SF candidate wants rival’s $500,000 crypto donation steered to the community

A candidate vying to represent San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point is calling on a rival to redirect a billionaire’s $500,000 donation to local churches and community groups. Shawn Richard, 58, one of four candidates running to replace termed-out Supervisor Shamann Walton in District 10, held a news conference on the steps of City Hall Sunday urging a political committee supporting opponent Theo Ellington, 37, to steer a half-million-dollar donation from crypto billionaire Chris Larsen — the single biggest outside contribution ever made to support a candidate for San Francisco supervisor — away from the campaign and toward the neighborhood. “Half a million dollars invested directly in families struggling with the high cost of food and basic necessities could have an immediate and tangible impact,” Richard said in a prepared statement, calling on the committee to put the money “directly into the hands of trusted Bayview churches” to buy groceries and other necessities for congregants and neighbors. In an interview after the news conference, Richard said the money shouldn’t go only to religious groups. “It’s not just the churches that we’re saying give all the money to,” he said, naming Cornerstone Baptist Church, Providence Church and Calvary Hill among congregations he’s spoken with. He said he’d also want the money to go to organizations doing “excellent work” on mental health and addiction services, and toward maintaining small-business corridors he said the city has neglected. City filings show the political action committee has raised $500,000 — all of it from Larsen, who co-founded Ripple — and has yet to report spending any of it. Individual donors are capped at $500 in direct contributions to a candidate, but no such limit applies to independent expenditure committees, which can raise and spend unlimited sums as long as they don’t coordinate with a campaign. It’s not unusual for PACs to give money to charity. They just don’t have to. Because the PAC isn’t a candidate-controlled committee, San Francisco’s surplus-funds laws don’t apply. Rather, it falls under the California Political Reform Act’s general rules for campaign funds. Under California Government Code, Section 89515, campaign funds may be donated to “bona fide charitable, educational, civic, religious, or similar tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations.” That means a Bayview church could qualify, as long as no committee insider personally benefits and the gift “bears a reasonable relation to a political, legislative, or governmental purpose” of the PAC. Both J.R. Eppler and D.J. Brookter, Ellington’s other opponents, criticized the Larsen contribution when it was first reported last week. Eppler said District 10 "deserves a supervisor who represents the hardworking people who live here” and argued billionaires “make investments and expect returns.” Brookter said it raises the question of “whose interests will actually be represented in office.” Richard’s demand took that criticism a step further.. The candidates’ own fundraising numbers, pulled from city Ethics Commission filings, show why the demand lands differently coming from Richard than it might from the others. Ellington’s campaign committee has raised roughly $480,000, compared with Eppler’s $151,000 and Brookter’s $129,000. Richard’s committee,“Elect Shawn M. Richard for District 10 Supervisor 2026,” has reported no financial activity at all this cycle. Asked whether the demand looks like sour grapes from a candidate who hasn’t raised as much money, Richard rejected the framing. He pointed to more than three decades of running the nonprofit Brothers Against Guns, which he founded in 1995 after losing two younger brothers to gun violence, as a source of recognition that doesn’t depend on outside money. “I don’t owe anybody anything,” he said. This is Richard’s second run for the seat; he also ran in 2014 and lost to incumbent Malia Cohen. District 10, the city’s poorest district, includes 80,000 residents and spans Visitacion Valley and Sunnydale — some of the last neighborhoods in the city to get new housing or basic public investment. The $500,000 check from Larsen, added to the $480,000 Ellington raised, puts just about $1 million behind just one candidate running for one of 11 seats on a city board. Aaron Peskin, a former supervisor and longtime critic of big spending in local elections, said it’s the kind of money “people spend to put someone in the U.S. Congress.” Richard argued the scale of Larsen’s interest in an underserved district race isn’t hard to explain. He pointed to undeveloped parcels in District 10 that could be built up to 10 to 15 stories, and to plans for AI-related data centers in the district. “The community needs to have say-so,” Richard said, arguing that whoever wins the seat will effectively help decide how much of that development goes forward. Two data centers are planned at the Bayview-Visitacion Valley border. One, run by NOVVA Data Centers, is already operating: a 36-megawatt facility on a 7.5-acre campus. The donation also complicates the “hometown, not the machine” image Ellington has built his campaign around, Richard said. Richard, in the interview, pushed back on the idea that Ellington bears no responsibility just because the money moved through an independent committee rather than his own campaign account. “Do you own your name, or do they own your name?” he asked, arguing Ellington could have spoken out publicly against the PAC. Richard said his opinion of Ellington personally hasn’t changed, but said the decision to accept the donation has hurt how the community sees him. “It doesn’t help his credibility ... as a man of the community that he says he is.” Ellington asserted his campaign’s independence from the PAC. “Outside organizations make their own decisions about how they participate in elections,” he told The Standard. “They do not speak for me or our campaign.” He pointed instead to his own record — growing up in the district and raising his family there, and “fighting for affordable housing, good jobs, environmental justice, safer neighborhoods, and opportunities for all working families.” If elected, he added, “that’s who I’ll answer to as supervisor: the people of District 10.”

Bip City is dead. Who killed it?

Twenty-odd years ago in San Francisco, someone smashed a car window and made off with a briefcase. But it was not a briefcase. It was a breast pump, belonging to a woman who happened to be working in the city that day — and whose daughter told us the story this week, because in San Francisco, a good bipping story keeps. Ask 10 San Franciscans, and you’ll get 10 tales: shattered glass, a stolen laptop, a fully loaded Prius emptied in the four minutes it took to sign the lease. Ask the ones who’ve never been bipped, and you’ll get something else: a lecture. They know the rules. They never left so much as a crumb in the car. You, clearly, did something wrong. Having your car broken into is a rite of passage in this city — as much a part of our urban identity as a symbol of our dysfunction. Or, at least, it used to be. Car break-ins in San Francisco are, in fact, down 75% since 2024, to a 22-year low. On this week’s episode of “PST,” host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with Standard news reporter Max Harrison-Caldwell, an expert on Bip City , to ask the obvious question: Why? And the better one: Who gets to take credit? Mayor Daniel Lurie likes to say it’s him. He touts the low car break-in numbers on Instagram and, more broadly, has made public safety a through-line of his time in office. But the law that made the precipitous drop possible was written by London Breed, the mayor he unseated. In March 2024, Breed put Proposition E on the ballot , and its passage (with 54% of the vote) allowed the San Francisco Police Department to fly drones and install cameras and license-plate readers without sign-off from the Police Commission or Board of Supervisors. By the time Lurie won the 2024 mayoral election, the SFPD had been flying drones for months and was using the technology to catch bippers . So, who do we thank? Maybe both mayors, or maybe the SFPD’s fleet of 98 drones — more than twice as many as the LAPD uses in a city with nearly five times the population. ( Yikes! ) Here are three takeaways from the episode. Listen to the full episode of “ PST with Emily Dreyfuss ” wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube . Surveillance technology played a role The SFPD attributes bipping’s heyday to a lack of enforcement technology and a district attorney unwilling to prosecute perpetrators. Burglars knew they could smash windows, grab electronics and other valuables, quickly sell them to black-market dealers, and likely never get caught. Less than 1% of car burglaries over the last decade led to a conviction. The SFPD increased patrols in bipping hot spots like Fisherman’s Wharf starting in 2023. Cops also started using bait cars and building cases against major bipping gangs. In 2024, the department deployed its network of Flock cameras, and voters, increasingly more concerned about public safety than about privacy , approved Proposition E. The following year, crypto billionaire Chris Larsen gave the SFPD $9.4 million, some of which was used to create the Real-Time Investigation Center. This hub allows police to view real-time feeds from drones, cameras, and license-plate readers, making it much easier to track and stop criminals, including auto burglars. But police tech isn’t the only factor Even before 2024, reports of bipping were on the decline. After peaking in 2017 with more than 31,000 reports, car break-ins started falling slowly before dropping off sharply two years ago. Several criminologists who spoke with The Standard said they didn’t know why this was, but there are theories. One is simply that fewer people were reporting to police that they’d been bipped. It’s a hassle to get insurance involved, and residents didn’t have much faith that the cops would recover their belongings, so it’s likely that, sometime in the late 2010s, more victims started heading straight to the auto-glass shop without stopping at the police station. Others speculate that 2017 was just an unusual peak; annual totals before were between 20,000 and 25,000, as were totals from 2018 to 2022. This suggests that those years represented a return to the pre-2017 status quo, rather than a true decline. Some residents take pride in having survived ‘Bip City’ Take it from our Instagram followers . “RIP city tax,” one wrote. “Born and raised in SF and I have never been bipped once. It was a great way of keeping annoying people away from the city.” “It’s a rite of passage here,” wrote another. “You know the saying: If your car window gets broken in SF, you did something wrong and left something inside.” A knowledge of the rule (don’t leave anything in your car) helps to distinguish between clueless tourists and streetwise locals. But no one enjoys being burgled. This is an early theme in the new film “Splash City,” which follows an SF bipping crew trying to score big and get rich. A former member of the crew — who has left the street life to pursue his hoop dreams — plans to propose to his girlfriend but leaves the ring in the car while running an errand. When he returns, it’s gone. Later, the crew hits a weed kingpin’s car, snatching a duffel with $500,000 in cash from the trunk. Berner, the San Francisco rapper and cannabis entrepreneur who directed the movie, said the latter scene was based on a true story. It’s a reminder that anyone can get bipped — even locals with street cred in spades. Watch the episode on YouTube

