supervisor Sophie Maxwell. Out on the campaign trail, Chan has been portraying Philhour — who formerly served as a senior advisor to Mayor London Breed — as a City Hall insider who will cozy up to corporate interests once in office. Marjan Philhour, candidate for Supervisor District 1 at Simple Pleasures Cafe in San Francisco on Monday, November 6, 2023. Responding to such criticism, Philhour has noted that she worked for Breed for less than two years, only a small portion of her long career in government and politics, which has spanned multiple roles. Even with the flood of spending, the race could hinge in the end on textbook campaign fundamentals, said Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “You’ve got two candidates who are well known,” he said. “Is it going to be a referendum on the incumbent? Very possible. Do voters want change?”Sizing up the political terrain With six out of the 11 total board seats up for grabs this cycle, moderates say they must win two contests in November to secure a firm majority. The high-stakes scramble for votes has pushed up campaign spending in supervisor races throughout The City, but nearly all have been eclipsed by District 1., where the progressive incumbent, Supervisor Dean Preston, is defending his seat against moderate challenger Bilal Mahmood, among others. The fight to lead the district, which includes the Tenderloin, has drawn in more than $1.5 million in campaign donations.) In the race between Chan and Philhour, spending has been dominated by expenditures from political-action committees, leading to accusations from both sides that special-interest political groups are attempting to buy the election.School teachers protest short staffing & low wages at SFUSD’s main office at 555 Franklin St. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. Moderate political groups have thrown their support behind Philhour, but the biggest spender of all, according to publicly available data, is a labor-backed PAC supporting Chan — “Fix Our City SF,” which is made up of a number of progressive-leaning unions. That one PAC alone has spent more than $600,000 in the race as of press time to boost Chan and attack her opponent. With the balance of power on the board of supervisors on the line, “We definitely think that a lot’s at stake,” said Ramses Teon-Nichols, the vice president of politics for SEIU 1021, one of the unions behind the PAC. He also cited Chan’s broad support for progressive priorities, including affordable housing and other programs assisting low-income residents.Philhour said she sees the big spending as an attempt to circle the progressive wagons around Chan. “I think it shows a fear and apprehension of change, when that is what we so desperately need” in the district, she said.Philhour is pitching herself as a middle-of-the-road public servant who will offer a common-sense antidote to what she describes as two decades of “extreme ideological leadership” in District 1. While city crime data suggests that the Richmond remains one of San Francisco’s safest neighborhoods, the district saw a rise in certain categories of crime — as did the rest of The City — in the years following the outbreak of COVID-19. Notably, that increase included burglaries and robberies, which have terrorized local shops in the neighborhood.Many residents have complained that police presence in the neighborhood has become too sparse amid a deep officer-staffing shortage at the San Francisco Police Department.Philhour, who has the endorsement of the Police Officers Association, points to the incumbent’s previous comments questioning the public-safety benefit of increasing funding for the police department. “We need leaders that are going to understand the importance of public safety and how that impacts every aspect of our lives,” Philhour said. Chan points out that she has been among those calling for more police officers in her district. In addition, Chan has said, as the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, she has signed off on every request to increase the police budget. Over the summer, The City passed an annual spending plan that grew the department’s budget to a record $821 million.Independent committees and the candidates’ campaigns have combined to spend more than $1.5 million on the District 1 supervisorial race as several hopefuls — including frontrunners Connie Chan and Marjan Philhour — vie to represent the Richmond district. The candidates have also sparred on housing. Chan has voiced skepticism about the ongoing effort to redraw The City’s zoning map in order to allow tens of thousands of new homes to be built in the coming years as mandated by state housing law. It’s an effort that Chan warns will displace “tenants and small businesses in the interest that is driven by billionaires and especially realtors.” Chan’s own housing platform centers on adding additional protections for renters, as well as her track record supporting new publicly-subsidized affordable-housing developments, including the recently completed 98-unit apartment complex in the Richmond at 4200 Geary Blvd., which is set aside