Danny Sauter for District 3 Supervisor
Key
😍 Perfect 😃 Great! 😐 Fine or not enough info 🤔 Questionable 😩 Quite bad
The Board of Supervisors are some of the most important elected officials we’ll vote for this November. We’ll be rolling out our endorsements over the next month, so check back here for updates and deep dives into why we’ve selected each of our endorsed candidates.
Why he’s our first choice:
Danny Sauter has truly progressive values, with policies designed to move San Francisco forward, not keep the city stuck with the status quo. Since 2019, Sauter has been directly involved with youth and senior activity programming as the Executive Director of Neighborhood Centers Together, a network of eight neighborhood centers serving over 10,000 people annually. But Sauter is also an entrepreneur, co-founding performance marketing company Bamboo in 2014, growing it to 30 employees before leaving in 2018. And he knows how to get things done in City Hall—he created the North Beach Farmers Market, which required Sauter to coordinate six different city departments to get the weekly market off the ground. We support Danny Sauter for supervisor because he’s a fresh, energetic leader with plenty of experience working with the community to improve San Francisco.
Political Experience 😃
An experienced local leader ready to step up
Danny Sauter’s political resume shows consistent, steady growth in leadership positions over time, and we think it’s time for him to move up to the Board of Supervisors. Sauter currently holds leadership positions at the Eastern Neighborhood Democratic Club and North Beach Neighbors, and was a board member of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition from 2021 to 2023. And he’s a strong campaigner—he ran for District 3 Supervisor in 2020, garnering an impressive 37 percent of the vote as a first-time candidate against long-time incumbent Aaron Peskin. Sauter is young, but he’s been preparing for this opportunity for years, and he’s ready to serve his neighborhood.
Past Policy 😐
Consistent on housing—less so on public safety
Danny Sauter’s past policy positions are a bit of a mixed bag, so we can’t give a full-throated endorsement here. He’s consistently advocated for more housing in San Francisco, which is the only way San Francisco will ever get out of the housing crisis it’s been stuck in for years. That’s great. However, his positions on law enforcement have been less consistent—in 2020, Sauter said that SFPD’s budget should be reduced through “budget justice.” And, he did not provide an answer to a question on whether SFPD should be disbanded or defunded. Now, Sauter supports hiring more police officers, with a focus on hiring bilingual officers for his district and increasing foot patrols. All that said, we admire Sauter’s belief that law enforcement should be accountable to the public and we believe that criticism of him for being “weak” on public safety lacks any real depth.
Proposed Policy 😃
Change is the way forward
Sauter is the most pro-housing, pro-transit, pro-San Francisco-working-like-it-should candidate in the race for District 3. Sauter supports making it easier to convert empty office space into housing, supports bringing the Central Subway to North Beach, and wants to make it easier to open small businesses in North Beach. These are basic policies that should have been enacted years ago—after two decades of obstructionist politics from termed-out supervisor Aaron Peskin, Sauter’s reformist policies are a breath of fresh air.
Don’t Forget
Chinatown is a pretty big cultural influence in District 3, and Sauter knows how to speak the language—literally. Sauter is conversational in Cantonese, and put those skills to use organizing a fundraiser to create a computer lab for underserved Chinatown youth.
Other Considerations
Matt Susk
Matt Susk is a newcomer into local politics, with a background largely in finance. His scrappiness in this race is admirable, and we support many of his positions on key issues like shutting down open-air drug markets and building more housing in San Francisco. But in Susk’s case, his political inexperience is just too detrimental. He hasn’t been able to build a base of political support to contend with some of the bigger names in this race, and his unfamiliarity with San Francisco politics means he would likely struggle as a supervisor.
District 3 represents North Beach, Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, Polk Gulch, Union Square/Financial District and Russian, Telegraph and Nob Hills.
Paid for by TogetherSF Action (tsfaction.org). Not authorized by any candidate or committee controlled by a candidate. Financial disclosures are available at sfethics.org.