One Month Until the Election: What That Means For San Francisco
City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s biweekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right and duty.
Riding the Poller Coaster
San Francisco is officially four weeks away from the November 5 election, and every candidate for mayor is making their closing arguments to voters. Good arguments are backed by data—but data can be hard to come by in an election. How can candidates prove to voters that they’d make a good mayor if they’ve never had the job before (or any real job, in some cases)? That’s where polling comes in.
Polls are supposed to be a representative sample of voter’s feelings on issues or candidates. But polls vary wildly, depending on the organization doing the polling, the date the poll was conducted, or the audience. And candidates can commission their own polls, asking voters leading questions that create favorable answers for the candidate. Polls can be useful, but they need to be taken in context.
Just look at the polling for the mayor’s race over the past few weeks. Throughout the year, polls consistently reflected voters’ dissatisfaction with Mayor London Breed—until August, when a San Francisco Chronicle poll showed a surge in support. That support has since cooled, or maybe never existed at all, and was just a mirage created by a poll using a bad sample of voters.
In early September, Daniel Lurie released results of a poll that showed he was gaining ground, moving into second place behind Mayor London Breed. A few days later, a KRON4 News poll showed Lurie back in third place behind Mark Farrell and Mayor Breed, where he’s been most of the race. What happened there? Well, the first poll was commissioned by Daniel Lurie, using questions designed to make Lurie look good and polling at a time when, due to his extremely large budget, only Lurie campaign ads were running. Voters had only seen and heard positive messaging for Lurie, so they ranked Lurie more highly. When KRON4 did their own polling, they got results that were less skewed to one particular candidate.
About that: there certainly are a lot of polls out there that show Daniel Lurie winning. It’s probably not a coincidence that those polls were paid for by the Lurie campaign—$13 million will buy a lot of positive polling. But two recent polls show a close-to-dead heat between Mark Farrell, London Breed, and Daniel Lurie.
Voters will make their voices heard November 5. In a tight race, every candidate is trying to make themselves look as good as possible to San Franciscans, and the media likes to cover the horse race aspect of campaigns instead of each candidate’s policies. A bunch of factors influence polls that can cause some wild swings in results. Remember that the next time you see the latest polling results.
Aaron Peskin Says He Wants to Fix Rent Control.
We Don’t Buy It.
Give District 3 Supervisor and current mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin credit: he knows how to draft legislation that sounds great on paper, but has disastrous real world effects. Last week, Supervisor Peskin introduced his latest proposal, rent control for every home and apartment in San Francisco. It’s a good metaphor for Peskin’s conservative governing philosophy, where benefits go to residents Peskin considers “real” San Franciscans, and no one else.
Currently, all residential buildings in San Francisco with two or more units built before June 13, 1979 are subject to rent control. That’s most rental housing in the city, so a good chunk of renters are already covered. And under California state law, rent increases for any type of housing is capped at five percent a year, plus inflation. So there are sturdy protections in place for renters right now.
But then there’s Prop 33, the rent control ballot measure Californians vote on this election. If passed by voters, Prop 33 would repeal California’s current rent control restrictions, and allow cities to implement stricter rent control regulations. If that happens, Aaron Peskin wants San Francisco to be ready—which is why he’s fast-tracking this ordinance before the election.
The research around rent control is clear—it works for tenants who live in rent-controlled homes, but only those tenants. Rent control depresses new housing construction, negatively affects housing quality, and increases prices for renters overall. Rent control reduces incentives for developers to build new homes, less housing gets built, there are fewer apartments for rent, and renters have to compete for the available apartments, driving prices up overall. It’s almost like a trap—renters move into a home, live for a few years, then can’t move out because their current rent is so much lower than everything else on the market.
Supervisor Peskin used his power as Board President to waive a 30-day notice for proposed new laws, so his sweeping rent control legislation could be heard before Election Day. As we mentioned, polls need to be taken with a grain of salt, but by most measures Aaron Peskin is trailing in the mayor’s race. He’s clearly rushing his proposal through the legislative process, so he has something to run on that appeals to his base.
This ordinance is just another piece of bad legislation from a supervisor who’s become notorious for it. We’re glad housing advocates like the Housing Action Coalition and YIMBY Action are calling Aaron Peskin out on this—given Peskin’s track record, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t drop another addled proposal before election day.
Election Countdown Fact-Check
“Silly Season” is a, well, silly name. It’s the term political wonks use for the month right before an election, a time when campaigns leak damaging opposition stories to the press, and rumors fly around without much fact-checking. San Francisco is deep in Silly Season, and it’s hard for voters to know what to believe right now. It’s time to correct a few errors.
Recently there have been a few stories centered around Mark Farrell, our top choice for mayor, based on hearsay or misleading information. Like the “story” about Mark Farrell’s home renovations. Almost two years after he left office, Farrell called Mayor London Breed’s office in April 2020 to ask about permitting timelines for his home. San Francisco has a notoriously slow and convoluted permitting process, and this was right after the pandemic shut down many city operations. It’s clear from Farrell’s questions that he was calling to ask about how long permits would take with the new shut down. But Mayor Breed is locked in a heated race with Farrell, so her campaign is trying to spin this as an improper attempt to pressure her office into expediting permits.
Last week, Daniel Lurie leaked private email exchanges he had with wealthy San Francisco donor Bill Oberndorf to the San Francisco Chronicle. Upset about the escalating attacks from Lurie on Mark Farrell, Oberndorf questioned the veracity of claims made by him against Farrell. Given that Oberndorf is supporting Farrell, we’d venture to guess Lurie’s campaign is retaliating and trying to make this a story.
And just this week, former mayors Art Agnos, Willie Brown, and Frank Jordan called for a criminal investigation into Mark Farrell’s campaign, alleging Farrell was misusing campaign funds. Longtime City Hall reporter and political insider Phil Matier opined on a recent podcast that the three of them know very well this does not rise to the level of being criminal. But all three are supporting Farrell’s competitors in the mayor’s race, with Agnos backing Aaron Peskin, Brown backing London Breed, and Jordan backing Daniel Lurie. It’s an example of the city’s powerful political machine coming together to try to discredit someone who’s promised reform at City Hall.
Breed has the power of the mayor’s pulpit, and Lurie has donated over $6 million to his own campaign—both can easily find and amplify stories that wouldn’t make news outside of Silly Season. With just one month to go until Election Day, it’s important for voters to read beyond the headlines and look at what really matters: the leadership ability to deliver results.