New evidence suggests Lurie’s office is concealing or destroying public records

Shaun Aukland, a SoMa-based tech worker who has been active in neighborhood political issues, wanted to see how his supervisor and the mayor were communicating. What he found was a discrepancy that suggests the mayor’s office is either concealing or destroying public records, violating its own 2025 pledge and possibly, according to a First Amendment attorney, the law. In April, Aukland filed a public records request — a tool used by researchers, attorneys, and journalists to see what local, state, and federal governments are up to — asking for texts between Supervisor Matt Dorsey and Mayor Daniel Lurie. He made identical requests to Dorsey’s office and the mayor’s office, seeking the release of texts between the two officials going back to January 2025. Dorsey’s office handed over months’ worth of texts. But Dexter Darmali, who handles public records for the mayor’s office, said there were no records on Lurie’s end to disclose. The discrepancy frustrated Aukland. “I think San Francisco should be an example of good governance,” said Aukland, who provided The Standard with his records requests and the text messages he received for review. “And there shouldn’t be the ability to hide records from citizens and journalists.” The correspondence between Dorsey and Lurie was largely benign, with the two exchanging congratulations on recent accomplishments and discussing budget priorities, among other matters. But additional instances of missing records discovered by The Standard concern more sensitive issues for Lurie, drawing scrutiny from transparency advocates over the record-keeping practices of the mayor and his top aides. Those advocates’ concerns were heightened by the recent temporary suspension of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, the body that hears complaints about potential city violations of public-records laws. The mayor’s handling of records could be in violation of local and state laws. The city’s public records law, known as the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance, was enacted in 1993 and strengthened by a related 1999 ballot proposition. That and state public records laws — which don’t apply to officials’ communications about personal matters — were drafted at a time when paper communication was the norm. Some mayors have interpreted public records and record retention laws as not always including “routine” emails and text messages; the legal validity of this has not been tested in court. In one case, The Standard obtained an email from a city department about the decision to scrap a proposed homeless shelter that had received funding through Breaking the Cycle, Lurie’s $49 million public-private partnership. The email was from one of the mayor’s policy chiefs, who revealed that he made the call to scrap the project even though several hundred thousand dollars in nonprofit funds had already been spent on the site . The mayor’s office said it had no record of the email. In another matter, one of the mayor’s policy chiefs started a group text related to Pacific Gas & Electric during the December 2025 citywide blackout. The mayor’s office again said it had no record of the chat, even though The Standard retrieved it through a public records request to a separate city department. Taken together with Aukland’s experience, these instances demonstrate the existence of public communications by the mayor’s office that it claims to have no record of. The mayor’s office did not respond to a list of questions from The Standard, including what happened to the missing records or whether they were being deleted by Lurie or his staff. “All staff in our office comply with all mayor’s office policies and relevant laws, just as the mayor expects,” Lurie’s spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, wrote in a statement. “We cooperate with every sunshine request in good faith — we conduct prompt, diligent searches to find any available records and produce them as required.” David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said “it raises a serious red flag” when the same public records requests sent to different parts of the city produce varying sets of documents. “One possibility is that the records exist in the mayor’s office, and they were just sloppy in failing to produce them,” he said. “Another is that the mayor’s office is deleting those records as soon as they’re generated.” The pattern of missing records undermines Lurie’s campaign promise to uphold a level of transparency at City Hall, and a pledge early in his tenure related to text messages. In April 2025, The Standard reported that a resident had requested text messages between the mayor and the Public Works Department: The department provided the records, while the mayor’s office said there were no documents to provide. Weeks later, Lurie’s office committed to voluntarily handing over his text messages if a public records request was made. Other California mayors have sparked controversy over their disclosure of communications. Lurie’s predecessor, London Breed, was accused of deleting her text messages , and former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo was criticized for deleting emails from his official city account. Last year, the Los Angeles Times sued the city , claiming that Mayor Karen Bass’ text messages about wildfires were unlawfully withheld and deleted. The case is ongoing. ‘No responsive records’ After learning of Aukland’s experience with the missing records, The Standard set out to determine how often the mayor’s office claims to have no records when other departments are able to produce them. In May, as part of an unrelated public records request by a Standard reporter, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing handed over dozens of emails regarding a proposal (later nixed) to move a tiny cabin site for homeless individuals from the Mission to a vacant location in SoMa. Among them was an exchange between Kunal Modi, Lurie’s chief of health and human services, and Rebecca Foster, CEO of the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund — the nonprofit managing the mayor’s Breaking the Cycle initiative . In an email dated Sept. 30, 2025, Modi informed Foster that the city was scrapping the SoMa project, which had relied on Breaking the Cycle funds, and putting the cabins in storage in the Bayview. His message was in response to an email from Foster earlier that day stating that the nonprofit had already spent approximately $300,000 on consultants and design work for the SoMa site. “I was not aware of the funding deployment implication over the past 3 weeks on 11th street, though I understand those activities were occurring,” Modi wrote. “I’ll give you a call so we can go through and we can appropriately communicate with our funders.” Yet when The Standard submitted a request to the mayor’s office for emails between Modi and Housing Accelerator Fund staff, no records were found. “After a reasonable and diligent search, we have determined that we have no responsive records. We now consider your request closed,” Darmali wrote in an email. (The mayor’s office handles records requests for other members of his administration, such as Modi.) Another example of missing records involves Ned Segal, Lurie’s chief of housing and economic development. Segal initiated a text group chat Dec. 20, amid the citywide blackout caused by a Pacific Gas & Electric substation, in which he discussed the utility’s potential assistance to the War Memorial Opera House. The chat included Department of Emergency Management Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll and War Memorial Managing Director Kate Sofis. In response to an April public records request, the Department of Emergency Management handed over the text chat from Carroll’s phone. Multiple times throughout this year, The Standard requested the messages from Segal but was told by the mayor’s office that there were no records. The group chat’s contents from Segal have particular resonance for the mayor: In February, PG&E’s CEO said during a public hearing that Lurie, during the December blackout, had asked the utility to prioritize power at the War Memorial Opera House — a statement PG&E later retracted and the mayor’s office denied. The Standard later filed a complaint with the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, the group that hears complaints about City Hall compliance with public records, about separate communications between Lurie and a PG&E executive during the December blackout. In June, the task force determined that Lurie violated the city’s rules by not fully disclosing those text messages. The mayor’s office said it had no record of them, despite having turned over a screenshot of what was visibly a chain of messages as part of an earlier Standard public records request. The Standard identified missing records where it was possible to request them from city departments that were in communication with the mayor’s office. But Lurie and his top aides presumably have communications internally or with non-city entities; it’s much more difficult to ascertain whether those records of public interest are being mishandled, concealed, or destroyed. A legal question This is the latest example of a long-standing disagreement between open