The final vote count is yet to be released, but the vibe shift is in: San Francisco appears to have mostly chosen moderate candidates and policies in the March primary election. Voters approved propositions to expand SFPD surveillance technology, drug test recipients of welfare, and encourage SFUSD to put algebra back on the middle school math curriculum. Elsewhere, though we’re still waiting for final reporting to come in, they seem to have heavily favored moderate candidates on the Democratic County Central Committee and Republican County Central Committee slates, both of which will determine crucial official party endorsements for mayor and open supervisor seats in the upcoming November general election. (If you think it’s strange that we’re three days post-election and over 90,000 ballots remain to be counted — it is; our guess is the delay has a lot to do with the post-covid surge in mail-in ballots, though it also reflects dysfunction at the city's Department of Elections.)

The results weren’t an across-the-board win for moderates — crucially, the two incumbent Superior Court judges notorious for handing down light sentences for fentanyl dealing and theft both appear to have won re-election — but this hasn't stopped the press from despairing of San Francisco’s purported “rightward shift.” In the Chronicle, Joe Garofoli and Aldo Toledo declared “San Francisco can no longer be called a progressive city,” in the Standard, Josh Koehn wondered whether the results “rais[e] the question of whether San Francisco’s vaunted reputation as a liberal bastion…is being hollowed out like an Ozempic patient,” and in 48 Hills, Tim Redmond declared simply: “the attack on poor people and pro-police agenda is working.”

On X, reaction from some progressives struck an even more hysterical tone:

When we spoke to moderates about the results, they struck a tone of cautious optimism. Steven Buss, who co-founded GrowSF, one of the most prominent moderate PACs in the city, said “As with the school board recall, the Boudin recall, and the elections of Joel Engardio and Matt Dorsey, [voters] across the ideological spectrum reject status quo machine politics and demand a new direction for the city.” Discussing the preliminary victory of the moderate slate for DCCC, candidate Michael Lai called the election a “sea change” and “the first step to winning the Board of Supervisors this fall.” Finally, Y Combinator’s Garry Tan, a leading moderate voice and apparent archenemy of the far-left, was decisive, telling us: “The doom loop will end and the boom loop begins as long as we can carry the momentum into the supervisor races in November. Job is not done.”

Indeed. Now — on to the recap.

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PRELIMINARY RESULTS (as of March 8, around 9am PT):

DCCC/RCCC Races: BROADLY MODERATE

Analysis: Preliminary results show voters overwhelmingly sided with candidates from the moderate "SF Democrats for Change" slate, which campaigned heavily on building housing, expanding the range of surveillance technology available to police officers, and cracking down on drug crimes. A few progressives may manage to slip through here and there — among those doing well in initial returns, you may recognize former D11 Supervisor John Avalos, who notoriously failed to maintain complete campaign finance records back in 2011 and frequently advocated for protecting people’s ‘right’ to pitch tents on city sidewalks while on the Board— but moderates will almost certainly secure majority control of the committee. Expect that their official Democratic Party endorsements of candidates in the November election will push lots of undecided voters further toward the center.

Similar stuff on the RCCC side, where voters have so far favored moderate, right-of-center candidates over their more extreme counterparts — another sign of a broad, centerward shift.

Prop A, “Affordable Housing Bonds,” authorizes the city to borrow $300 million to finance affordable housing projects — PASSED

Analysis: While the approval of Prop A — the third $300 million-plus affordable housing loan SF has green-lit in the past decade — shows plenty of voters still have an appetite for the ‘throw-public-money-at-it’ approach to solving the city’s housing crisis, we should note this measure seems to have passed by a narrower margin than its near-identical counterpart did back in the November 2019 election. (Though this could change as the final numbers roll in.)

Prop B, “Police Officer Staffing Levels Conditioned on Amending Existing or Future Tax Funding,” conditions additional police staff hiring on increased taxes — FAILED

Analysis: Prop B, the infamous “cop tax,” was liked by almost no one — not even, it seemed, by Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who introduced the “poison pill” amendment conditioning the original measure’s establishment of minimum police staffing requirements on increased tax revenue. After news broke of B’s loss, Safaí blandly remarked to the Chronicle that it at least “shifted the conversation around police staffing,” which…I guess it did, though only as a rebuke to Safaí (and, by extension, his fledgling candidacy for mayor).

Prop C, “Real Estate Transfer Tax Exemption and Office Space Allocation,” waives the tax for converting commercial real estate to residential use — PASSED

Analysis: Prop C, which waives the transfer tax on office-to-housing zoning conversions, is admittedly a bit of a weird measure. It contains sensible sounding elements (waiving taxes, repurposing empty office space), but is based on the bizarre premise that there will be lots of interest in converting unused office space into apartments. Will there be? We’ll soon find out; voters have green-lit the experiment by a narrow margin.

