San Francisco voters are angry, yes. But they’re also smart, thoughtful, forward-thinking, hopeful and willing to part with their hard-earned cash to make their city better.
Those were the lessons I took from surveying the results of Tuesday’s election. While some political observers feared — and polls suggested — voters might storm the ballot box in a frothing, burn-it-all-down, reject-everything kind of mood, that’s not what happened.
Yes, they appear to have selected two more moderate members for the Board of Supervisors, though the District Four race was still very tight as of Friday. They appear to have picked middle-of-the-road District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who wants to take a harder line with repeat offenders, particularly fentanyl dealers.
And they backed school board members who want to — get this — make improving student achievement a priority rather than distracting the city with sideshows about renaming schools and the merits of murals.
Is it the death of progressivism in San Francisco? Hardly.
City voters remain among the most liberal in the state and country. When it came to the state’s Proposition 1 to enshrine the right to abortion and contraception in our Constitution, every single precinct in the city backed it with at least 70% of the vote, and some got close to 100%.
No, San Franciscans haven’t turned into a bunch of right-wing Donald Trump lovers as some far-left city leaders and their acolytes repeat ad nauseam on Twitter. They just want a city that works — and they’re willing to put their money behind commonsense, good-government efforts in a bid to make that a reality.
San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman (left), District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Supervisor Matt Dorsey and state Sen. Scott Wiener rally on Folsom Street on Election Day.
Jessica ChristianState Sen. Scott Wiener nearly ran the table on his endorsements, signifying his style of liberal politics twinned with pragmatism over ideology represents the current mood of the populace.
He said that while some members of the Board of Supervisors are “terrific,” the group as a whole hasn’t been in line with the rest of the city. Poll after poll has shown the board is about as popular as $1.7 million toilets.
“San Francisco voters have a history of being very thoughtful and nuanced,” Wiener told me. “They want elected officials to just do the job, and they’re willing to provide funding to do it.”
Kanishka Cheng, executive director of Together SF Action, a civic engagement and political advocacy organization, agreed: “San Franciscans are still super liberal, willing to tax themselves, willing to consistently support the institutions that are pillars of our city. But they want outcomes, and they want results.”
Honey Mahogany appeared as of Friday to have fallen short in her bid for District Six Supervisor, though she was waiting for more ballots to be counted before deciding whether to concede to Supervisor Matt Dorsey. She, too, rejected the idea the city had swung to the right, saying voters clearly want “a firmer hand” when it comes to law enforcement, but also hold progressive values about funding important city services.
Columnist Heather Knight will join Kanishka Cheng of Together SF and Manny Yekutiel to discuss the results of Tuesday's election and what they say about the direction of San Francisco. 7 p.m. Wednesday at Manny's, 3092 16th St. welcometomannys.com/events
“You can’t just demand things improve and not put the money there to actually improve them,” Mahogany told me Friday in a phone interview from an LGBTQ film festival in Tulsa, Okla.
She said that while she and Dorsey have similar policy positions on many issues, voters appeared more attracted to Dorsey’s law-and-order approach.
“I think that stems from people feeling unsafe and that they’re living in chaos, and we should take that seriously,” she said. “The election basically showed us people really, really want action in San Francisco. They are desperate for it.”
San Francisco voters supported the extension of a tax to fund public transportation, including Muni.
Lea Suzuki / The ChronicleFortunately, voters paired that cry for change with the money to back it up.
Bucking what polls showed, San Francisco voters appear to have supported the extension of a tax to fund public transportation including paratransit, street safety measures and new light-rail vehicles. Without it, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency would have had to slash service, but with it, there’s hope for our supposedly transit-first city.
Voters overwhelmingly approved the creation of a new Student Success Fund to give city money to public schools in $1 million grants for academic tutoring, nurses and social workers, student mental health care and other needs. The school district and its kids are in crisis as they emerge from the pandemic, and they need the help.
Voters also funded the city’s library system and passed a good-government measure to streamline the election schedule, even though moderate Mayor London Breed opposed it.
And by a wide margin, they made car-free JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park permanent, while rejecting a measure to return it and the Great Highway to their unpleasant pre-pandemic traffic configurations.
Marta Lindsey, spokesperson for the pedestrian advocacy group Walk SF, said she was dreading the possibility of angry voters punishing city leaders by returning car-free JFK Drive to traffic and wrecking our public transit system.
“But San Francisco voters are smarter than that. They’re not just vengeful,” Lindsey said. “We’re a city with vision and belief.”
Sounding giddy, she added: “I was just loving San Francisco this week!”
The biggest surprise for me in the election results was the apparent rejection of Proposition D, meant to streamline the permitting of housing, though as of Friday it still had a chance to squeak through.
The likely failure of both Props. D and E — the latter placed on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors to thwart Prop. D — shows the importance of our leaders rowing in the same direction on the most pressing issues facing the city. Dueling measures only serve to confuse people and turn them off to both.
It also shows, yet again, the importance of state intervention in our housing production debacle and the near impossibility of building a mandated 82,000 new units by 2031 if left to our own devices.
One winner to emerge from Tuesday’s election might be Supervisor Myrna Melgar. If Dorsey in District Six and Joel Engardio in District Four hold their leads, she’ll be smack dab in the center as the volatile board’s swing vote.
“I want to be president at some point, and there’s a path in being the person in the middle for that,” she told me. “My whole shtick is that I get along with everybody.”
A consensus-building, warm person who’s not devoted to either political camp? Leading a board on which no group has the clear majority and must find compromise? Now that would make for a nice change at City Hall.
Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
November 12, 2022 at 07:03PM
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A hard right turn? No, the election just shows voters want a San Francisco that works - San Francisco Chronicle
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