SF League of Pissed Off Voters

• PDF of our print voter guide - print it and bring it to the polls!

November 2019:
Attack of the Appointed Incumbents!

City & County Offices

• Mayor: No Endorsement
• Board of Supervisors, District 5: Dean Preston
• City Attorney: Dennis Herrera
• District Attorney: Chesa Boudin 
• Public Defender: Manohar Raju
• Sheriff: No Endorsement
• Treasurer: No Endorsement
• Board of Education: No Endorsement
• Community College Board: Ivy Lee

City & County Propositions

• Prop A: $600M Affordable Housing Bond: YES
• Prop B: Representation for Disabled and Aging Adults: YES
• Prop C: Let Juul Write Vape Law “For The Children”: HELL FUCKING NO
• Prop D: Teeny Tiny Traffic Tax on Lyft and Uber: YES
• Prop E: Finally! Affordable Housing For Teachers and Families: YES
• Prop F: Sunlight on Dark Money: YES

Hey Leaguers,

While the national attention is on the 2020 Democratic Primary, San Francisco has our own little election coming up November 5, 2019. The League is starting to dig into who and what is on the ballot, and you're invited to join us.

We're having a casual happy hour gathering to go over the ballot, figure out who's researching what, talk about how we do research, what our priorities are, and what we're pissed off about this year. If you're interested in helping with our research process but can't make this event, you can email us back to get involved.

Join us at one of the picnic tables in the back of Thee Parkside. It's all ages, so everyone is welcome.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 17, 6pm to 8:30pm
WHERE: Thee Parkside (map)
1600 17th St at Wisconsin
San Francisco, CA 94107

While most of us have been hibernating from local politics for the holidays, the ever active Democratic Party politicos have been busily gearing up for an election this weekend.

Voters will choose Assembly District Delegates at an obscure meeting called the Assembly District Election Meetings (ADEMs). These delegates help set the policies and priorities for the California Democratic Party. So if you’ve ever been pissed off about sellout Democrats, and you live in David Chiu’s Assembly District, you might want to show up on Saturday (10am-1pm at the Women’s Building) to vote for a bunch of rad progressives who are running against a slate of more middle-of-the-road Dems.

The League’s steering committee has a range of feelings about how involved we should be in ADEMs, absent a formal endorsement process, so we’re not making any official endorsements. We are not a Democratic club and some of us aren’t Democrats. Some of us are turned off by participating in these insider politico machinations and/or question if the ADEMs really matter or if it’s just a popularity contest for politicos. Some of us are excited to see some of our allies and heroes stepping up to run for the ADEMs to reform the state Democratic Party that has been dominated by corporate sellouts for as long as we’ve been around. If this kind of geekery interests you, read on!

Update 11/7:

Huge thanks to everyone who supported the League this election. You passed out voter guides, pub crawled, helped research, voted on our endorsements, and helped push forward an exciting pissed off progressive slate. We couldn't do it without you. Most of the races have been decided, but with 139,000 ballots left to count, we're still going to be watching those 4pm Department of Elections results...at least for a few days.

Election Day 11/6:

You might notice that few local results are on the news Election Night. We've got you covered for that, too.

Links for election results:

SF election results summary
SF Ranked Choice Voting results
California election results

Timing of results:

Tuesday at 8:45pm: The Department of Elections will release the first batch of results. These will be only vote-by-mail ballots received before Tuesday. Typically, these are the most conservative votes. Don’t freak out if the results look bad! Have another drink and wait for….
Tuesday at 9:45, 10:45, and maaaybe midnight: Elections will release the totals from ballots cast at polling places.
Wednesday at 4pm: Elections will release an updated count and tell us how many ballots they still have to count.
Every day after that at 4pm: They'll keep release results until they're all counted.

What to expect?

None of the absentee ballots dropped off at polling places will be counted on Election Night! It might take two weeks for them all to be counted! Also, nobody who registered on Election Day at City Hall will have their ballot counted tonight. Also, none of the provisional ballots will be counted tonight! The drama will play out every day at 4pm in the basement of City Hall when the Department of Elections will release new results. We’ve been watching this process for years, and almost always, the late results swing the results a few percentage points towards progressive causes. 

Keep the faith, Pissed Off Voters, keep the faith!

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.