for low-income seniors. But Philhour, who favors policies that boost market-rate housing development, says that building affordable housing alone will never bring in the quantity of new homes that the district desperately needs to solve its affordability crisis.Chan also pushed back against the claim that her leadership has been driven by ideology. Over her time in office, she contends, her focus has been on finding practical solutions to the challenges faced by residents. She said those solutions have run the gamut from the sweeping renter protections she supported during the pandemic to bread-and-butter constituent support such as assistance to small businesses recovering from vandalism or help applying for grants.The flood of campaign dollars in District 1 has fueled a barrage of attack ads echoing the themes of the campaigns. “Connie Chan will keep us stuck” reads the yellow block text dashed across one mailer decrying the incumbent’s record on public safety, including her opposition to the 2022 recall of former District Attorney Chesa Boudin. On the other side of the race, a digital ad targeting Philhour reads “Don’t let them bulldoze our neighborhoods!” It includes an animated cartoon depicting Philhour bulldozing a row of Victorian town houses to make way for glass-walled high-rises, all while stacks of cash from “developer- and billionaire-backed groups” pile up in the background. As the election money has sloshed about, complaints of campaign-finance violations have also been lobbed between the opposing political camps. The accusations have been met with vehement denials of wrongdoing and also fierce recriminations. So far, San Francisco ethics officials have released no public information about the complaints and levied no fines against the campaigns, according to a review of recent ethics penalties. Amid the negative electioneering, the District 1 campaign has grown heated at times. During Philhour’s closing remarks at a candidate forum last month, she told the crowd that without a major change, the district will be stuck with “what’s been happening in the neighborhood for 20 years.” She went on to compare the district and its crime challenges to a house with a leaky roof that is about to cave in and ruin everything beneath it.“Well, there are people who offer nothing but to be more than willing to gaslight us with divisive messages and misinformation,” she said.richly funded Proposition DThe sweeping — and, in parts, complex — measure, a focal point in The City’s ongoing battle between moderate reform forces and progressives, had attracted $8.7 million in campaign support as of Monday, more than all other measures on the November ballot combined. Opponents had raised only $39,014. Driving the Yes on Prop. D campaign is TogetherSF Action, which promises its initiative will improve city government by roughly halving the number of city commissions — including boards, advisory councils, committees and task forces — and preempting attempts to regrow the commission system down the road. The measure would also increase mayoral powerKanishka Cheng: “We knew we had to set some sort of cap to force actions to be taken and to force some actual streamlining to happen.” “I think that we know, based on how this city runs itself and how ballot measures and policies get set, that there is no restraint that our elected officials can hold themselves to, and so we knew we had to set some sort of cap to force actions to be taken and to force some actual streamlining to happen,” said Kanishka Cheng, CEO of TogetherSF Action, which is backed by billionaire tech venture capitalist Michael Moritz. Critics, led by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, counter that while The City might need to trim its nearly 130 commissions, Prop. D’s supporters have not justified or adequately explained their rationale either for a 65-commission cap or for Peskin has introduced Prop. E, a competing measure that would create a task force to recommend commission-system changes, but which has no cap. TogetherSF Action calls Prop. E a “decoy” measure that would not necessarily lead to change and would inappropriately give unelected task force members the power to introduce ordinances concerning some commissions that would take effect unless rejected by a supermajority of eight supervisors. TogetherSF Action argues Prop. D’s hard cap will compel streamlining, thus strengthening a bloated commission system and preventing out-of-control commission growth in the future. Prop. D advocates are quick to point out that the measure does not by itself eliminate any bodies, instead providing for a “public process” in which a five-member task force will recommend to the mayor and Board of Supervisors which commissions should be kept, dissolved or restructured so as to meet the limit.because the moment Prop. D is approved, it will start a process in which The City would have to decide which commissions should be eliminated to reach the limit. “I don’t understand why the arbitrary number of 65 was decided upon,” said Aaron Leifer, chair of the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency