View the San Francisco for Thursday, November 7, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers her concession speech for the 2024 presidential election Wednesday on the campus of Howard University, her alma mater, in Washington, D.C.Former President Donald Trump’s resounding Election Day victory over Vice President Kamala Harris places a sudden and sharp focus on the state and city officials who say their task is to combat Trump’s worst policies and impulses.
Officials such as City Attorney David Chiu, who cruised to reelection on Tuesday, could play a key role in legal confrontations between Trump and The City, like those seen during Trump’s first term in office. Chiu told The Examiner on Wednesday morning that he and the attorneys in his office will “use every legal tool at our disposal to defend our city.”San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu: “I certainly will be talking to city leaders as well as allies around the country on how we respond to what may come.” “We’re going to have to be prepared for anything and everything, and I certainly will be talking to city leaders as well as allies around the country on how we respond to what may come,” Chiu said. Harris formally conceded in a speech Wednesday afternoon at Howard University, her alma mater, in Washington, D.C. “Do not despair,” Harris told the crowd. “This is not a time to throw up our hands; this is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.”, who in 2019 managed the first of two successful impeachment efforts against Trump, was elected to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. He will likely become a “lightning rod” for the Trump administration, according to R. Michael Alzarez, co-director of the Linde Center for Science, Society, and Policy at Caltech. “California will continue to be a political foil for Trump and Republicans, and I’m anticipating that a lot of that political venom will focus on Adam Schiff, our state’s senator-elect,” Alzarez told The Examiner. “The animosity between the president-elect and California’s senator-elect will continue to develop and could have implications for future federal resources for the state.”during his first tenure in office, and new legal battles are likely to at least partially mirror those of the past.to block an order that would have withheld federal funding from sanctuary cities. San Francisco is among several cities that legally bar local law enforcement from coordinating with federal immigration officials to carry out deportations. In his 2024 campaign, Trump called for Congress to pass a law that would ban sanctuary-city policies similar to San Francisco’s. In addition to old battles that might resurface, new Republican efforts could shake Californians’ and San Franciscans’ faith in their ability to insulate themselves from federal restrictions on individual liberties. Trump and Republicans could push forward a federal abortion ban or look to walk back the legal right to gay marriage, Alzarez said.Of course, there are many who voted for Trump within California and San Francisco. Neither was unanimously blue, and Harris underperformed compared to President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in both, according to preliminary election results. Nancy Tung, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, called the election results a “wake-up call” for national party leaders. “You are not communicating with, you are not reaching, the people who should be your demographic,” Tung said, listing working people and Latinos as examples. Local Democrats had traveled to Nevada to offer assistance and phone-banked from their Market Street headquarters. “It doesn’t necessarily feel great to say ‘we did everything we could and then we still lost,’ but I think that the results are the results, and some of that is kind of baked in because of how people feel about the state of the economy,” Tung said. Those economic concerns were seen as a driving force behind Democrats’ loss of support not only in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, but also in reliably Democratic strongholds such as New York and California, according to political experts., to no avail. Instead, voters might have been more fixated on the price at the gas pump and size of their rent check. “The ‘save democracy’ and ‘democracy is on the line’ arguments are really elite-level conversations,” Alzarez said. “Once we get all of the data in, I think that we will see that this election was largely about pocketbook economic issues, the issues that presidential elections typically revolve around.” Conventional political wisdom is that high turnout helps Democrats. But in this case, it might have benefited Republicans, and political scientists are still working to assess whether that’s a phenomenon that’s here to stay or is Trump-specific. As for why San Francisco and California shifted rightward, it can partially be explained because in blue strongholds “there’s just more potential for Republicans to make gains,” said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor, during a post-election panel hosted by the MIT Election Lab on Wednesday. “In the battlegrounds, both sides have essentially dug in to the point where there’s just not a lot of movement one way or the other,” Burden said.At a purely emotional level, San Francisco party leaders said they were devastated Wednesday. Chiu is a longtime friend and ally of Harris. When she rose to the top of the presidential ticket this summer, he quickly arranged a video call through the AANHPI Men for Kamala Harris organization he leads to build support and raise money for her campaign. “Words can’t describe how devastated so many of us are this morning, and it’ll take some time to process and grieve over this moment,” Chiu said. Tung said local organizers were wide-eyed and understood that the contest was close, but remained “nauseously optimistic” heading into Election Day. Now, she’s looking ahead. “The work was never going to stop tomorrow,” Tung said. “The work continues and continues and continues because we are a very divided nation, and the values that we have in San Francisco are ones that should be universal across the country, and they’re not.” “We just need to regroup and have a game plan for 2026 and really lean on leaders who will be able to help disrupt the Trump administration in 2025,” she said.Kathy Fang’s stardom burns bright not just through her visionary cooking but in how she — with the enduring pride and love she has for her hometown, San Francisco — uses her platform to champion the causes that lie closest to her heart. The City’s zestful restaurateur continues to blaze new food trails while staying grounded to her Bay Area roots. Fang and her family showcase the very best of The City. Fang’s parents, Peter and Lily Fang, immigrated to San Francisco from Shanghai in 1980 with little money and barely knowing English. They started working as restaurant servers just to make ends meet. Eight years later, they founded— now an iconic Kearny Street restaurant — seeking to show Americans a different side of Chinese cooking by uniquely featuring cuisines from Shanghai. But the restaurant did not reach that level of prestige overnight. Fang’s parents worked every day, weekends and nights, taking off only Christmases and Thanksgivings, to build it into the San Francisco institution it is