Prop D, “Changes to Local Ethics Laws,” standardizes ethics training across city departments and heightens penalties for ethics violations — PASSED

Analysis: Few voters likely believe Prop D, which proposes some modest changes to the city’s ethics laws, including restricting the types of gifts city employees can accept and heightening penalties for certain ethics violations, is going to meaningfully fix City Hall’s rampant corruption problem. But the huge margin — 88% to 12% — by which the measure passed shows voters are at least aware of and concerned with the problem.

PROP E, “Police Department Policies and Procedures,” expands surveillance technology available to SFPD, reduces power of police oversight commission — PASSED

Analysis: Four years ago, Mayor Breed championed an initiative to strip the police department of millions of dollars in funding as part of a nationwide push to “defund the police.” Yesterday, Prop E, which she put on the ballot and which expands SFPD’s power to use surveillance technology to fight crime while stripping the (anti-police) Police Commission of its ability to unilaterally determine SFPD policy, passed handily. This is the vibe shift at work. Defund the police is out, public safety is in. Time to make crime illegal again.

PROP F, “Illegal Substance Dependence Screening and Treatment for Recipients of City Public Assistance,” requires welfare recipients “reasonably suspected to be dependent on illegal drugs”to undergo regular screening — PASSED

Analysis: It may seem strange that in San Francisco, a city which last year saw record overdose deaths, a measure to condition access to welfare on drug screening and treatment faced vociferous opposition from the activist left. But voters, in general, seem not to believe the city should be subsidizing people’s fentanyl addictions, and approved Prop F by a wide margin.

PROP G, “Offering Algebra 1 to Eighth Graders,” urges SFUSD to allow Algebra 1 to be taken by middle schoolers again — PASSED

Analysis: Ten years into SFUSD’s experiment to prioritize “equity” in math by de-emphasizing tracking and watering down curriculum, voters have weighed in: overwhelmingly, they want algebra back in middle schools. This is unsurprising; a recent study of the policy found the “large ethnoracial [enrollment] gaps” in advanced math courses “did not change in the post-reform period,” and district officials themselves have admitted the policy “is not working.”

Superior Court Judge Seat 1: Michael Begert

Superior Court Judge Seat 13: Patrick Thompson

Analysis: The victory of these two notoriously soft-on-crime judicial incumbents in the Superior Court race deals a harsh blow to the moderate claim to victory in this election. DCCC endorsements can push voters centerward, District Attorneys can aggressively bring cases to trial, but only judges and juries can actually make crime illegal again. The outcome of this race suggests many pro-public safety voters who supported Props E and F were uninformed about the catch-and-release track records of Begert and Thompson or, perhaps, swayed by popular politicians like Scott Wiener and Matt Haney who endorsed the incumbents. (As an example of these track records: Judge Thompson has released at least 17 different felony drug dealers on their own recognizance, ten of whom had been arrested for committing new felonies when their were previously given pretrial release; and Judge Begert released a convicted sex offender on four separate occasions, despite knowing he had also been charged with robbery and assault and battery while released.)

State Senate District 11: Scott Wiener

State Assembly District 17: Matt Haney

State Assembly District 19: Catherine Stefani

Analysis: No surprises here. Wiener, Haney and Stefani will need to win again in the November runoff to secure their seats, but they’ve all won by such large margins that their victories seem like foregone conclusions. The real thing to watch out for here is who the next mayor will appoint to Stefani’s D2 supervisor seat if she wins in November.

Prop 1, “Behavioral Health Services Program and Bond Measure,” authorizes California to borrow $6.4 billion to fund homeless and mental health services — UNANNOUNCED

Analysis: As of this writing, the outcome of the vote on Prop 1, Newsom’s measure approving a $6.4 billion loan to fund homeless and mental health services, is too close to call. Setting aside the specifics of the measure, which I’ve already touched on elsewhere, the fact that this race is nail-biter is remarkable: Newsom has thrown his full political weight behind the measure, and the ballot committee supporting it has raised over $12 million, while the grassroots campaign opposing it raised only $2,000. Have voters finally lost confidence in Newsom? Or are they simply sick of spending billions of dollars a year on homelessness, to no apparent end? (For a look at how “spending billions on homelessness” in California usually winds up, see our recent look into Project Roomkey, Newsom’s $3 billion pandemic-era program to house unsheltered homeless people in hotels.)

— Sanjana Friedman