City Hall Digest: Five Takeaways From November’s Election

The results are in. San Francisco has a new mayor, the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors has changed for the first time in recent memory, common sense has returned to the school board, our elected officials are committed to enacting commission reform, and solving the fentanyl epidemic is at the top of the city’s agenda. This edition of City Hall Digest digs into exactly what happened in an historic election.

Did the Anti-Incumbent Wave Hit San Francisco?

Two weeks have passed since the election. Nationally, the narrative around incumbents in this election has started to crystallize. Voters hated the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created worldwide inflation, fractured supply chains, and exacerbated political divides—and they trained their anger at incumbent politicians. But locally, there was more at play than incumbency in some of the most hotly contested races. Let’s take a look.

We looked at three factors to determine whether incumbency alone was playing a role: funding, name recognition, and alignment with constituents.

In the mayor’s race, Daniel Lurie had all three. His family’s personal fortune gave him a huge funding advantage, his work with Tipping Point Community and the Civic Joy Fund made him well known in the business and nonprofit world, and despite his long-time connections to some of San Francisco and California’s biggest political insiders, he effectively framed himself as an outsider candidate. Voters, fed up with six years of Mayor London Breed’s ineffectiveness, ousted the incumbent and opted for a new mayor with no political experience. While Lurie’s lack of experience could cause some headaches for San Franciscans as he figures out how to navigate City Hall, we’re optimistic that his policies are aimed in the right direction. In the mayor’s race, voters certainly voiced their opposition to the incumbent, but it was Lurie’s existing insider relationships and funding to buy him the name recognition and positive association with the public that pushed him over the finish line.

On the Board of Supervisors, incumbents in District 1, 5, and 7 were up for reelection. District 5 voters rejected incumbent Dean Preston’s uncompromising brand of ideological politics, while District 1’s Connie Chan kept her seat, and District 7’s Myrna Melgar defeated her challenger as well. So how did two incumbents keep their seats in two districts, despite San Franciscans voting for challengers elsewhere? Again, we have to look beyond mere incumbency.

Let’s take a look at District 1. Public safety was one of the top concerns for voters in District 1 this year, and challenger Marjan Philhour stayed on message throughout the campaign, highlighting Supervisor Connie Chan’s failures in that area. But that message was drowned out by a torrent of outside spending against Philhour and for Chan.

This race saw the most spending for any Board of Supervisors race this year, and that money heavily favored incumbent Connie Chan. Organized labor spent almost $750,000 to support Connie Chan, while challenger Marjan Philhour received $290,000 in external support. Now, organized labor is an interest group like any other, and they spend money on candidates they think will deliver beneficial legislation and budgets that are favorable to union demands. But labor’s interests don’t always line up with the majority of San Franciscans or working class people. Despite District 1 voters’ vocal displeasure with Supervisor Chan’s tenure, her funding advantage and name recognition earned in part by some high-profile endorsements, was enough to give Chan the edge this year—even though she’s an incumbent.

Additionally, Prop K proved to be a polarizing issue for residents in the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods—and Philhour’s opponents used this against her. Despite Philhour opposing Prop K very clearly, her opponents branded her guilty by association with supporters of Prop K which very likely cost her some votes, especially in Outer Richmond precincts that she performed well in this past March:

At the bare minimum, this messaging muddied the waters for Philhour. See the text screencap below for some questionable electioneering paid for by organized labor.

In District 5, spending for and against Bilal Mahmood and Dean Preston was split more evenly. Unlike in District 1, organized labor didn’t heavily back the incumbent, so Preston’s main challenger was on much more level footing. With Mahmood’s name recognition (he ran for State Assembly in 2022 and was elected to the DCCC earlier this year), and Preston’s unwillingness to compromise for the good of his district, voters elected the new candidate who promised more practical solutions for District 5.

Name recognition goes a long way in elections. In District 7, spending for and against Supervisor Myrna Melgar and challenger Matt Boschetto was split fairly evenly, with a slight advantage for Melgar, but the incumbent’s inherent advantage was too much to overcome for a political newcomer. Crucially, Supervisor Melgar isn’t an ideological hardliner like Dean Preston, or someone who doesn’t listen to her constituents like Connie Chan. While she’s an inconsistent legislator, she’s positioned herself as a bridge builder on the Board of Supervisors, and she doesn’t face the same level of vitriol voters have aimed at Chan and Preston. That helped her overcome the anti-incumbency trends San Franciscans voted for elsewhere.

Our takeaway? San Franciscans voted for change this year—but not unequivocally. While the results were largely good for TogetherSF Action’s movement, it wasn’t a sweeping mandate. Change takes time. But overall, San Francisco is moving in a much more sensible direction.

A (Nearly) Brand New Board of Education

San Francisco public schools have been in a near-constant state of crisis for years, brought on in part by poor leadership on the Board of Education. This year, San Franciscans voiced their displeasure with the SFUSD school board at the ballot box, voting for three out of our four endorsed candidates.

However, voters sent incumbent Matt Alexander back to his seat, instead of challenger John Jersin. That’s surprising, because Jersin campaigned as a slate with Parag Gupta and Jaime Huling, two candidates who easily won school board seats. So why did Jersin lose to an incumbent by a fraction of a percentage, just 287 votes, when so many San Francisco parents have a negative view of the current Board of Education? It likely came down to a failure to endorse Jersin by the city’s most well-known paper. The San Francisco Chronicle supported Gupta and Huling, but didn’t endorse Jersin.