Citizens Advisory Council, who also questioned the reasoning for “I can understand the need for efficiency in government, but to me, this seems to be stifling the opportunity for the public to be heard,” said Leifer, who works in marketing at AT&T and has been on the advisory council since 2018. Any commissions with decision-making authority that are kept would also become advisory only, with decision-making responsibilities transferred to department heads. Authority to decide appeals and other proceedings would shift to hearing officers. If officials fail to hit the 65-commission cap by May 2026, all bodies not provided for in the City Charter or required in order to comply with state or federal law would be dissolved, though some could be added back within the limit.Police Chief Bill Scott during a Town Hall meeting hosted by St. Anthony Foundation inside St. Boniface auditorium at 175 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. The measure would also give the mayor more control and the Board of Supervisors less over commission appointments; provide the mayor sole authority to appoint and remove most department heads; and transfer authority for setting rules governing police-officer conduct to the police chief from the Police Commission, which would no longer be able to fire the chief independently of the mayor.Prop. D campaign materials do not identify which commissions would be retained or cut from the charter, nor do materials posted on The City elections website from the City Controller or The City’s ballot-simplification committee. TogetherSF Action gave The Examiner a list of 25 commissions it said would be removed and another identifying 22 that would be kept in the City Charter, which is essentially The City’s constitution. The group also provided a list of 26 commissions it estimated would be kept to meet state or federal requirements. With Prop. D’s cap of 65 total commissions, that would leave only about 17 slots available for the other 82 commissions that would be on the chopping block. The limit, Cheng said, came out of consultations with the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, a think tank at Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles County. Other stakeholders consulted included neighborhood, labor and business groups, and the organization’s own network of supporters. Institute Director Ken Miller said his organization came to the conclusion that a cap of 65 would promote streamlining and accountability for city departments and elected officials, and not “the sort of bloated commission system” that now exists. “We do think that a lot of the things that are currently done by multiple commissions can be consolidated into a smaller number,” Miller said. Much of the Rose Institute’s efforts went into determining which commissions were needed to meet state and federal requirements and which ones cities typically need to have, said Miller, a professor of government. The institute found San Francisco had significantly more commissions than other jurisdictions in number and on a per-capita basis, he said. Amy Cleary, a spokesperson for the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which endorsed Prop. D, said members of her group felt TogetherSF Action did “a very good job presenting that they did not come up with that number arbitrarily” when making a presentation in February. Cleary’s group is one of various business organizations supporting Prop. D, including the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. The San Francisco Democratic Party also backs the measure. The San Francisco civil grand jury suggested a much less drastic remedy. It spent most of a year studying The City’s commissions — it said 115 were active, and more than half were advisory — and in June issued a report finding San Francisco had more commissions than areas with similarly structured governments and should get rid of 15 of them. The 1,200 systemwide seats were “burdensome” to fill, it said. The grand jury selected commissions for removal that it deemed redundant or otherwise unnecessary, considering factors like numerous canceled meetings, little public comment or engagement, and a lack of achievements. One, the Sanitation and Streets Commission, was created to oversee a department that no longer exists. Another of the grand jury’s chief recommendations called for establishing a permanent commission to evaluate, optimize and streamline the commission system. But it also said that the charter commissions — most of which have decision-making powers — were in general “professionally run,” “adequately” performing their oversight roles and providing value exceeding costs. John Monson, a co-chair of the report’s investigating committee, said in an interview that The City did have a disproportionate number of commissions, but he personally thought Prop. D’s “artificial limit” of 65 was not a good idea. “San Francisco would probably be worse off by having only 65,” said Monson, a retiree who spends much of his time volunteering at a Bernal Heights public school. “It’s not like there’s some magic, perfect