today. That work ethic was ingrained in Fang, who practically grew up in the restaurant, spending her formative years learning what it takes to thrive in the culinary world. Today, Fang owns not just House of Nanking, having inherited the restaurant from her parents, but has also opened an eatery of her own in SoMa, aptly named Fang. Similar to House of Nanking, Fang wanted it to feature a new version of Chinese American cooking, billing the restaurant as an upscale fusion establishment that specializes in modern twists on traditional northern and southern Chinese favorites. Fang has emerged as one of the City’s premier restaurateurs and celebrity chefs, appearing on Food Network TV programs such as Guy’s Grocery Games, Cutthroat Kitchen and the cooking competition show Chopped — And she continues to use that platform to enrich the lives of those in need while proudly wearing as a badge of honor her ties to San Francisco — the only place she’s lived except for her college years at USC. “People want to come to the City. The City is beautiful,” she told The Examiner earlier this year. “It’s highly concentrated with a lot of things that you can do. There’s art, there’s food, there’s culture — there’s so much.”— where Fang was born and raised — an especially important role following the pandemic, which decimated the historic neighborhood’s economy.after disasters and economic collapses. We will get there at some point. We just all have to have faith in our beautiful city and keep pushing.”, The Examiner has set out to recognize the people who define The City. As our city is being reborn, there have been a few remarkable contributions by people who refuse to succumb to the lazy narrative of doom loops and ,instead, in truly San Francisco style, choose to see the opportunity and will a new future into existence. This is one of the 12 San Franciscans you, our readers, selected whose innovative work and leadership have left an indelible mark on our city and inspire us all to be better San Franciscans.Alex Bastian, president and CEO of the Hotel Council of San Francisco President and CEO, earlier this year delivered signatures to the San Francisco Department of Elections for the measure that became Proposition M. Proposition M proponents declared victory Wednesday for a business-tax reform measure that was broadly supported by San Francisco political, business and labor leaders, with just more than 69% of votes counted in favor. “Prop M’s victory demonstrates what we can achieve when we come together for the good of our city—but this is just the beginning,” read a statement by the Revitalize SF campaign that supported the measure. “We are committed to working with the Mayor and Board of Supervisors to stabilize our tax system and strengthen support for our small businesses, ensuring San Francisco becomes a city of economic opportunity.” Prop. M needs 50% plus one vote to pass. It would broadly reorganize The City’s business taxes, including by cutting taxes for many small businesses, and it would stop certain scheduled business tax hikes from going into effect next year.who argued that it would bolster and help retain businesses as The City continues its economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. “Prop. M is truly a recipe for what we can do as San Franciscans going forward,” said Alex Bastian, a campaign spokesperson and president and CEO of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, praising the collaboration between various interest groups he said put the needs of The City first. “Everybody compromised and came up with a solution that is a step in the right direction around the issue of making San Francisco a bit more business friendly,” Bastian said. “And if we continue to do this as San Franciscans, if we continue to work together to put our city first, we can achieve great things.” Supporters raised a little more than $2 million for the election campaign, with large donations coming from multiple technology companies, including Airbnb, Google, Meta Platforms and Uber, as well as from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. There was no funded opposition. If Prop. M does pass, it will mean tax rates will not rise for businesses in January, which is when increases were set to go into effect. Those increases were approved by voters in 2020 but delayed until 2025 and 2026 by the Board of Supervisors in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. That will be a relief to Laurie Thomas, another Prop. M spokesperson who is the executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. Thomas’ company, Nice Ventures, runs two restaurants in Cow Hollow, and she said she dreaded the possibility of having to pay more to The City.She said she was “a little shocked” at the nearly 70% of counted votes in support as of early Wednesday morning, and she thoughtthat was attended by the five leading mayoral candidates and other prominent politicians a week before the election helped get the message out that Prop. M was important.Mayor London Breed speaks Oct. 29 at a campaign rally outside San Francisco City Hall in favor of Proposition M. Prop. M backers said they worried prospective voters had indicated they were confused by the complex measure, and that they had a tendency to want to vote no at the sight of the word “tax.” Advocates sought to convey that Prop. M would result in a rare cut to tax rates for thousands of businesses — along with increase for some others — and could lead to the elimination of $10 million in fees charged to many firms, particularly smaller companies. They said the measure would streamline The City’s complicated business-tax structure and provide relief to more than 2,700 small businesses, including nearly 90% of restaurants, by raising the exemption threshold for paying gross-receipts taxes from $2.25 million to $5 million.record-high local office-vacancy rates with the rise of remote work . Hotels and arts, entertainment and recreation businesses, among others, would receive tax cuts, while biotechnology, specified financial services, wholesale trade and utilities would be among the sectors seeing increases. Government officials have been highly motivated to try to prevent the loss of jobs and businesses in San Francisco given the shaky downtown economy and research highlighting the comparatively high taxes charged to companies by The City and the concentration of business taxes collected from a small number of companies.According to a City Controller’s analysis, the measure over the first three fiscal years would reduce tax revenues by about $40 million annually, with subsequent scheduled rate increases generating about $50 million of additional revenue in fiscal year 2028-29 and thereafter., the Muni funding measure, to leave Prop. M blank on ballot forms. Prop. L would add a tax of up to 4.5% on revenue generated in San Francisco by Uber, Lyft and Waymo. Prop. L backers said they felt compelled to make the recommendation because Prop. M contained a so-called poison-pill provision requiring Prop. L to not only get a majority but Prop. L had 18,371 fewer votes than Prop. M in the most recent count, which was released early Wednesday by San Francisco elections officials.Sorry, your subscription does not include this content.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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