Sachin and I (Steven) are taking a well-earned break, so we’re keeping this one short. Congratulations to the voters, and to everyone who calls San Francisco home. The future looks brighter than ever.
Wow, what an election! With almost 90% of ballots counted, we know the outcome of every race, and it was a landslide for the GrowSF Voter Guide. Thank you to everyone who voted with the guide, shared it with friends, and voted to make San Francisco an even better place to live.
Hey, it wasn’t just us. Mayor Lurie and the San Francisco Chronicle agreed with us on almost everything, too.
We also want to thank the San Francisco Department of Elections for running a friction-free, high-quality, and fair election, as always. And this time they were fast, too! Just two days after polls closed, they had counted 75% of ballots, putting them three days ahead of the 2022 and 2018 counts. We don’t know what they changed to speed up counting, but we’re excited to find out.
Want to see how your neighborhood voted? Every race is mapped precinct by precinct on elections.growsf.org.
All numbers below from the November 6th Preliminary Report.
Board of Supervisors
The candidates endorsed by GrowSF and Mayor Lurie won easily:
District 2: Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, 91% (21,560 votes)
District 4: Supervisor Alan Wong, 76% (18,550 votes)
District 6: Supervisor Matt Dorsey, 80% (12,048 votes)
District 10: Supervisor-elect Theo Ellington, 65% (10,698 votes)
Final ranked-choice round.
In District 8, Gary McCoy won with 64% after ranked choice. Neither GrowSF nor Mayor Lurie endorsed him, but two days after we endorsed his challenger, he released a new public safety platform that moved him much closer to us: working with Mayor Lurie, hiring officers until SFPD is fully staffed, adding foot patrols, and arresting drug dealers while moving people who use drugs into treatment and recovery housing. We’re glad he did, and we’ll hold him to it.
Congratulations to all of the Supervisors. We look forward to working with the new Board on the goals we share.
Board of Education
All three of the GrowSF-endorsed candidates won comfortably:
1st: Phil Kim: 146,143 votes, 58,074 ahead of fourth place
2nd: Tim Tung: 104,785 votes, 16,716 ahead of fourth place
3rd: Autumn Brown Garibay: 103,722 votes, 15,653 ahead of fourth place
This is a clear mandate for the work Board President Phil Kim started: literacy and math scores are improving for the first time in years, and the district has climbed out of a “negative” fiscal certification. With Tim and Autumn joining him, the Board can keep SFUSD focused on student outcomes and finish the job of getting out from under state oversight.
Ballot measures
Mayor Lurie was the big winner here. Props D, E, and F passed comfortably, and his transit priorities, Prop H and Measure RTM, passed with flying colors. Thank you to the voters in our neighboring counties who agreed that saving regional transit is worth the cost.
Props D, E, and F will change how City Hall works. Prop F puts the Mayor you elected in charge of the government you elected him to run. He can now hire and fire the heads of Planning, Building Inspection, Public Works, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and other key departments directly, instead of spending six to twelve months to replace one that’s failing, and he can merge departments that duplicate each other’s work. Prop E puts one person, the City Administrator, in charge of the City’s purchasing rules. Today those rules are scattered across more than 100 sections of code, and buying something can take six to twelve months and sign-offs from up to 14 departments. Prop E also raises the size of contract that needs a Board vote from $10 million to $25 million, so routine purchases stop waiting in line at the Board. And Prop D shortens your ballot. Putting an initiative on the ballot now takes signatures from 8% of registered voters instead of 2%, so more of the City’s laws will be written, debated, and fixed by the people you elect, not locked in by ballot measures that are hard to change.
Right now it looks like the only measure that didn’t go our way is Prop B, the public bank. That’s less bad than it sounds. Prop B doesn’t create a public bank. It tells the Treasurer to set up a municipal finance corporation, but only once the City funds it. That corporation could start turning into a bank only after at least three years in operation, and only with approval from state and federal regulators (which we don’t believe it will receive). There’s a long way to go between today and a public bank.
The first step under Prop B is creating a municipal finance corporation, and nothing requires that corporation to ever become a bank. Given the problems and inaccuracies we found in our analysis of Prop B’s legal text, we’re not convinced the public bank conversion will ever happen. A municipal finance corporation could still be useful. It can’t take deposits, but it can make loans for affordable housing, affordable homeownership, and small businesses, working alongside local credit unions and community lenders. We’ll be watching how it’s designed.
Congress
Scott Wiener is heading to Congress! For the first time in forty years we will have a new representative in Washington. We’re excited to have a GrowSF ally and fighter for housing and transit weighing in on national policy and federal appropriations. Congratulations, Scott!
Thank you
We love working on important problems that help San Francisco and are honored that we get to do it every day thanks to your support. Fundraising after an election is typically very tough, so if you’d like to help us keep the lights on please donate!
- Steven and Sachin