number of commissions that are going to serve San Francisco the best,” he said. “Commissions come and go. They should come and go.” People drop off their ballots at a drop box outside City Hall in San Francisco, Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Prop. D supporters cite San Francisco’s five commissions focused on homelessness as evidence of bloat. The grand jury’s report noted that the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing had an oversight commission and four advisory boards. It recommended getting rid of one, the Shelter Grievance Advisory Committee, which advises on policies and procedures regarding denial of access to city-funded shelters and reviews complaints about arbitrators. Prop. D would remove the Homelessness Oversight Commission, which voters approved in 2022 to oversee the massive Department of Homelessness and Supportive Services. Asked why Prop. D would cut some specific commissions from the city charter, Cheng said that they did not match the group’s criteria and were “worthy of a discussion.” The “Committee to Fix San Francisco Government” website supporting Prop. D says commissions were evaluated for whether they operated similar to businesses or other major departments; performed ethical, financial or good-government oversight; were redundant or could be merged; remained active; or were federally or state-required. Nicole Neditch is governance and economic policy director at the urban affairs think tank SPUR, which recently opposed Prop. D. She provided a list of criteria she said TogetherSF Action emailed in seeking an endorsement that included the first two of those, along with others that prioritized commissions related to city employees’ retirement/benefit systems; having a fundraising function to finance city art institutions; handling city-employee discipline cases and appeals; and hearing appeals on permits, particularly related to housing.“We think that there should be a public process that is actually going through and evaluating all of the commissions, and that didn’t happen in this case,” Neditch said. SPUR officials wanted to understand costs and impacts of shifting workloads to city departments and equity implications of eliminating commissions, she said.SPUR board member Ed Harrington, the former City Controller, is helping lead the campaign against D and for E, but he did not participate in SPUR’s committee that evaluated the propositions., acknowledged that for herself personally the limit of 65 commissions was to some degree “pulling a number out of hat,” and was not an aspect of the measure that she loved.who signed a paid ballot statement as an individual supporting Prop. D, said the number seemed reasonable, and having a clear target would facilitate needed action. “I feel like that can be difficult, but at the same time, if we don’t, then we just kind of wiggle our way out and nothing really changes,” Natoli said. Natoli, who is the San Francisco organizing director for the housing-advocacy group YIMBY Action, said The City’s high number of commissions compared with other cities suggests they are overused tools without regard to effectiveness. “No one can provide an explanation for why we need twice as many commissions as many other cities, or what function they have, or how our city improves or is made better by this,” she said. “Ultimately, we have a system where I think most people are going to tell you that everything they’re doing is really important, and that may or may not be true.”The seven-member Health Commission would be lined out of the charter. It oversees The City’s Department of Public Health’s more than $3 billion budget, fulfills state and federal mandates for oversight of Zuckerberg San Francisco General and Laguna Honda hospitals, oversees emergency medical services, reviews private-employer insurance plans, gets charity-care reports from private hospitals and holds hearings and makes findings that can be influential when private hospitals plan to close facilities. Laurie Green, president of the Health Commission, said she did not understand creating a situation in which the commission might cease to exist or survive as a purely advisory body. Either result, according to the Health Commission’s staff, would necessitate a new regulatory entity having to take on licensure, credentialing, and certification requirements at the two city-owned hospitals“I think most people don’t realize the degree in which the commission really does delve into all the functions of the two institutions,” said Green, who is the co-founder of Pacific Women’s Obstetrics & Gynecology Medical Group.From left: Mark Farrell, Ahsha Safai, Daniel Lurie, Mayor London Breed and Aaron Peskin share the stage during the mayoral debate at UC Law San Francisco in June. If there’s one thing candidates for San Francisco mayor can agree on, it’s that it’s anybody’s race. A raft of new voter polls released Monday show an inscrutably close race between incumbent Mayor London Breed, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, former interim Mayor Mark Farrell, and Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and