Our takeaway? The seven member Board of Education has been completely revamped since the 2022 school board recalls. Parag Gupta, Jaime Huling, Phil Kim, Supryia Ray, and Lisa Weissman-Ward replaced ineffectual, performative politicians who spent more time angling for their next job than focusing on San Francisco kids. Together, this bloc has promised to stabilize SFUSD’s budget, reverse declining enrollment, focus on student’s academic performance, and manage school closures and consolidations effectively. Now that the Board of Education has a majority of sensible, public school parents, it’s time for them to deliver.

Daniel Lurie Won The Chinese Vote By a Landslide

Let’s dig into Daniel Lurie’s victory in the mayor’s race a bit more. Any candidate who wants to win a citywide race in San Francisco needs to win the hearts of Chinese voters. Now, that’s easier said than done. Chinese voters aren’t a monolith—they’re a very powerful voting bloc, but also one that has many different, sometimes competing interests. Every mayoral candidate focused resources on winning the Chinese vote, but Lurie took it to an unprecedented level.

Early in the race, Lurie used his massive funding advantage to blanket Chinese media with his face and message. That bought him name recognition with Chinese voters. In the final months of the campaign, Lurie hired a team of 23 Chinese-language canvassers who met Chinese voters face-to-face to spread Lurie’s message, and dedicated a field team for each Chinese neighborhood in San Francisco.

Those targeted resources paid off big for Lurie. Even though he received almost no endorsements from Asian-American advocacy groups, almost every heavily Asian precinct ranked Lurie as their first choice as shown by Mission Local’s graphic (left).

Our takeaway? Lurie’s victory shows the power of an excellent ground game. Early in the race, Lurie identified a demographic he needed to win, spent resources to effectively reach these voters, and ended up winning them handily. So why doesn’t every candidate use this playbook? Well, Lurie is a unique candidate, with a unique self-funding advantage. Most candidates don’t have an extra $8.9 million dollars lying around to donate to their own campaigns. Lurie did, and with an opportunity-rich field of opponents and good strategic advice, he used that money to capture lightning in a bottle.

San Franciscans Want Some Kind of Commission Reform

This election, voters told City Hall they’re ready to reform our overly-complex, outdated commission system. It’s not the bold reform we envisioned with Prop D—voters opted for Prop E’s watered-down measure instead. Still, Prop D changed the conversation around commission reform, and that’s a win.

TogetherSF Action sponsored Prop D to alert incumbent politicians that residents will not accept the status quo in City Hall. Before we gathered 78,000 signatures to place Prop D on the ballot, no elected official had even considered the need for commission reform. Shortly after we launched our effort, Daniel Lurie immediately endorsed it, Mark Farrell formed a campaign committee to support Prop D, London Breed launched her own proposal, and Aaron Peskin corralled seven of his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors to place Prop E on the ballot.

Mark campaigned on bringing real, effective change to City Hall, and he was an early and ardent supporter for Prop D. But he didn’t garner a large share of the vote in his race, and voters who didn’t connect with him may have written off Prop D by association.

Overall, Prop D didn’t see support from the broader moderate coalition in San Francisco, failing to get enough support in traditionally moderate areas like District 4 and District 7. Lower turnout across the city likely played a part in the demise of Prop D. We take this as a learning for the future to engage people more. The only district Prop D won overall was District 2, the district where Mark Farrell also got the most support. Meanwhile, Prop E’s support was roughly the inverse of Prop D’s. There was strong opposition in District 2, slight opposition in District 7, and general support in all other districts.

Our takeaway? Even though it didn’t pass, Prop D kickstarted the conversation about commission reform in San Francisco, and shone a light on our needlessly complicated bureaucratic system. The passage of Prop E indicates that the city is ready for commission reform—regardless of who enacts it.

First Responders Win, But Police Get Left Behind

One of the biggest surprises in San Francisco’s election was the failure of Prop F, given the success of similar local measures Prop H, Prop I, Prop N and state measure Prop 36. Historically, people often vote in patterns, voting for candidates and measures based on the biggest concerns of the year. That pattern didn’t hold this year.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s Prop F was a funding incentive for SFPD officers to delay retirement for a few years, to keep more experienced officers in the field. Similarly, Prop H expanded retirement benefits for firefighters, Prop I expanded retirement benefits for nurses and 911 operators, and Prop N expanded loan forgiveness benefits for first responders. Those measures all passed locally. Prop 36, which will hold accountable those committing petty theft crimes and mandate treatment options for specific drug-related felonies, won with nearly 70 percent of the vote. Prop F’s failure is a glaring outlier, especially given how similar it was to other local measures that passed. Polling shows public safety to be a major issue but overall voter turnout was less than expected, which may have contributed to Prop F’s failure.

Our takeaway? Policing is clearly still a thorny issue in San Francisco, and many voters are unwilling to devote more resources to the police department—especially when they aren’t seeing results. But it’s not necessarily a question of resources. The hard truth is that not enough new recruits are signing up for the force. But with SFPD short 500 officers, elected officials need to figure out new strategies to recruit and retain quality officers, or San Francisco will face an unprecedented public safety crisis.