government advocates and City Hall over how certain records, including emails and text messages, should be handled. Those pushing for more transparency argue that such communications should not be deleted — as they can contain important city business — whereas San Francisco officials appear to disagree. When Lurie told The Standard last year that public records requests for his texts would be fulfilled, it wasn’t clear for how long he would retain his messages; the office said at the time that it was developing a policy. Instead, it seems the mayor’s office has reverted to previous guidelines. Asked recently for its records retention policy, Lurie’s office provided a 2014 memo dating back to Mayor Ed Lee’s administration, the same guidance Breed’s office used. It’s unclear exactly how Lurie’s office is interpreting the guidelines, but actions by the Breed administration help paint the picture. Breed considered text messages to be “non-records,” according to Mission Local’s coverage of the legal question in 2024, meaning they “may be destroyed when no longer needed,” the retention policy states. But legal experts argue that California Government Code §34090 prohibits the destruction of government records less than 2 years old. “A local policy cannot trump state law,” said Karl Olson, a California media attorney who helped litigate a landmark 2017 California Supreme Court case involving Liccardo that found that text messages on a private device relating to city business are subject to public records laws. In the weeks after Lurie’s election, Olson penned an opinion article in The Standard, urging the mayor not to repeat Breed’s texting practices. “Lurie should not emulate Breed’s penchant for secrecy, especially after he ran his campaign as an outsider who wasn’t part of the corrupt City Hall establishment,” he wrote. “I’m disappointed that the mayor’s office is doing this,” Olson said about the latest account of missing records. “I think he’s exposing the city to liability if somebody sued the city to obtain these records, because No. 1, he’s not in compliance with the [Public Records Act], and No. 2, the city, the agency, is on the hook when a public records act violation is found.” Nowhere to go There’s one other problem involving public records in San Francisco: Residents and journalists currently have no ability to demand a public hearing if they believe a law has been broken. The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, normally the venue for such issues, has not met since June because it has not had enough active members for a quorum. New rules this year prohibited termed-out members from staying in their seats. The Rules Committee, chaired by Supervisor Shamann Walton, has yet to schedule the review of new appointments to the task force, according to an August email from his office, resulting in a case backlog that will likely take many months to resolve. Walton did not respond to a request for comment Monday for an update on when that review would take place. A compliance hearing regarding The Standard’s complaint against Lurie over his PG&E texts was scheduled after the task force made its determination that the mayor’s office was in violation of public records requirements. The office did not hand over additional records to The Standard — despite the task force’s order — and the compliance hearing was canceled because the task force lacks a quorum. Some former members of the task force fear that it will be filled with loyalists; the body has generally comprised transparency advocates, including journalists and attorneys. Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman told The Standard in July that the appointees should understand the “burden that particularly repeat [public records] users can place on departments and the functioning of city government” and that the city’s laws “definitely get misused and move into the realm of harassment.” The lack of a functioning Sunshine task force has left Aukland with nowhere to go. After the discrepancy in the Dorsey-Lurie records, he filed a complaint with the watchdog group. No hearing has been scheduled. “There is no body in San Francisco that is able to hear my complaint or issue an order for the mayor’s office to comply,” Aukland said. “So what do I do? The only remedy left is Superior Court, which isn’t realistic for an ordinary resident.” Saul Sugarman, a recently termed-out member of the task force and editor in chief of The Bold Italic, said he thinks Lurie has been doing good work for the city, particularly around rehabilitating its public image. “But it doesn’t mean we can simply defer to the current regime — meaning the mayor’s office and the majority of moderate Democrat supes — and give them a pass on Sunshine violations when we plainly see them. “There are only so many times you can use the ‘we have no responsive records’ talking point,” he added. “It ceased being credible months ago.”

Mayor moves to overhaul $500M in homelessness contracts

Eighteen months after putting service providers for San Francisco’s homeless population on notice, Mayor Daniel Lurie took a long-awaited step toward overhauling how the city awards at least half a billion dollars in contracts annually. On Monday, the Lurie administration launched a multi-year effort to re-award its full portfolio of homelessness services and housing contracts through a competitive process and to reorient contracts around performance measures and outcomes. How much the system will change and what standards providers will be judged on remain unclear. But city officials said the restructuring could lead to fewer contracts, consolidating programs that offer overlapping services, and shifting more funding to high-performing providers. “We are not going to continue spending $1 billion of taxpayer money on a failing system — we’re fixing the system so we can deliver the safe and clean streets every San Franciscan deserves,” Lurie said Monday. The announcement comes after years of public scrutiny over the city’s massive spending to address the homelessness and addiction crises. It follows recent backlash over the city’s oversight of homelessness contracts and comes about two months after a new executive director took over the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. The initiative is one of several reforms Lurie vowed shortly after taking office to address the fragmented homelessness and behavioral health systems. In a March 2025 executive directive , he said the city’s approach had “not been working” and laid out a series of changes to “better help our most vulnerable residents while ensuring that public spaces remain safe and clean, and taxpayer resources are responsibly managed.” Among them was a goal to “begin the re-procurement of health and homelessness contracted services” within six months. The administration provided few public updates about that goal until Monday, but Charles Lutvak, a Lurie spokesperson, said the administration began the effort a “long time ago,” and “there was a lot of work involved that got us to this point.” Mike Levine, who assumed leadership of the homelessness department in early July, explained the proposed overhaul of contracts to the Homelessness Oversight Commission in early August. He drew on a site visit his office conducted with a contractor and noted that most of the meeting was spent talking about the provider’s internal costs. “I think we talked more about cleaning supplies than we did about how we’re moving clients out of an emergency housing situation,” Levine told the oversight commission in August. “When you shift the contract, you shift the conversation away from those sorts of expense-related matters to, ‘Why did we all get into this work? And how are we helping and advancing people?’” About $500 million of the city’s homelessness department budget is in the form of contracts awarded to providers. The lack of oversight of those funds was the subject of a scathing civil grand jury report released in June. One of its main findings was that the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has internal data that it isn’t using effectively to identify troubled housing sites or the outside contractors operating them . Additionally, it criticized the city for not measuring operators by “client safety, exit success criteria, or real performance outcomes.” Additionally, the grand jury couldn’t find a single instance in which contracts were not awarded or renewed following corrective action taken against the providers. Just last week, Lurie’s office issued a response to the citizen-led investigation, shooting down most of its recommendations about how to beef up oversight and transparency in homelessness contracts. As part of the initiative launched Monday, the Lurie administration and the homelessness department said they are working to set transparent performance expectations and tie funding more directly to measurable outcomes. The department is seeking feedback from community members and nonprofit providers on a handful of questions, including how the city should measure success for various programs, which reporting requirements create unnecessary burdens, and to what extent providers should be paid based on program outcomes more than reimbursement for expenses. Feedback can be submitted via online forms or at three listening sessions scheduled for September.

