How the fall election is shaping up

The Board of Supes and most city commissions are in recess for most of August, but the fall campaigns are now in full swing. The measure to open the Great Highway to cars during the week has qualified for the ballot; so have Mayor Daniel Lurie’s City Charter amendments that would give the mayor a lot more power and make it harder for citizens to put a measure on the ballot.

The Dept. of Elections and the City Attorney’s Office prepare a “title and summary” for every ballot measure, and those can be pretty political. “Changes to Real Property Transfer Tax” sounds pretty neutral and boring; what the measure really does is critically important. It guarantees that the money voters approved for affordable housing actually goes to affordable housing.

“Allowing Private Vehicles on the Great Highway in Sunset Dunes Park” is just misleading. Nobody wants cars in a park; actually, that measure would just restore the compromise the existed for years, when the highway was open to traffic on weekdays and closed on the weekends.

“Changes to Ballot Measure Process” also sounds vague; it’s actually a profoundly important measure that would undermine half a century of direct democracy that has allowed progressives to bring some of the most important housing, development, and taxation reforms in the city’s history directly to the voters after the supes and the mayor refused to act.

The other two parts of the mayor’s power grab will probably pass without much opposition—but the measure to increase by a factor of four the number of signatures required to put a measure on the ballot already has organized opposition.

In essence, that plan would guarantee the only well-funded operations that can pay big money to gather signatures would be able to do ballot-measure campaigns. The Fair Ballot Access Committee, led by the Harvey Milk Club, is organizing and raising money to stop that, and it’s possible that labor unions will come on board.

Meanwhile, the Congressional race is getting closer. According to Mission Local, the race is within a few points, which means that, given the margin of error of polls, it’s a statistical tie.

I find this quote from Wiener’s spokesperson fascinating:

“Connie Chan should enjoy this moment,” spokesperson Joe Arellano said, speaking to Mission Local.

“Once San Francisco voters learn that her entire career is built on stopping progress and making housing unaffordable, her poll numbers will sink faster than the Giants’ season.”

First, that means much of Wiener’s campaign is going to be about attacking Chan. That’s his history; when a race is close, he goes strongly, often wrongly, negative.

Here’s how it works:

The SF Standard ran a story July 15 saying that Sup. Connie Chan had taken corporate PAC money in her race for Congress. That was a mistake: The American Crystal Sugar Company, which donated $5,000, is not a corporation. It’s a cooperative owned by 2,500 mostly small sugar beet growers in in Minnesota and North Dakota. These rural coops are fairly common: Tillamook Cheese is a cooperative of family dairy farmers in Oregon.

The co-ops title does say “company,” and I’m sure it’s incorporated somewhere, as are most nonprofits. The beet growers give money to both Republicans and Democrats, as many organizations that seek to influence Congress do. It seems likely that the group donated to Chan after Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi endorsed her.

But it’s not a traditional “corporate PAC,” and the Standard ran a correction fairly quickly after the paper was alerted to the error.

That didn’t stop Chan’s opponent, state Sen. Scott Wiener, from leaping into action to use the Standard story for fundraising (just as he did with the Trans March.)

I got an email three days after the Standard story ran announcing that:

My opponent and I both promised not to accept corporate PAC money.

I kept my word. She didn’t.

We’ve set an immediate goal to raise $5,000 from grassroots donors to match the corporate PAC check my opponent accepted so we can expand our operation and educate more San Franciscans about what’s at stake in this race.

The problem here is that the Standard corrected its mistake (these things happen in political reporting). Wiener didn’t. He used an inaccurate story, without fact-checking it, to send out emails to thousands of voters accusing Chan of lying.

We are, sadly, going to see a lot more of that.

But here’s the other twist:

Voters in the Marina, especially older, white voters, tend to be among the most conservative in the city, and by most standards should be far more likely to support Wiener.

And yet, many of them are opposed to the giant Safeway project that can bypass local control entirely because of Wiener’s state legislation. A meeting of those folks, and the picture that went with it, became a viral post for the Yimbys, who love to talk about how old people don’t want to allow more housing for new people to move to the city. (Most of the folks who fund these groups are wealthy tech guys who can easily afford to live here).

It’s no secret here that, whatever you think of density and tall buildings (which I am not against) the hard data shows the Yimby agenda doesn’t work.

But this idea that old people should shut up and get out of the way is offensive on a lot of different fronts. Here’s Rebecca Solnit on Facebook:

One of the superpowers of the climate-and-democracy group Third Act (on whose board I serve) is that all our members are over sixty and like many elders across the US are very good at showing up at meetings. Nothing prevents younger people from going to this and other meetings (but like the image I saw of the meeting to decide on the Hopkins Street bike lane in Berkeley, most of the people pictured trended older). [update: I’m informed that the crowds were more diverse and people were attending on zoom.]

The ability to sit through meetings is an activist superpower (and yes they are often tedious and active participation requires mastering bureaucracies and reaching a crucial decision can unfold over many meetings or even many years). Older people also vote in higher numbers.

San Francisco has built 55,000 units, increasing its total housing stock about 12– 13% since 2000. One statistic I read a few years ago said that we have 30,000 vacant units–second homes, properties bought and warehoused as investments, etc. Another version says that in 2023 we had 52,000 vacant units (link in comments).

A thing that does often distinguish a lot of the old from the young is: they’ve had decades to live in a place, come to love and understand it and maybe also understand that important decisions that affect the quality of life of the place will be made at tedious meeting. I mean, I met someone who was born in San Francisco today, and she might maybe be thirty, so that’s thirty years in San Francisco–but she was working a job that definitely will not let her a homeowner off earnings, but maybe she has other forms of stability. (I know second-gen. San Franciscans who’ve inherited homes.)

A lot of younger people, though, came to San Francisco for jobs, and they don’t necessarily have strong roots and ties to the place or see the process of its transformation. I lived in one apartment for 25 years in a neighborhood a lot of short-term residents saw as stable and my long residency let me see was being radically transformed. Too, the brutal housing costs here and in many other places mean that young people can’t be confident they can commit to a place, because they can’t afford to buy a home, and a renter’s life too often feels vulnerable and contingent. Of course a lot of elders are also renters, and they’re even more vulnerable–an eviction can really devastate someone on a limited income without the resources to generate more.

So: Is it possible that when those older and more conservative, once pro-Wiener voters, learn that the project they hate and can’t stop exists only because “his entire career is built on” undermining the ability of communities to challenge projects like this, his poll numbers in the Marina will sink like the Giant’s season?

Full disclosure: my independent, adult daughter works on the Connie Chan for Congress campaign.

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