SF League of Pissed Off Voters

When we vote for the Board of Supervisors, a key quality we look for is leaders we trust to stand up to the corporations that want to exploit our City for profit. Christine Johnson was tested on this when she was a Planning Commissioner, and she failed. The Commission was considering regulations for AirBnB at a time when thousands of apartments were being taken off the rental market to be converted into full-time AirBnBs. We are 100% fine with people using Airbnb properly to rent out their home when they’re out of town. But we’re 100% Pissed off at people who profit off converting apartments to Airbnbs. The linchpin of the regulations to prevent that is requiring Airbnb to delete listings that aren’t registered with the city.

Johnson was appointed to the Planning Commission by Mayor Ed Lee. She originally voted to support this regulation. But after she did, the Mayor’s staff texted her, upset by her vote. This video shows how Johnson then awkwardly went back and changed her vote to oppose this crucial piece of our Airbnb regulations. (This was all documented by the Examiner and SF Weekly who obtained copies of the text message exchange depicted in our video.)

For us, that’s disqualifying. As a magnet for innovation, San Francisco also attracts some corporations and start-ups that want to exploit us for profit: our housing, our streets, our data. They want to monetize all of it, and we need leaders who will stand up for us.

That’s why we support Matt Haney for District 6 Supervisor. Read our full take on this race in our voter guide: http://www.theleaguesf.org/#d6

11/6: Election Day! Polls open 7am-8pm. If you’re in line by 8 you can vote!

2018 Midterms: The Resistance Strikes Back!

• PDF of our print voter guide (made for 11x17" paper)
• Here's our voting cheat sheet. See below for all of our research and analysis.

Federal, State, and Regional Offices

Governor: No Endorsement
Lieutenant Governor: Ed Hernandez 💩😕💩
Secretary of State: Alex Padilla
Controller: Betty Yee
State Treasurer: Fiona Ma 💩😕💩
Attorney General: Xavier Becerra
Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara
Board of Equalization, District 2: Malia Cohen 💩😕💩

U.S. Senator: Kevin de León
U.S. Congress, District 12: No Endorsement
U.S. Congress, District 14: Jackie Speier

State Assembly, Districts 17: No Endorsement
State Assembly, Districts 19: Phil Ting

Judges: Not official endorsements, but recommendations based on our research below:

Carol A. Corrigan: NO
Leondra R. Kruger: YES
James M. Humes: YES
Sandra Margulies: NO
James A. Richman: NO
Marla Miller: NO
Peter John Siggins: YES
John B. Streeter: YES
Alison M. Tucher: YES
Barbara Jones: YES

State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond

Community College Board: Brigitte Davila, John Rizzo, Thea Selby
BART Board, District 8: Janice Li
Board of Education: Alison Collins, Gabriela Lopez, Faauuga Moliga

State Propositions

Prop 1: $4B Bond for Affordable Housing: YES
Prop 2: Allow Previous Bond Money to Be Used for Homeless Housing: YES
Prop 3: $9B Bond for Water Projects: YES
Prop 4: $1.5B Bond for Children’s Hospitals: YES
Prop 5: Expand Prop 13 for Property Owners: HELL NO!
Prop 6: Repeal Gas Tax and Require 2/3rds Vote for Future Gas Taxes: HELL NO!
Prop 7: Start the Process to Eliminate Daylight Saving Time: YES
Prop 8: Regulation of Kidney Dialysis Charges: YES
Prop 9: Stupid Vanity Prop to Divide CA in Thirds: KICKED OFF THE BALLOT!
Prop 10: Repeal Costa Hawkins! Allow Expansion of Rent Control! HELL YES!
Prop 11: Private Ambulance Companies Try to Mess with EMTs’ Work Breaks: NO
Prop 12: New Standards for Confinement of Farm Animals: YES

Local Propositions

Prop A: $425M Bond to Start Rebuilding the Seawall: YES
Prop B: Privacy First Policy: YES
Prop C: “Our City, Our Home!” Tax Big Businesses to Fund Homeless Housing and Services: HELL YES!
Prop D: Two for One! Tax on Cannabis and on Non-SF Companies that Sell Stuff Here: YES
Prop E: Restore the Hotel Tax Allocation for Arts and Culture: YES

San Francisco Offices

Assessor-Recorder: Paul Bellar
Public Defender: Jeff Adachi

Board of Supervisors, District 2: No Endorsement
Board of Supervisors, District 4: Gordon Mar
Board of Supervisors, District 6: Matt Haney
Board of Supervisors, District 8: Rafael Mandelman
Board of Supervisors, District 10: #1 Tony Kelly #2 Uzuri Pease-Greene

(Note: 💩😕💩 indicates candidates we're not super excited about, but we recommend holding your nose and voting for them, because they're better than their opponents.)

