For Decades San Francisco Has Been Liberal On Social Issues & Conservative On All Things Fiscal

But People Are Freaking Out That The City Has Turned Right

Feinstein had all the money; she beat Jello Biafra in the 1979 mayor's race

I washed up in San Francisco after a few years of living in a van, driving around Asia and Africa and then living in Amsterdam. I had visited in the 1960s when I was in college a couple times and I always liked the vibe. It I was happy to give it a try. I’m supposed to read the proofs of this book that’s sitting in front of me, WannaBeat— Hanging Out And Hanging On In Baby Beat San Francisco by David Polonoff. I promised the published I would write a blurb. I don’t know Polonoff but we lived in San Francisco at the same time and had some of teh same experiences. He even wrote about going to a benefit concert for striking miners I helped organize (46 years ago this month). 

I don’t like the San Francisco vibe anymore. The city— my city— seems drastically changed, so much so that I stopped going up there. Maybe it’s creepy because it’s filled with transplants from everywhere out to get rich in Silicon Valley— or, worse, already rich and out to get richer in Silicon Valley. Something’s not for me in that town anymore. But when people say the politics have moved right, I have to scratch my head. Politico: “The liberal bastion of San Francisco pivoted rightward in Tuesday’s election as voters responded to ongoing drug, homelessness and crime crises by approving policies that bolster police and require drug-screening for welfare recipients. The results represent a major victory for embattled Mayor London Breed, a moderate Democrat who faces a tough fight for a second full term in November. She hitched her political future to a slate of three ballot measures that aim to move a city struggling with its slow post-pandemic recovery in a strikingly more conservative direction. Voters approved all three of her measures on Tuesday, including her proposal to screen and mandate addiction treatment for people receiving county welfare.”

My recollection is that the rich, white, “moderate” (or conservative) establishment always called the shots in San Francisco, at least when I was living there. Other than Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk— both of whom were assassinated by a right-winger— I don’t recall too many leftists being elected to office... lots of moderates and conservatives. The preference always seemed to be to elect Republicans who called themselves Democrats— like Dianne Feinstein. 

Rich people tend to be conservative— even if pro-Choice and without any problems about the LGBTQ community— and San Francisco has extremely limited space for a lot of people willing to pay more than the people before them can pay. Now it’s filled with rich people who aspire to be Elon Musk.

Last week, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, always the conservative organ of the money elite, Joe Garofoli and Aldo Toledo asserted that San Francisco can no longer be called a progressive city and that “Progressives are looking at a thin bench of future leaders and staring down a deep-pocketed tech community that thinks their policies are destroying the city… [Progressives] are worried that moderates [a word Garofoli and Toledo use instead of “conservatives”] are going to continue to steamroll them with a huge financial advantage, fueled largely by wealthy donors.”

Some leading progressives dismissed Tuesday’s results as just another skirmish in the long history of San Francisco’s forever war between its shades of blue. A better barometer of San Francisco’s progressivism, they say, will be November’s election, when moderate Mayor London Breed will face voters— likely with Aaron Peskin, president of the Board of Supervisors, carrying the progressive banner. 

Besides, some say, San Francisco’s status as a progressive city has long had an asterisk next to it, given that moderates have controlled the mayor’s office for more than three decades. 

“If a couple of mods are elected, so what?” said Art Agnos, who, as the city’s last progressive elected mayor, was voted out in 1992 after one term, about the hotly contested DCCC race. “This city has survived much bigger political trauma. This town is big enough to absorb that kind of point of view and we’ll handle whatever comes because of it.”

But others argue that progressives need to rally behind better solutions when it comes to the problems that voters care about most, like public safety, housing, homelessness and the drug crisis. 

Progressives generally support affordable housing, tenant protections, a proposed public bank, treating the drug crisis like a public health emergency and diverting people accused of low-level offenses into treatment to reduce incarceration. They generally oppose coercing drug users and those with mental illness into treatment and reject a law enforcement-led response to the drug and homelessness crises. But they don’t always have a unified message.

Jane Kim, a progressive former member of the Board of Supervisors, said that after the pandemic, “voters’ priorities changed from affordability to substance abuse and public safety.”

“Progressives have always had very clear solutions on affordability,” said Kim, who is the state director of the progressive California Working Families Party. “Progressives need a credible vision around public safety.”

David Campos, another progressive former member of the Board of Supervisors, who is now vice chair of the California Democratic Party, said that vision doesn’t have to mean compromising progressive values. 

“We want progressive values driving criminal justice, but at the end of the day everyone has to feel safe,” Campos said. “Progressives need to articulate that. Nothing works if people don’t feel safe.”

Progressives also need to better articulate their vision on housing. 

Over the course of just a few years, many local and state political leaders have gotten behind the push to build new housing at all income levels as the city has to build 82,000 units by 2031, 46,000 of which are supposed to be affordable. 

