The next six months will be crucial for San Francisco’s political future. At the primary on March 5 — the election we’re focusing on in this guide — voters will be asked to elect new leadership to the local Democratic and Republican parties (which provide official endorsements in the November general election that can be hugely influential, given most people just vote for whichever candidate their party has officially endorsed), elect two judges to the Superior Court, and decide whether to approve a slate of propositions that, among other things, could push the city and state into deeper deficits. Then, in the general election in November, voters will be asked to elect a mayor, three supervisors to the Board of Supervisors (D1, D3, D5), a district attorney, a sheriff and a treasurer.

The outcome of these two elections could either shift the city’s political balance definitively toward the moderates, or entrench power further in the hands of the far-left. Below, an easy-to-follow cheat sheet with all of our recommendations. After that, if you’d like to read on, we’ve provided a bit more context. In any case, godspeed. Let’s bring this city back to life.

CHEAT SHEET

San Francisco —

You’ll notice we didn’t provide a complete list of suggestions for certain positions. This is because, in some cases, there were not enough sane candidates to suggest. We recommend only voting on the folks below.

DCCC Assembly District 17: Matt Dorsey, Nancy Tung, Laurance Lem Lee, Peter Ho Lik Lee, Trevor Chandler, Lily Ho, Cedric Akbar, Michael Lai

DCCC Assembly District 19: Marjan Philhour, Michela Alioto-Pier, Lanier Coles, Supervisor Catherine Stefani, Jade Tu

RCCC Assembly District 17: Bill Jackson, Christopher Lewis, Charles Page Chamberlain, David Cuadro, Jennie Feldman, Christian J. Foster, Josh Wolff, Jamie H. Wong, William Kirby Shireman

RCCC Assembly District 19: Martha Conte, Nicholas Berg, Jeremiah Boehner, Peter Elden, Grazia Monares, Tom Rapkoch, Deah Williams, Jennifer Yan, Jay Donde, Jan Diamond

Superior Court Judge Seat 1: Chip Zecher

Superior Court Judge Seat 13: Jean Myungjin Roland

NO on Prop A

NO on Prop B

YES on Prop C

YES on Prop D

YES on Prop E

YES on Prop F

YES on Prop G

California —

State Senate District 11: No endorsement. (See selected notes for details)

State Assembly District 17: No endorsement. (See selected notes for details)

State Assembly District 19: Catherine Stefani

NO on Prop 1

SELECTED NOTES

DCCC Assembly Districts 17 & 19: All registered Democrats in SF can vote on the composition of the 33-seat DCCC; this year, 24 of those seats are up for grabs. If you live in the east side of the city, you’ll vote on District 17 candidates. If you live in the west side, you’ll vote on District 19 candidates. The DCCC is hugely influential; as part of its responsibilities, it makes official Democratic Party endorsements for political candidates and local propositions — a big deal in a city where voters are overwhelmingly registered Democrats.

The two opposing Democratic political factions in the city — the “progressives” (whom we’ll call ‘leftists’ from here on out, because it’s more accurate) and “moderates” — have each fielded their own slates of candidates for the election. The progressive “Labor & Working Families Slate” is extremely far-left (endorsed candidates include Peskin acolyte John Avalos and SF Reparations Committee member Gloria Berry). These are the types of people who think “billionaire tech dark money” is the reason the city isn’t doing well. Do not vote for them if you want the political paradigm in the city to change.

The moderate “SF Democrats for Change” slate is better — most people on it agree we need more police, better housing policy, and less tolerance for drug crimes — but there are still some pretty unappealing candidates on it. Emma Heiken, for example, is a recent transplant to the city who believes “we must pursue alternatives to the police, including social service workers” and refused to indicate on a questionnaire whether she opposes “policies commonly referred to as ‘defund the police.’” Bilal Mahmood boasts of his endorsement from current DCCC Chair Honey Mahogany (who opposed the recall of ex-DA Chesa Boudin and helped architect the disastrous initiative to put homeless people in taxpayer-funded hotel rooms at the start of the pandemic). Mike Chen is a member of SF Yimby, the organization that backed Prop M (otherwise known as the “Empty Homes Tax”). Joe Sangirardi says he opposed the recall of Boudin because Boudin “was made out to be a buggy man [sic].” We can’t in good faith give our endorsement to “moderates” like this.

RCCC Assembly Districts 17 & 19: Our endorsements here are drawn largely from the Briones Society, a new local PAC with a shockingly sane political platform that includes enforcing anti-camping laws, dismantling “Housing First” homeless policy, disbanding the Police Commission, and mandating the Planning Commission make decisions on new residential developments within one year of receiving their applications. Of course, “R” is still a scarlet letter in San Francisco; Republicans make up less than 10% of registered voters, and the city hasn’t elected a Republican to office in over 20 years. But political change is afoot in the city, and if Republicans begin to field smart candidates capable of expressing good ideas in language palatable to the average left-of-center SF moderate, they might start to emerge from the margins.