AI’s new frontier: Why Anthropic employees are pouring cash into Alaska governor’s race

The rapidly spreading battle over AI regulation has landed in one of the least likely corners of the country: remote Alaska. The governor’s race in the Last Frontier is attracting hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from AI workers, most of them located here in San Francisco — raising eyebrows in Alaska and illuminating the growing power of the sector to shape political campaigns. Four candidates advanced out of Alaska’s crowded jungle primary earlier this month in the race to replace Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who terms out at the end of this year. The race has largely revolved around the state budget, education funding, and how to tax oil producers. But AI entered the conversation last month, when local outlets reported that Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, who has called for a moratorium on the construction of data centers and other regulations on the AI industry, had outraised the entire primary field, raking in $1.8 million in donations. Hundreds of thousands came from out-of-state tech workers, and more than 20% came from employees of a single company: Anthropic. Six Anthropic employees gave a total of $372,000 to Kriess-Tomkins between February and May, according to campaign finance disclosures. One employee, Drake Thomas, gave $100,000, making him the candidate’s second-biggest donor; four other Anthropic employees — Daniel Ziegler, Jan Lieke, Steven Bills, and Evan Hubinger — are among his top 10 biggest donors. Kreiss-Tomkins, a former legislator from the commercial fishing hub of Sitka, pulled in another $273,000 from people working at AI safety and research groups, including Trajectory Labs, the AI Futures Project, and MATS Research. He brought in another $160,765 from people working at nonprofits or policy groups influential in the space, including three executives at Coefficient Giving, a nonprofit that devotes a large portion of its funds to AI safety efforts. Kreiss-Tomkins did not respond to a request for comment. He has previously stated that his campaign received more donations from Alaska voters than any other campaign, and that he was the first gubernatorial candidate to publicly call for AI regulation in the state. The news of these donations spurred backlash in Alaska, where some questioned whether Kreiss-Tomkins was in the pocket of the AI industry. (One Instagram parody pantomimed him saying, “How was I supposed to know you guys wouldn’t like my AI blood money?”) But it also illuminated a larger trend: Across the country, employees of major AI labs are donating to local and federal candidates at unprecedented levels. The six Anthropic donors to Kreiss-Tomkins’ campaign have donated more than $3 million to federal candidates and PACs in this cycle, and several have maxed out to California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra’s campaign. A Standard analysis found that Anthropic employees gave $3.83 million to federal campaigns in the first two quarters of this year, and OpenAI employees gave $876,000 — markedly more than employees of pre-IPO Google and Airbnb had given at that stage in their companies’ histories. The donations from the AI workers often came in waves, suggesting a degree of coordination among employees. In a single day last fall, 28 employees of Anthropic and OpenAI gave a combined $173,000 to Alex Bores, a New York state senator who was running for Congress. Two days later, 17 employees gave a combined $86,700 to California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress. Other candidates pulling in support from AI donors include Manny Rutinel, a Colorado state representative running for the House, and Zach Wahls, a former Iowa state legislator running for Senate. Like Kreiss-Tomkins, many of these candidates share a commitment to regulating the AI industry. Many AI lab employees have expressed concern about the technology they are building and a desire for the government to regulate it — even against the wishes of some of their executives. At least seven employees of OpenAI have given to a PAC called the Guardrails Alliance, which explicitly counters political spending from AI executives like OpenAI President Greg Brockman. The Alaska donations also appear to be motivated by AI safety concerns. A former state representative, Kreiss-Tomkins was active in AI safety circles as nearly 10 years ago, signing on to an open letter from the major AI safety nonprofit Future of Life Institute in 2017. A source familiar with the AI donors who was not authorized to speak on their behalf said some knew of Kreiss-Tomkins through these AI safety circles and were eager to get someone who shared their concerns elected to office. But why go all-in on Alaska? Many of the AI donors prioritize donations with the maximum possible impact, this person said. Because Alaska is a relatively cheap media market, donations there go further than those made in, say, California or New York. Another person familiar with the donors’ thinking pointed out that Alaska has no cap on campaign donations, allowing AI safety advocates to give more than in other state and federal races. (Voters in the state this month overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure limiting such donations in the primary; the limit will not take effect until the next election.) There’s also the question of how AI policy is being made. The Trump administration and the Republican majority in Congress have shown little interest in passing stringent regulations on the technology. (The president, notably, has accepted tens of millions in donations from AI executives fighting against such regulations.) Instead, such regulation is proceeding mainly via the states. Alex McCoy, a political organizer working on AI regulation, said those hoping for more safety laws are turning to state races as part of a “ratcheting up” strategy. Since AI companies have to follow whatever a state passes to operate there, advocates can effectively raise the floor for AI safety laws by passing increasingly more stringent laws from state to state. That strategy, he said, is “dependent upon maximizing the amount of states where there is a governor and a legislature willing to take on big tech.” Thomas, the Anthropic researcher and Kreiss-Tomkins backer, said in a recent Anchorage Daily News op-ed that AI safety concerns were one of his primary reasons for donating to the candidate. An Alaska native who now lives in San Francisco, Thomas wrote that he is “terrified by the extremely rapid pace of AI development” and wishes it were slower. “I do some of the safety testing Anthropic conducts before releasing each AI model, and I think about ways to improve the company’s safety policies,” he wrote. “But I worry that none of my efforts to improve things at just one company will be enough if there aren’t forward-thinking people like JKT who can help pass laws that will protect the public on a greater scale.” Kreiss-Tomkins, who came out on top of the primary with 22.5% of the vote, has taken pains to distance himself from the AI industry since news of the donations broke. He recently debuted a proposal to ban data center construction in Alaska until the legislature passes “comprehensive regulation on data center development” and suggested other regulations like a ban on AI deepfakes and mandated disclosures on AI-generated political ads. Still, in an interview with the Northern Journal , he admitted that he should have seen the backlash to his AI donors coming. “I think I failed to give full appreciation to the optics of this,” he said. “Because, having known [Thomas] and the work of these other folks for a while, it was like, ‘Oh, these are the good guys.’”