Voters have overwhelmingly backed housing champions like state Sen. Scott Wiener, who has said that “the progressive position is the YIMBY position.” 

Campos, meanwhile, lost a race for an Assembly seat in 2022 after his record on approving new housing projects came under intense scrutiny. 

Campos said progressives who’ve opposed new housing projects need to convince voters that they aren’t knee-jerk NIMBYs. 

“We all want housing. There has to be a better articulation that it’s not that we don’t want housing,” Campos said. “We want housing for everyone, including affordable housing.” 

But Peskin and Supervisor Dean Preston disagree. One thing a progressive is certainly not is a YIMBY, they both said.

But that may be at odds with voters. A 2022 Chronicle poll found that 74% of city residents surveyed said it was either “extremely” or “very” important for city officials to create enough housing for everyone who works in the city to afford to rent or buy here.

Preston said the way progressives win is by sticking to what they know: centering the needs of working people. 

That means supporting housing policy that is focused on affordability, tenants’ rights and protecting labor, Preston said. Progressives can win, he said, if they speak to the working-class people who haven’t been priced out of San Francisco. 

“I don’t think there’s a shortage of (progressive) ideas,” Preston said. “I think there’s an unwillingness of many of the more conservative or moderate political leaders in this city to implement the things that we know work.”

One message progressives agree on is that they’re in danger. They say the biggest challenge they will face in returning to power will be overcoming the enormous amount of money their opponents are wielding.

Moderates raised more than $1.5 million to elect candidates to the Democratic County Central Committee, which has often been ignored but holds enormous power: It endorses candidates, including for the coming mayoral, district attorney and Board of Supervisor elections.Some progressives pointed to the rising influence of wealthy tech executives, some of whom have discovered a newfound interest in San Francisco politics. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, pledged to contribute $100,000 to oppose Preston’s reelection. 

Others pointed to the rising influence of Garry Tan, co-founder of the tech incubator Y-Combinator and a prolific donor to moderate causes. He has also come under fire for his crass political opinions on Twitter, and for threatening city supervisors with “slow deaths” in an admittedly alcohol-infused rant in January.

“We are currently being overwhelmed by the monumental amount of money for the first time in this city’s history,” Agnos said. “It’s millions and millions instead of thousands and thousands. That’s going to require a huge adjustment.”

The biggest adjustment progressives have to make in the wake of Tuesday’s defeats is to answer fundamental questions: What does it mean to be a San Francisco progressive in 2024? And how can they differentiate themselves from moderates? 

“Everybody is progressive in San Francisco until money is involved,” Kim said. “Where we have been divided is actually on bread and butter issues,” like raising the minimum wage, tenants’ rights and how much affordable housing to build versus market-rate units. 

Agnos said that if progressives want to win in the future, they have to fight big money with grassroots activism and concoct a grand vision for the city along left-leaning lines. 

One way to do that is to win the mayor’s race. Progressive hopes rely on the 59-year-old Peskin, who acknowledged he wouldn’t have been considered a progressive two decades ago. 

“In the old sphere, I was a moderate,” Peskin said. “What the Garry Tans of the world have done is normalize far-right-wing behavior and changed what the definition of moderate is.”

He said there has been a “scourge of toxic, earth-scorching billionaire” money used to pay for a “campaign of negativity” about San Francisco that has turned off progressive voters and incensed moderates and conservatives.

The bad news for progressives is that those moderates are winning. And they’ve got a lot of money behind them. And now, momentum.“In San Francisco, people keep on being sold progressive ideas without progressive solutions,” said Joe Sangirardi, a member of the moderate slate of DCCC candidates that won. “And the result is that we’ve been stuck in a status quo for a long time, with people parroting the same policy ideas that aren’t actually addressing our issues, while the same people remain in positions of power. And they’re finally ready to change things.”

Still, Preston was optimistic, but also realistic about what might be ahead.“Is the mayor’s office winnable in 2024? Absolutely,” Preston said. “Is it a sure thing? Is it easy? Of course not.”

The next day, Joe Rivano Barros and Junyao Yang, wrote in the Mission Local and weren’t afraid to use the word “conservative.” They noted that local conservatives had a field day and that “Breed’s favored policies adhered tightly to the wishes of the San Francisco Republican Party. More than organized labor, progressive political clubs or the official San Francisco Democratic Party, the local Republican chapter’s picks for ballot measures were the closest match to what Breed and her allies endorsed— and what voters chose… Control of the Democratic Party endorsement in local races will all but surely switch out of progressive hands in time for November, likely handing boosts to allied ballot measure contests and candidates.”

And in case you're forgotten, in 2018, progressive Kevin de León took on conservative incumbent Dianne Feinstein in her last Senate run. She beat him 6,019,422 (54.2%) to 5,093,942 (45.8%) but in “liberal” San Francisco, the vote was 226,167 (64.2%) to 125,954 (35.8%). It was significantly closer in L.A. County, where Feinstein got 57.7% and De  León got 42.3%.