Superior Court Judges: Chip Zecher and Jean Myungjin Roland are both running to unseat incumbent Superior Court judges: Judge Michael Begert (Zecher’s opponent) and Judge Patrick Thompson (Roland’s opponent). Begert and Thompson are both notorious for repeatedly releasing felony drug dealers and thieves. Thompson recently released a repeat armed robber on home detention with an ankle monitor; within weeks, the robber had violated the terms of his release and was re-arrested on a felony warrant. Begert repeatedly released a convicted sex offender while presiding over the city’s Drug Treatment Court.

Zecher has aligned himself with current DA Brooke Jenkins. Roland is a veteran prosecutor from the DA’s office who has highlighted her commitment to serving victims.

Prop A — “Affordable Housing Bonds.” How many more $300 million loans does SF need to build housing? Readers will recall that almost a decade ago, SF voters passed a near-identical initiative approving an $310 million loan for affordable housing (which was, hilariously, also called Prop A). The problem isn’t money, the problem is the city refuses to build. No more funding without a plan to actually build. This is insane.

Prop B — “Police Officer Staffing Levels Conditioned on Amending Existing or Future Tax Funding.” Takes a good thing (establishing minimum staffing levels for SFPD) and conditions it on a bad thing (increasing taxes on a population that is already one of the most heavily taxed in the country). Everyone — leftists and moderates alike — hates this proposition, and with good reason. City Hall has many ways to raise money to fund SFPD that don’t involve raising taxes — they should start by cutting bloated administrator salaries and useless departments.

Prop C — “Real Estate Transfer Tax Exemption and Office Space Allocation.” It’s unclear whether this proposition, which waives the tax for converting commercial real estate to residential use, will cause an uptick in office-to-housing conversions. (The idea is, since almost 40% of office space in the city is currently vacant, we might as well incentivize people to turn empty offices into housing.) But it’s generally good to waive taxes in a severely over-taxed city.

Prop D — “Changes to Local Ethics Laws.” This proposition gives the city’s Ethics Department centralized control over annual ethics and anti-bribery training, rather than letting each department run its own in-house training. This is a small but positive step toward clamping down on rampant corruption in city government.

Prop E — “Police Department Policies and Procedures.” This proposition gives SFPD the ability to use drones in vehicular pursuits and install surveillance cameras in certain public spaces, under limited circumstances. It also restricts the power of the Police Commission — an unelected group of anti-police bureaucrats the city has (for some reason) tasked with making policy recommendations to SFPD. The technology provisions are commonsense (and already standard practice in most PDs across the country), and the curtailing of the Police Commission should be welcomed by all who value public safety. Prop E is a win all-around.

Prop F — “Illegal Substance Dependence Screening and Treatment for Recipients of City Public Assistance.” More or less exactly what’s on the label — this Prop conditions access to welfare on regular drug testing for recipients who are either confirmed or suspected addicts. Two remarkable things about this proposition: 1) that it’s not already law (yes, your tax dollars have probably funded someone’s fentanyl addiction) and 2) that it’s somehow controversial.

Prop G — “Offering Algebra 1 to Eighth Graders.” This is an entirely symbolic measure, but it would serve to send a message to SFUSD that a majority of voters disagree with its decade-old decision to stop teaching middle schoolers algebra. Great.

State Senate District 11: basically, we dislike Scott Wiener (who is quite good on housing policy but unbelievably bad on things like “HIV criminalization reform” — legislation he pushed through to lower the penalty for intentionally infecting someone with HIV — “sex offender registration reform” (see legislation here), and absolutely nonsense pick-me AI “safety frameworks,” but none of the other candidates running seem like serious contenders.

State Senate District 17: Same issue as above. The incumbent is Matt Haney — former D6 Supervisor, clownish figure who got the ball rolling on renaming SFUSD schools (he objected to George Washington High School on the basis that Washington owned slaves) and pushed for “safe injection sites” in the Tenderloin — but the two other candidates look unserious. For instance, the Republican running, a guy named Manuel Noris-Barrera, is a little-known realtor with a vague political platform.

Senate Assembly District 19: Democrat Phil Ting is termed out of his Assembly seat this year. Stefani is basically the only reasonable candidate running to replace him — her Democrat opponent, David Lee, is a nonprofit executive who supports raising the minimum wage to $25/hour and eliminating student debt, and her Republican opponent is Nadia Flamenco, a freelance filmmaker who (as far as we can tell) hasn’t articulated a political platform anywhere online, and Arjun Sodhani, an inventory manager with an ambitious but vague platform that includes projects like building a bridge between SF and Richmond (“more details coming”) and ending the federal reserve. That leaves us with Stefani, who currently serves as D2 Supervisor. She’s a pretty run-of-the-mill SF moderate, but one who’s managed to draft some good policy on the Board, including an ordinance to increase oversight on all nonprofits in the city.

Prop 1: This is Newsom’s ballot measure asking for an additional $6.4 billion in taxpayer funding to support homeless-related services. Besides the fact that California, which is currently facing a $68 billion budget deficit, literally cannot afford to keep spending this kind of money on its massive population of dependent, tent-dwelling out-of-towners, Prop 1 would also spend this windfall in insane ways — allocating $4.4 billion to funding around 6,800 addiction/behavioral health treatment beds, which amounts to an average almost $650,000 per bed. Stupid and bad. No thank you! What the hell! Please be less insane! (For more details on Prop 1, see the lead from the DP newsletter a few weeks ago, here)

— The Pirate Wires Editorial Board