The SF supervisor who never left: Ahsha Safaí’s City Hall lobbying blitz

Yes, we are covering the San Francisco Democratic Party’s endorsements Wednesday night. Stay tuned for coverage in the coming hours. In the latest “Where Are They Now: City Hall Edition,” a quick scan of the Ethics Commission’s lobbyist database shows one former official who never exited the gilded dome: Supervisor Ahsha Safaí , who termed out in 2025. While city officials have a one-year “cooling off” period during which they’re barred from lobbying government, as soon as he legally could, Safaí lobbied like his life depended on it. Lobbyists are required to report which government officials they spoke to, when, and about what issue. Safai contacted officials 23 times in March and April, 32 times in May, 52 times in June, and 24 times in July, the latest month for which data is available. He didn’t respond to a request for comment. Safaí’s clients include the Mission gas station Doubletime , residential treatment center provider Psynergy Programs, and the influential San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council. He tapped his Rolodex for those clients, lobbying Supervisors Matt Dorsey , Bilal Mahmood, Connie Chan, Stephen Sherrill, Rafael Mandelman , and Danny Sauter. He has also hit up Mayor Daniel Lurie ; the mayor’s chief of staff, Aly Bonde , and head of communications, Han Zou ; fire chief Dean Crispin ; and a small army of city staffers. The topics have been just as diverse, ranging from the city’s project labor agreement (an issue Safaí worked on as a supervisor ), a proposed real estate transfer tax, training programs for climate change initiatives, and obtaining street permits. The sheer number of contacts raised the eyebrows of City Hall insiders. Even some of the most prolific and well-known lobbyists rack up only a dozen contacts with city officials in a month. But Safaí is a special case, they said. “Ahsha, whatever you want to say about the guy, if you remember his campaigns, he was a relentless campaigner,” one of those insiders said. “When Ahsha had a thing he was pursuing, he would not leave you alone.” Or, as another insider put it, “That man looooves to talk.” — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez Got tips? Send them to us at powerplay@sfstandard.com . OPENGOV HEARING : It’s been unclear for months whether Supervisor Jackie Fielder would hold a hearing about OpenGov, the controversial software Lurie procured for the city in October to revamp its convoluted permitting infrastructure. Fielder’s office confirmed to Power Play that it’s finally going down: Sept. 2 before the Budget and Finance Committee. The timing is important. The hearing will take place right before the three-member board — comprising Supervisors Dorsey, Sauter, and Chyanne Chen — votes on a major extension of the software that is set to cost the city tens of millions in the years to come . Fielder will focus on the findings of a recent Budget and Legislative Analyst report, which found that the OpenGov deal lacked transparency but didn’t violate city contracting rules. Liz Watty , a Planning Department official and one of the chief overseers of the OpenGov project, will speak, as will Fred Brousseau , director of policy analysis for the BLA, and a representative of the city’s Office of Contract Administration. — Gabriel Greschler LURIE’S RADICAL FOCUS: A handful of big-city mayors have become national figures lately, held up as a preview of where the Democratic Party is headed. Lurie wants no part of it. He made that crystal-clear again this week in a rare sit-down interview with a national outlet. In a taped interview posted Monday, a Washington Post reporter repeatedly tried to draw Lurie in — asking about AI policy debates in Washington, mayors shaping the future of the Democratic Party, and his own tendency to dodge national politics. Lurie wouldn’t bite. He steered every question back to San Francisco. Asked whether he sees himself as bucking a trend of more “radical” mayors, Lurie turned the premise around. “I think it is radical for an elected official to think about his or her city and just stay focused on that,” he said. Without naming names, he took a jab at other elected officials who attempt to use their local positions as a stepping stone to higher office. “I didn’t come into office thinking about what was next for me. I think actually we saw too much of that from our elected leaders,” he said. Call it principle or call it positioning. Either way, Lurie has found his own version of radicalism. So far, it seems to be working in his favor. — Maggie Angst RED ALERT : When a magnitude 7.0 earthquake shook Northern California one night in December 2024, San Francisco was placed under a tsunami warning. It caused widespread panic, and the city’s emergency alerts to residents didn’t provide guidance on what to do in the event of a tsunami, according to an internal review of the incident discussed in a civil grand jury investigation published in June . Another internal review of emergency alerts for a July 2025 tsunami advisory, following a magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Russia, found that the city had to “ rush translation during the event .” Both situations exposed shortcomings in the city’s emergency alert system, and they’re just two of hundreds that were missing crucial information, as identified by the June audit. In a response this week to the grand jury, signed by Lurie and the heads of the police, fire, and emergency management departments, the city agreed with most of the report’s findings and recommendations for improving the way it communicates about emergencies. By January 2028, the city will adopt clear written standards for what information should go into emergency alerts, including the source of the emergency, hazard, location, specific guidance, and time. It will also standardize alerts that communicate when an emergency has ended and will comply with the city’s Language Access Ordinance. The city’s detailed responses are available here . — Omar Rashad

SF nonprofit paid out $5.6M without checking whether anyone did the work

An audit released Wednesday by the city controller found a pattern of financial mismanagement involving a Japantown nonprofit, including payouts of $5.6 million in stipends over five years without documentation verifying that recipients had performed the work. City auditors determined that the Japanese Community Youth Council’s work training program was structured in a “vague and fragmented” manner, leading to a “lack of city oversight, mismanagement, and accountability.” While the nonprofit’s grant increased from $1.95 million in 2019 to $13.3 million in 2023, participation in its programming remained low. Mayor London Breed promised it would serve 3,000 young people per year, but auditors found it fell far short of that. The program — part of Breed’s 2018 Opportunities for All initiative — was funded by the city’s Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families and managed by the Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission, which Mayor Daniel Lurie last year merged into the Agency for Human Rights, has faced major scandals, including corruption charges in March against its former executive director, Sheryl Davis . The audit says the Japanese Community Youth Council hired Davis’ sister as its program manager, at Davis’ request. It does not name Davis’ sister. According to the report, the nonprofit refused to hand over the contract for Davis’ sister, saying it was outside the scope of the audit. That left auditors unable to determine her role at the nonprofit or details about her work. “The audit found a disjointed structure to execute the agreement and the entities involved … were confused about their respective roles and responsibilities,” the audit states. “This lack of clarity contributed to JCYC’s deficient fiscal controls and practices surrounding budget, invoicing, payroll, and record retention in addition to inadequate city oversight, mismanagement of the agreement, and weak accountability in both the fiscal and programmatic sides of the OFA program.” Among the audit’s findings: The Human Rights Commission directed that Japanese Community Youth Council program participants be paid stipends rather than wages. “This created changes in how participants were classified, eligibility was determined, and evidence of work performed. In total, JCYC paid $5.6 million in stipend payments to OFA participants without verifying they were eligible to work, without ensuring they had performed the work or completed assignments, and without documenting how the amount paid to each was determined,” the audit states. The Japanese Community Youth Council “could not demonstrate that 14 of 20 program operating expenses we reviewed were appropriate and compliant due to difficulty in providing records or inaccurate, insufficient, or inconsistent records.” The Human Rights Commission and Japanese Community Youth Council “generally lacked documentation and records for program and payroll decisions and directions given during the five-year period of the grant agreement reviewed, fiscal years 2019-20 through 2023-24.” The Human Rights Commission did “not responsibly manage the program,” and “key documents and records” were not accessible to the city. A spokesperson for the Agency for Human Rights said the department agrees with the audit’s findings and has made changes in response to 27 recommendations from the controller’s office. “The young people who participate in this paid internship initiative deserve nothing but the very best in terms of program management, service delivery, and professional practice. The Human Rights Commission is committed to ensuring this happens going forward,” Devi Zinzuvadia said in a statement. Jon Osaki, executive director of the Japanese Community Youth Council, said in a statement, “The audit report identifies several opportunities to strengthen JCYC’s financial management, internal controls, and documentation. While most improvements are already underway, others will continue to be implemented through the organization’s commitment to continuous improvement.” In a follow-up email, Osaki said that his organization processed payments in accordance with the city's instructions. He added that the Japanese Community Youth Council only learned that they had hired Davis’ sister after Davis resigned from the Human Rights Commission. The Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families did not respond to a request for comment. The findings come nearly two years after a City Hall scandal erupted when The Standard discovered that Davis was sharing a home with a nonprofit executive with whom she had signed contracts. The revelations cast a shadow on Breed, who was close to Davis and had charged her with overseeing a signature program called the Dream Keeper Initiative, which directed tens of millions of dollars toward the Black community. In March, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins charged Davis with 19 criminal counts, including felony misappropriation of public funds and felony perjury. Jenkins also charged James Spingola, the former executive director of Collective Impact and the man to whom Davis had directed contracts.