Looking for help with cities outside SF?

We focus on San Francisco, so we can't 100% vouch for all of these voter guides, but here are some recommended resources:

• Oakland: Bay Rising Action and Oakland Space Cat Voters. These are two groups we know and trust.
  
• Los Angeles: Democratic Socialists of America LA chapter. We know nothing about LA, but they've done a ton of research and we love DSA-SF.
• Richmond Progressive Alliance. We don't know personally them, but they are the gold standard for organizing progressive people power.
• Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland: Frustrated Socialist Guide. Written by some East Bay DSA members including Soli Alpert, a former SF League member who is running for Berkeley Rent Board!
• San Jose: Paulina Cortes' progressive voter guide. We don't know Paulina, but they've clearly put a lot of work into this and it looks like they share our values. Plus you can print out their voter guide zine!
• Marin & Peninsula cities: Sasha Perigo's mega-long voter guide. Sasha is relatively new on the SF political scene, but she's a nerdy, passionate organizer, and her SF endorsements almost exactly match ours.

Wow! The Board of Supervisors just voted 8-3 to reject the reappointment of Joe Marshall to the Police Commission! Fewer, Peskin, Cohen, Kim, Sheehy, Tang, Yee, Ronen against. Only Safai, Stefani, Breed supported Marshall. Thanks everybody! Your call & emails made a difference!

Can you please take a quick minute to email the Board of Supervisors to tell them to reject the re-appointment of Joe Marshall to the Police Commission? In May, the Board rejected interim Mayor Mark Farrell's re-appointment of Dr. Marshall, but Farrell nominated him again, and today is the last day for the Board to block his re-re-appointment! We're concerned that Mayor-elect London Breed has said she will support Dr. Marshall. If you want to go the extra mile, call her office at (415) 554-7630 and ask her to reconsider.

Here is a sample email:

Please vote against the re-appointment of Dr. Joe Marshall to the Police Commission. Dr. Marhsall is simply too cozy with the Police Officers Association (POA) to implement the police reforms San Francisco needs.

We are especially troubled by his dishonest statements at the Rules Committee yesterday. He tried to deny that his organization, Alive and Free receives funding from the POA, but their annual reports show POA donations of between $1,000 and $10,000 every year for the last six years! Dr. Marshall also tried to deny that he had initially voted to allow police to use the dangerous carotid restraint. And maybe most disturbingly, he said he didn't think the POA had delayed any of our police reforms! We've seen over and over and over how the POA has tried to stall or block Use of Force reform, body cameras, taser policy, etc.

The Board's recent hearing on applicants for the Police Commission demonstrated that there are many well-qualified community members who are interested in serving on the Commission. Please reject this appointment to create the opportunity for new leadership on police reform.

Update 6/25: The Department of Elections concluded their count of ballots on June 21 and found one uncounted card they added to the tally. The final results are expected to be certified this week. Only 53% of the City's registered voters chose to vote. This abysmal showing is considered "high turnout."

When we look at first place ballots cast, here's how the votes shook out on the top three candidates.

After rank choice votes were distributed, the election was decided by 2,546 votes. Damn.

Take a couple of weeks to enjoy your summer. The November election begins....um... already?

Ready for something positive and inclusive and aspirational about the SF Mayor's race? Check out this piece by Rebecca Solnit.

I want a feminist mayor.

I want a mayor who is a champion of human rights.

I want a mayor who knows what it’s like to be a woman, an immigrant, a person of color, an outsider, a newcomer, a beginner, who stands with the dreamers and the old-timers, with the vulnerable and not just the powerful.