antipoverty nonprofit founder. Here are a few themes that have emerged across polls conducted in recent weeks, which include a survey commissioned by Peskin’s campaign, another conducted byFrom left: Ahsha Safai, Mark Farrell, Daniel Lurie, Mayor London Breed and Aaron Peskin take part in a mayoral debate at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco on June 12.Voters’ general dissatisfaction with the field of candidates has emerged as a theme that each candidate aims to use to their advantage, hoping to pick up second-choice and third-choice votes from voters skeptical of other options. A poll conducted Oct. 18-19 by Peskin’s campaign and released to The Examiner on Sunday found that a plurality of voters have an unfavorable opinion of each of the four leading candidates in the race — except Lurie.The Chronicle poll, which asked respondents to assess favorability on a scale of zero to 10, found Lurie is viewed most favorably among the candidates, scoring an average rating of 5.4. That’s a slight dip from the publication’s August poll, but it remains the highest among leading candidates. The same poll shows that Farrell’s favorability has plummeted in recent weeks, from an average of 5.5 to 4.5, just below Breed, who saw a slight bump from 4.6 to 4.7. Although his performance in locking down No. 1 has improved in recent weeks, Peskin’s own poll also shows that he suffers from poor favorability ratings, with 41% of respondents saying they view him unfavorably and 34% viewing him favorably. Despite being the first prominent figure to announce a challenge to Breed last year, Supervisor Ahsha Safai has not received more than 10% in any of the polls and does appear to be in contention.As mentioned, Peskin is increasing his share of No. 1 votes. His campaign’s latest poll, conducted by the firm Public Policy Polling , showed him tied with Lurie atop the field, earning 25% of first-choice votes.in the race, who had largely been written off by his moderate opponents for much of the campaign thus far. “ are tuning in and have become increasingly interested in the only candidate who is not supported by the billionaires who are pushing this city in the wrong direction, and the poll numbers reflect the enthusiasm we are seeing in the streets,” Peskin told The Examiner.In a similar poll conducted three weeks prior, Peskin earned just 7% of No. 2 votes. But even as more voters are deciding their second choices as Election Day nears, he continues to earn just 7% of No. 2 votes in the latest poll. His approval rates also remain stubbornly low. Jim Stearns, a longtime political consultant advising Peskin’s campaign, said Peskin had gained eight points in the last weeks, which is “amazing.” The campaign sees its mission as placing in the top two first-choice vote-getters — which it accomplished in its latest poll — then competing for second and third-choice votes.Aaron Peskin and Mark Farrell participate in the mayoral debate at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024.torrent of attack ads from Lurie and Lurie’s supporters. In addition to the approval ratings dropping in the Chronicle survey, an increasing share of respondents in the Public Policy Polling survey are rating Farrell poorly. But despite a clear drop in his standing since this summer, polls show him being firmly in the mix. In a statement, Farrell called the race a “dead heat,” and pointed out that Breed is unpopular with voters and Lurie lacks experience in elected office. “Our campaign continues to convert voters into committed No. 1 votes at a high rate, and the energy on the ground has been overwhelmingly in our favor,” Farrell said.Regardless of where he lands in first-choice votes, Lurie continues to prove particularly adept at picking up No. 2 and No. 3 votes in polls. Given how close the margins are in first-choice votes, those second- and third-choice votes could prove the deciding factor in the race. On the flip side, campaigns generally view second- and third-choice votes as malleable. A person might be leaning toward ranking a candidate second or third now, but change their mind by the time they fill out their ballot.Lurie has invested $8 million into his campaign, which thus far has spent more than $4 million more than any other campaign, according to the latest publicly available campaign-finance filings. A well-funded independent expenditure committee supporting his campaign has also poured $6.3 million behind him, well more than any other mayoral campaign has received. Despite those ample resources, Lurie continues to pitch himself to voters as an outsider taking on the entrenched machinery of city politics. At a campaign event in the Outer Sunset on Sunday, he warned voters the next few weeks could get thorny. “You are going to get more attack ads saying I’m like one of the worst human beings in the history of the world over the next 16 days,” Lurie told the crowd at Pitt’s Pub. “It is amazing what happens when the City Hall machine gets scared.”Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. 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