Lurie rejects core reforms of homelessness oversight audit

Mayor Daniel Lurie rejected several key recommendations from a highly critical San Francisco civil grand jury report on the city’s oversight of homelessness services, including proposals to publicly track deaths and overdoses by individual housing sites and subject nonprofit contracts to greater scrutiny. The June report found serious gaps in how the city oversees the nearly $500 million it spends annually on nonprofit homelessness contracts. The grand jury found that, despite collecting reports on hundreds of deaths, overdoses, and other serious incidents, city leaders have failed to systematically analyze related internal data to identify troubled housing sites or service providers. The investigation also questioned whether the 3-year-old Homelessness Oversight Commission is doing right by its name, finding that it had largely stopped reviewing contract renewals and extensions and had not fully used its authority to hold the Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department and its outside contractors accountable. The grand jury recommended that the oversight commission request audits of permanent supportive housing sites following spikes in overdoses and deaths at the facilities. Lurie wasn’t on board with that. In a detailed response to the grand jury released Monday, the mayor’s office acknowledged that the oversight commission has the authority to conduct performance audits of the city’s homelessness department, as well as systemic factors behind overdoses and deaths. However, the mayor’s office said the commission has limited analytical capacity and staffing. And Lurie hasn’t indicated a desire to change that. His office added that the homelessness department “is already partnering with departments to strategically address issues of overdoses in [permanent supportive housing].” The grand jury also recommended that the homelessness department regularly bring contracts to the Homelessness Oversight Commission for review and approval — an idea also rejected by Lurie. His office declared that contract renewals and extensions are administrative matters handled by the homelessness department’s director and aren’t under the purview of the oversight commission, based on the San Francisco’s city charter . “Returning all renewals and extensions to the consent calendar would add administrative burden without a corresponding increase in oversight value,” the mayor’s office wrote. Why the mayor responded Lurie’s responses Monday offer a view into whether the oversight commission — formed after voters approved Proposition C in November 2022 — has proven effective. His office had 60 days to respond to the grand jury. In a letter Monday , Lurie and Mike Levine, the homelessness department’s executive director, thanked the Civil Grand Jury for its work. “We commend the Jury’s desire to strengthen transparency and data-driven oversight across the City’s homelessness response system,” the letter said. “Further, we thank the Jury for raising the importance of client safety in HSH-funded programs and for the time its members devoted to examining how data can improve services and outcomes.” Every year, the San Francisco Superior Court staffs the jury with 19 members selected from a pool of applicants to serve a one-year term. They choose a few issues to investigate and issue reports by the end of June every year. While the mayor’s office disagreed fully or partially with all but one of the grand jury’s findings, it did indicate it will implement a few of the report’s recommendations. That includes evaluating nonprofit operators of housing sites using resident safety outcomes and developing automated alerts for when housing sites deserve greater scrutiny. Should internal data be made public? A quarter of all overdose deaths in San Francisco occur at permanent supportive housing sites, according to 2024 data cited in the grand jury report. When a death, overdose or other serious incident occurs at a housing site, nonprofit operators are required to submit a critical incident report to the homelessness department within 24 hours. Hundreds of those reports are filed to the city over the course of a year, and the grand jury found that city leaders aren’t using data from them to identify housing sites with troubling safety trends, such as a spike in overdoses or deaths. The finding isn’t new: The controller’s office flagged that issue in a report two years ago. On that point, Lurie agrees. The mayor’s office acknowledged that the city’s homelessness department could be using data from critical incident reports from nonprofit service providers to “more systematically identify safety trends.” One of the grand jury’s key recommendations calls for data from critical incident reports to be aggregated and anonymized into quarterly reports to the Homelessness Oversight Commission. The grand jury also recommended publishing the data on a public dashboard. Lurie rejected both recommendations. “The City will not implement this recommendation,” his office wrote in its response. “HSH already reports relevant public-safety data monthly for neighborhoods with high concentrations of HSH-funded sites and shares CIR information with the Department of Public Health and other operational partners as needed to support oversight and safety planning.” Lurie’s office added that some data could be made available to those who file public records requests. The grand jury report emphasized that outcomes for unhoused people at permanent supportive housing sites must be among the main benchmarks city leaders use when reviewing the work of contracted service providers — typically nonprofit organizations — running those sites. The report also noted that the 2024 statistic — that 26% of overdose deaths took place at permanent supportive housing sites — was an increase from prior years .