I want a mayor who’s passionately committed to keeping this place a sanctuary city.

I want a mayor who will be everyone’s mayor. A mayor who believes that San Francisco is for all of us, poor as well as rich, the baby born last week and the person who’s lived here nine decades, not just those of us in our prime working years. I want a mayor who knows that we need dishwashers and bus drivers and schoolteachers living here. I want the mayor with plans about how to close the widening gulf between rich and poor in in this town (and Jane Kim has them).

There's no debate that Mark Leno was the most progressive member of the state Senate. Whether it was tenant protections, police reform, health care, LGBTQ rights, clean energy . . . you name it, Leno was on the right side. But Leno's super power is his ability to push the envelope on progressive policies while also earning the respect of everyone in the room and charming the pants off his fellow Senators! Check out this video of a bunch of stuffy state Senators gushing about how great Mark is! Drinking game: drink every time they talk about Mark's "grace!" Share this with your more moderate/less firey friends to show them they can feel safe voting for Leno. ;) Wouldn't it be great to have a Mayor who shares our values AND builds political bridges? That's why we're excited to vote for both Jane Kim and Mark Leno. See our voter guide for our full take.

P.S. Did you notice what a sausage fest this video is? Fun fact: there are currently only nine women in California's 40-member state Senate! :/

KALW asked London Breed about the San Francisco Tenants Union's criticism of her record, and it didn't go well. Breed said the SFTU lied when they said she did not support 2014's Prop G, the anti-speculation tax. But then she says she did not take a position. Isn't "not supporting" the same thing as "not taking a position?" That's not a lie. The Tenants Union asked Breed to support Prop G, but she refused to. We were super excited about Prop G to discourage speculators from buying up apartment buildings to evict the tenants and flip the property for a big profit. Unfortunately it lost 46% to 54% after the National Realtors Association parachuted with $2 million against it. Breed could've made a difference on it.

Then Breed said she voted for the ordinance regulating tenant buyouts. But the Board of Supervisors website (page 15) and press reports clearly show she voted against it! We join with the Tenants Union in supporting Jane Kim and Mark Leno as the best choices to protect tenants as our next Mayor.

See our voter guide for our full take on everything on the ballot.

London Breed with George and Charlotte Shultz, January 11, 2018. Photo by Drew Altizer.

(UPDATED 5/17/18 with confirmation from Richie Greenberg.)

In case you hadn’t noticed, things are getting weird in the Mayor’s race! Our friends at the Berniecrats posted this shocking video yesterday of a KTVU report that London Breed’s campaign approached the Republican Central Committee asking them to endorse her as their second choice, but they declined.

WHAT??

Breed rightfully joined the other major candidates in denouncing Angela Alioto’s proposal to weaken San Francisco’s Sanctuary City ordinance, but she’s going to ask for support from our local Republican party who opposes ALL Sanctuary City policy—in addition to all of their other awful policy positions?

This is extra troubling considering Breed’s campaign just paid $9,000 to send out a fundraising letter from George Shultz, a local Republican who was Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State and Richard Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasurer! We would love to see the distribution list of who they mailed those letters to. We bet they went to a lot of San Francisco’s 35,000 Republicans.

It’s also weird that Breed would want the Republican’s #2 endorsement after she refused the local Democratic Party’s #3 endorsement! What’s going on here?

One of the big topics in the Mayor’s race is the Housing Crisis. (Another is homelessness, which is totes connected.) We’ve been calling for reforming Prop 13 since we were founded and for building 100,000 new units of housing since 2014. We’re all about building more housing as long as we prioritize protecting vulnerable tenants and building as much affordable housing as is feasible, along with the vital infrastructure to serve all those new bodies.

We’re pissed off at those Forest Hill NIMBYs who blocked affordable housing for seniors, and pissed that the Mayor’s Office of Housing didn’t fight for the project. We’re also pissed off at the developers who are trying to use state law to build less affordable housing than our local laws require—and the state legislators that are enabling them.

You want to upzone the suburbs? So do we! But, we’re skeptical of this idea that, “if the government would just get out of the way and let developers build as much market-rate housing everywhere, everything will be better.” When in the history of capitalism has it worked out to fully deregulate an industry and “let the market decide??”