A two-supervisor brawl tests Lurie’s kumbaya era at City Hall

If you had asked City Hall observers in January 2025, when Mayor Daniel Lurie took office, to guess which board members would be at each other’s throats roughly a year and a half later, they likely would not have said Supervisor Bilal Mahmood and President Rafael Mandelman. Both were of the moderate persuasion and, on the surface, appeared to agree on hot-button issues. But on Monday, Mahmood accused Mandelman of stripping him of committee assignments over a legislative spat — the latest feud in a slowly simmering battle between the two lawmakers in recent weeks. “It’s disappointing,” Mahmood said of Mandelman’s decision to remove him from the Land Use and Transportation Committee and the Government Audit and Oversight Committee amid a larger reshuffling of assignments. (He was placed on the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee.) “That’s not a great signal of leadership.” Mandelman did not dispute that his moves were at least tangentially related to Mahmood’s recent efforts to amend a historic preservation bill championed by the board president and the mayor. Mahmood has contended that the bill runs counter to efforts to increase housing stock; Mandelman has waved away such criticism as untrue. “He decided to pick a fight around this and to hijack this legislation,” Mandelman said. “I don’t think that is particularly collegial. I don’t particularly want that from the land use committee.” This represents the biggest dust-up yet between supervisors in the age of Lurie, which promised more cooperation than the London Breed administration, known for infighting, hurt feelings, and lawmakers refusing to talk to one another. Signs that something was amiss have been brewing: In July, Mahmood lashed out at Lurie and Supervisor Connie Chan for squashing his plan to levy a tax on vacant grocery stores. That showed how Mahmood, who represents the Tenderloin and surrounding neighborhoods, is trying for a Zohran Mamdani style of anti-corporatism and YIMBY political progressivism at City Hall. Why now? When Lurie took office in January 2025, there was broad agreement on the board — barring a few members — on how to address the topic du jour: public safety. But the winds have changed, Mahmood told The Standard in a recent interview. Public safety is no longer the pressing matter, as crimes like car break-ins are on the decline . Instead, it’s all about housing and affordability as San Francisco faces a bonkers rise in rental prices , which, from his perspective, has skewed the previous alliances on the board. “San Francisco is used to seeing stuff from the moderate-progressive [lens],” said Mahmood. “But when the moderates are not consistently in support of housing, and the ‘progressive’” — his quotation marks — “is showing as more pro-housing, that leads to different coalitions forming on different issues. That is what has shifted.” Asked about Mahmood’s take, Mandelman said there have been real disagreements over public safety in the last year and a half. He said Mahmood is “finding out what elected official he wants to be.” “He was elected to represent a district that was represented by Dean Preston,” said Mandelman, referring to the democratic socialist supervisor whom Mahmood ousted and was considered one of the most progressive members of the board. “I think he’s been figuring out how to represent that district over the last year and a half. I don’t fault him for it if he’s been discovering that representing the district involves more conflict with the mayor or the board president.” Mandelman also dispels the idea that harmony is dead at City Hall. “I think there’s still a supermajority of supervisors who want to see Lurie succeed and want to see the city succeed, and that those are interrelated,” Mandelman said. “We don’t always agree on everything. Majorities shift. But I do think it’s premature to do the obituary for the era of good feeling at City Hall.” But there may be other reasons for the cantankerous exchanges between Mahmood and Mandelman: plain ol’ politics and musical chairs. Mandelman has expressed interest in Assemblymember Matt Haney’s seat . Haney could run for state Sen. Scott Wiener’s seat if Wiener is successful in November in his bid to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress. Who else, you might ask, is eyeing the Assembly seat? Mahmood has chatted about it, as reported last month, which wouldn’t be a terribly surprising move considering his unsuccessful bid for Haney’s seat in 2022. For now, he’s staying mum. “I have every intention to complete the rest of my term,” Mahmood said. Asked about his potential political competition, Mandelman didn’t mince words: “Most politicians believe that the world would be well-served by them occupying a higher position than the one they currently hold. And that is part of the disease.” There’s one person who appears to be trying to keep the peace, at least publicly. “Will let the supervisors involved speak to it themselves,” a Lurie spokesperson said Monday.

A murdered father, then foster care. Now she’s fighting to replace Eric Swalwell

State Sen. Aisha Wahab has built her career around the idea that power exists to protect those who have none. “If you’re going to sit in a position of power or authority, do good — and that’s for the most vulnerable,” she told The Standard. It’s a governing philosophy shaped by a childhood that offered few reasons to trust institutions. That instinct — protect the powerless, distrust the powerful — is about to be tested on a bigger stage. Wahab, a Democrat, is the front-runner to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell in California’s 14th Congressional District, after his seven-term hold collapsed this year under sexual misconduct allegations . The winner of the Aug. 18 special election will only serve through January — a Nov. 3 rematch will decide who will hold the seat for a full term. Wahab’s path to victory is no certainty. She is facing a $2 million ad blitz from outside groups supporting her Democratic challenger Melissa Hernandez, the BART Board president and healthcare director for Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert. Long before Wahab was fighting off an opponent’s ad campaign, she was fighting just to survive. Her parents fled Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and settled in New York City, where she was born. Her father was murdered soon after — the case remains unsolved — and her mother died not long after that. Wahab and her older sister grew up in the foster care system until they were adopted by an Afghan American couple in Fremont, when Wahab was about 9. “I’m far more fortunate than many foster care kids — less than 3% obtain a college degree — but it comes with a significant amount of baggage and isolation, being an outsider in many ways,” she said. “So I carry all this trauma, and I try to use it for good.” Wahab won the June primary by roughly 26 points, but groups backing Hernandez have spent more than $2 million in the past two weeks on ads to try to defeat the state senator. The bulk of the cash came from a super PAC tied to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which has received funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. After eight years in public office, Wahab has built a career on refusing to soften, hedge, or wait her turn, even if that means crossing fellow Democrats. It doesn’t always win her goodwill, but she’s not particularly interested in that kind of currency. “I get myself into so much trouble with so many people because of [my] drive,” she said. “But I believe in doing the right thing as best as possible.” Her 2023 bill to ban caste-based discrimination , which was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, brought her death threats and a recall campaign. And when Democratic Party leaders tried to coalesce around a single, low-profile caretaker candidate to fill the remainder of Swalwell’s term, which ends in January, Wahab refused to defer. “Am I supposed to just sit there and nod my head at everything that’s said to me, or am I supposed to be thinking critically and actually do my job — hold people accountable, both allies and opponents in this political world?” she said. “It doesn’t matter about this particular seat — I genuinely care about listening to people and serving the community.” In 2018, she became the first Afghan American woman elected to public office in the U.S. when she won a seat on the Hayward City Council. In 2022, she became the first Muslim woman elected to the California State Senate. While on the Hayward City Council in 2022, Wahab said she was appalled to learn about the “preventable tragedy” of Sophia Mason, an 8-year-old Hayward girl who died after months of documented abuse that the county had been warned about but failed to stop. Once in the state Legislature, Wahab pushed for an audit of the county’s child welfare agency and later pressed state regulators to assess whether the agency had fixed any of the problems identified by the auditor. Hayward City Councilmember Angela Andrews, who served with Wahab, commended her focus on the issue. “Child welfare has always been a concern for her,” said Andrews, who has endorsed Wahab. “She’s one of few members in the state legislature that focuses on, particularly, Black children.” Last month, Wahab stood outside Alameda County’s headquarters in Oakland and challenged county leaders — none of whom were in attendance — to “do your job.” She was reacting to a state report that found worsening conditions in the county’s Department of Children and Family Services. Callers to the abuse hotline waited more than an hour for help and referrals were downgraded without documentation. “If you cannot protect these children, the public may decide what to do about you,” she said. “The failure is public. The deadlines are public, and from this day forward, the accountability will be public.” In Sacramento, Wahab has authored laws that mandate a statewide audit of all untested rape kits and criminalize AI-generated images of child sexual abuse. “It’s always been important to me to protect vulnerable communities — women and children in particular,” she said. “I’m ethnically Afghan, so I see the devastation in communities and cultures when women and children are not prioritized.” Wahab has the endorsement of the California Democratic Party, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and many of the state’s largest labor unions. Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus PAC, called Wahab a “fighter” who is “bold, fearless, and rooted in community.” Hernandez won endorsements from several local police and fire associations, county board supervisors, and moderate Democratic officials, including Reps. Sam Liccardo and Adam Gray. Ads backing Hernandez cast Wahab as a soft-on-crime candidate, seizing on a few of her committee votes. The ads highlight a 2024 bill that initially proposed making it an automatic felony to solicit sex with anyone under the age of 18. The Senate Public Safety Committee, chaired by Wahab, amended the measure so that automatic felony penalties would apply when the victim was younger than 16 or was an identified victim of human trafficking. Other ads point to the committee’s failure to advance several bills that would have increased penalties or issued homicide warnings to convicted fentanyl dealers. She has also faced criticism over the years for voting against several pro-housing and criminal justice reforms. Hernandez campaign manager Ajay Mohan described his candidate as a “fighter who will lower costs and support strong public safety, and serve as a strong Latina voice in Congress.” Echoing the attack ads, Mohan said Wahab has failed to answer for “her own record of lowering sentences for child predators and blocking bipartisan fentanyl bills that would have held dealers accountable.” Wahab has called the ads “false and misleading,” arguing that they ignore her voting record aimed at protecting the communities they claim she’s failed. If elected to Congress, Wahab said, she will prioritize shielding social services from Trump administration budget cuts while cracking down on corporate price-gouging and monopolies. “It’s very frustrating, because the record clearly shows I’ve done this work for years,” she said. “And I will continue to utilize this position to again do what’s right, do what’s best for the larger community.”

Asian Art Museum

Office of the City Administrator

Adult Probation Department

Airport

Arts Commission

Office of the Assessor-Recorder

Board of Appeals

Office of the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors

Office of the City Attorney

Department of Children, Youth and Their Families

Controller's Office

Planning Department

Civil Service Commission

District Attorney's Office

Department of Building Inspection

Department of Early Childhood

Department of Emergency Management

Department of Police Accountability

Department of Public Health

Department of Public Works

Office of Economic and Workforce Development

Environment Department

Ethics Commission

Fine Arts Museums

Fire Department

Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing

Human Rights Commission

Department of Human Resources

Human Services Agency

Health Service System

Juvenile Probation Department

Public Library

Municipal Transportation Agency

Office of the Mayor

Public Defender's Office

Police Department

Port

Public Utilities Commission

Recreation and Park Department

Department of Elections

Retirement System

Rent Board

Sheriff's Department Office of Inspector General

Sheriff's Department

Department of Technology

Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector

War Memorial

Department on the Status of Women

General City Responsibilities

General Administration & Finance

Culture & Recreation

Community Health

Human Welfare & Neighborhood Development

Public Works, Transportation & Commerce

Public Protection

SF Civil Grand Jury

STATUTORY signing duty: indictments 'signed by the foreman' (Penal Code 940); presides

SF Civil Grand Jury Foreperson

SF Superior Court

SF Superior Court Presiding Judge

judicial assignments; court administration (CRC 10.603); CEO direction

The Abatement Appeals Board provides a final review process for City permitting decisions. It ensures fair and efficient adjudication of permit-related disputes before an impartial panel. The board holds authority to make binding decisions on appeals concerning notices of abatement.

Abatement Appeals Board

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 1

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 2

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 3

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 4

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 5

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 6

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 7

The Access Appeals Commission provides final reviews for a wide range of City permitting decisions. It ensures an efficient, fair, and expeditious permit issuance process through an impartial panel. The commission holds authority to make binding decisions on appeals related to City permits.

Access Appeals Commission

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 1

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 2

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 3

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 4

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 5

The Adult Day Health Care Planning Council advises on the development and improvement of adult day health care services. It provides expertise in healthcare planning, policy recommendations, and program evaluation. Key responsibilities include assessing community needs and advising on service delivery enhancements.

Adult Day Health Care Planning Council

Adult Probation Department supervises individuals on probation and facilitates their reintegration into the community. It provides reentry and rehabilitative services, including victim restitution and financial assistance for crime victims. The department values public safety, offender rehabilitation, and community partnerships.

Cristel Tullock

The Advisory Committee of Street Artists and Crafts Examiners evaluates arts and crafts applicants and monitors program compliance. It conducts studio visits and public screenings to ensure adherence to established criteria. Members also revise program criteria and undertake additional tasks as needed.

Advisory Committee of Street Artists and Crafts Examiners

The Advisory Council on Human Rights advises on anti-discrimination laws and racial equity initiatives. It provides expertise on reparations and public policy impacts on Black communities. It guides efforts to establish partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities in San Francisco.

Advisory Council on Human Rights

San Francisco Airport manages air traffic operations and ensures safe aircraft movement. It provides parking facilities and maintains airport infrastructure to accommodate travelers and staff. The department oversees ground transportation and coordinates with airlines for efficient passenger services.

Mike Nakornkhet

The Airport Commission oversees policy and strategic planning for San Francisco International Airport. It makes key decisions on airport development projects and financial management. It ensures compliance with regulations and collaborates on initiatives like terminal naming.

Airport Commission

Airport Commission Commissioner 1

Airport Commission Commissioner 2

Airport Commission Commissioner 3

Mark Buell

Susan Leal

Airport Director

Animal Care and Control Department manages animal sheltering, adoption, and emergency response services. It enforces animal-related laws and regulations, ensuring the humane treatment and safety of animals. The department also provides public education on responsible pet ownership and animal welfare.

Animal Care and Control Department

Virginia Donohue

Animal Care and Control Department, Director

The San Francisco Arts Commission oversees the integration of arts into city life and ensures public access to cultural experiences. It makes decisions on public art programs and allocates grants to support local artists and performances. The commission actively shapes policies affecting the arts ecosystem in San Francisco.

Arts Commission Commissioner 1

Arts Commission Commissioner 2

Arts Commission Commissioner 3

Arts Commission Commissioner 4

Arts Commission Commissioner 5

Suzanne Ferras

Jessica Rothschild

Seth Brenzel

JD Beltran

Marcus Shelby

J Riccardo Benavides

Nabiel Musleh

Charles (Chuck) Collins

Lydia So

Arts Commission Commissioner 15

San Francisco Arts Commission invests in a vibrant arts community and shapes cultural policy. It enlivens the urban environment through public art programs and supports diverse artistic expressions. The commission facilitates meetings and discussions to engage the community in cultural development.

Ralph Remington

Arts Commission, Director of Cultural Affairs

The Asian Art Commission determines policy and administers the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. It oversees museum operations and collaborates with the Asian Art Museum Foundation on fundraising efforts. Commissioners ensure the museum's strategic direction and financial sustainability.

Asian Art Commission

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 1

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 2

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 3

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 4

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 5

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 6

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 7

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 8

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 9

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 10

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 11

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 12

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 13

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 14

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 15

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 16

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 17

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 18

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 19

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 20

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 21

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 22

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 23

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 24

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 25

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 26

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 27

Asian Art Museum showcases Asian art and culture through exhibitions and educational programs. It offers diverse collections and hosts special events to engage the community. The museum fosters cultural appreciation and understanding by providing access to its extensive art collections.

Dr. Soyoung Lee

Asian Art Museum, Director

The Assessment Appeals Board #1 hears property tax assessment appeals in San Francisco. It evaluates evidence presented by taxpayers and the Assessor to determine property values. The Board has the authority to make final decisions on assessments regardless of property type or value.

Assessment Appeals Board #1

Assessment Appeals Board #1 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #1 Commissioner 2

Assessment Appeals Board #1 Commissioner 3

Assessment Appeals Board #1 Commissioner 4

Adena Gilbert

Paul Bellar

Quirina Mitchell

Hilary Winslow

The Assessment Appeals Board #2 adjudicates property tax assessment appeals for San Francisco taxpayers. It evaluates evidence presented by taxpayers and the Assessor to determine accurate property values. The Board exercises authority to render final decisions on residential properties and specific real estate assessments.

Assessment Appeals Board #2

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 2

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 3

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 4

Louisa Mendoza

Joyce Lewis

Nicholas Goldman

Michelle Domingo

The Assessment Appeals Board #3 provides a platform for San Francisco taxpayers to contest property tax assessments. It conducts hearings where evidence from both taxpayers and the Assessor is evaluated. The Board makes binding decisions on property assessments based on presented evidence.

Assessment Appeals Board #3

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 2

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 3

Marc Dickow

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 5

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 6

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 7

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 8

Assesses property, applies exemptions, collects transfer taxes, and records official documents.

Assessor-Recorder