Lurie wanted San Francisco to bounce back. Now he’s got an affordability crisis

For years, the overwhelming perception of San Francisco was that of a crime-ridden liberal hellhole from which residents were desperate to escape. Now it feels like the hottest city in the country. The reversal comes as AI money pours in, with companies filling long-empty downtown offices , and their high-income workers driving a red-hot housing and rental market . Mayor Daniel Lurie, who rose to power in 2024 on a campaign promise to focus on public safety, has prioritized reselling San Francisco as a city on the rise — one Instagram reel at a time . It’s a remarkable turnaround for a city that spent years trying to convince residents, employers, and investors that its best days weren’t behind it. Now, as that recovery takes hold, it is reshaping Lurie’s governing agenda. The boom that is reversing the doom-loop trend has also revived San Francisco’s oldest challenge: affordability. Lurie, who spent his first 18 months in office cleaning up San Francisco’s streets , is discovering that he has a more pernicious problem to solve. “I am the first one to say we are not where we want to be,” the mayor said this week in an interview with The Standard at his City Hall office about his proposals to mitigate the high cost of living. “We have to make this city more affordable, so that families can stay here and thrive here.” That San Francisco is expensive is not breaking news. But if living costs were pricey before, there’s no adequate adjective to describe current conditions. The typical home value was about $1.4 million in June , according to Zillow, which city economists reference for their data analyses, a 9.5% increase from the year before. The median monthly rent has surged 19% over the last year to $3,558 , according to Apartment List’s July report. Those numbers illustrate the paradox facing City Hall. The economic recovery that has made San Francisco one of the country’s most attractive real estate markets is also making it harder for many people to afford living here. “It has been the fastest increase that I’ve ever seen in one single season,” Compass agent Ruth Krishnan said. Before you ask: “Yes, AI is definitely part of what is increasing the price, and it’s probably going to increase it more,” she said. “Now these companies are going to go public, and there is going to be even more money.” Ted Egan, San Francisco’s chief economist, said the eye-popping prices come after a “major adjustment” during COVID, when tens of thousands fled the city, according to state population estimates , chilling the housing market. During that time, San Francisco went from being extremely expensive compared with most cities to just expensive, Egan said. Rents that were once three times the national average are now a little more than double. Even so, “our rents are growing much faster than in other places, and AI is the big reason for that,” said Egan, who himself made the choice to relocate out of San Francisco to a smaller city outside the Bay Area. But the consequences extend well beyond the housing market. Rising prices are forcing City Hall to confront a broader question: Who can still afford to live in San Francisco if the recovery continues at this pace? San Francisco prices long ago pushed out a good chunk of the working-class population. But the appealing new image means that even some high-earning workers can’t afford to stay — fueling the fear that the city is becoming a haven solely for millionaire AI and tech workers. “This is not an issue that is unique to lower-income workers versus middle-class versus even tech workers,” said Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who recently clashed with the mayor over grocery affordability legislation . “Every single person I represent in District 5 has said it is too expensive to live here.” Lurie told The Standard it shouldn’t be — and can’t remain that way if the recovery is to last. “I want families working in every industry to be able to stay and afford to live here,” he said, adding that San Francisco’s economic recovery is dependent on a diverse workforce outside the tech sector. Lurie is acutely aware that San Francisco has ridden a series of tech booms and busts over the past three decades. While AI is fueling the latest resurgence, the city can’t afford to become overly dependent on a single industry again, he said: “It cannot be one industry, and that’s why we’re talking to business leaders of all backgrounds, saying, ‘We want you here.’” Part of that strategy is recruiting universities to the city, including Vanderbilt , which Lurie hopes will create a more stable mix of jobs and activity beyond the AI sector. He said the city is talking to universities focused not just on technology but on arts, culture, and manufacturing. “We have focused on how we attract universities. Not one, but multiple universities downtown. How do we get more professors and teachers, and how do we have more life in our downtown core?” Diversifying the workforce, however, will require far more housing. Lurie pointed to his signature Family Zoning Plan , which he said will pave the way for tens of thousands more housing units over the next five years. He is also working with Supervisor Myrna Melgar to shore up funds for affordable housing through the city’s Housing Trust Fund . “We need to build more housing. For decades, we in this very progressive city have said no to new neighbors,” Lurie said. But affordability is about more than housing, he pointed out. He has also zeroed in on two of the biggest recurring expenses for families: childcare and transportation. He noted that San Francisco is “the first city in the country to provide access to free early childhood care ” for certain families with children up to age 5. “I’ve had many parents say, ‘You’re saving me $36,000 a year per child,’” Lurie said, emphasizing that San Francisco is the first city to offer such a robust program. ( Take that, Mamdani .) “If they have two, that’s $72,000. It’s made a big difference for some families.” Lurie has also worked to qualify a local parcel tax for the November ballot that is expected to generate around $150 million annually for Muni, plus another $10 million to strengthen transit services. “I want people to be able to get around our city so they don’t have to use rideshare, they don’t have to buy a car, they don’t have to have car insurance, they don’t have to pay for monthly parking.” Cyrus Hall, a transportation advocate, said Lurie’s support is a major boost. “The fact that he is popular and the fact that he is willing to spend political capital on this is great,” Hall said. A thriving transportation system is critical for working-class families who can’t afford car expenses and rely on an affordable public transit system to get around town, Hall said. But Lurie admits that some of his efforts will take time — long after he leaves office — before families feel the broader financial impact. “The unfortunate part is it’s not going to be solved overnight,” Lurie said. “When you have 30-plus years of not building enough housing, it’s going to take us years and years to get there, if not longer.” Critics say that’s exactly the problem. Whether the Family Zoning Plan will make a meaningful difference is debatable. San Francisco faces a state mandate to plan for more than 80,000 new homes by 2031 . The city completed 2,832 units in 2025, with roughly half designated as 100% affordable, according to the Department of Building Inspection. So far this year, 413 units have been completed, 276 of them affordable. “The problem with affordability in San Francisco is we are always working on the thing that we should have been working on 10 years ago,” said Mahmood, who is a renter. “The city is doing the bare minimum to comply with state laws, rather than thinking about how to fundamentally solve the problem.” Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, said San Francisco is “at best treading water” on solving the housing crisis. She argues that the city should pursue more aggressive short-term measures while waiting for new housing to be built. More immediate action to lower costs, Foote said, could include declaring a housing emergency to streamline production, waiving all impact fees, or proposing “ single-stair reform ,” which would allow certain apartment buildings to have one exit stairway instead of the required two. “I’m not saying they are doing nothing,” Foote said. “But there are bolder actions they are not taking that would have an impact today.” Advocates worry that without immediate action, San Franciscans across the socioeconomic spectrum will continue to leave. They range from hospital workers and police officers who were born in the city to young parents who hoped to raise first-generation San Franciscans but are giving up on that dream because it feels unattainable. Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, warned of a future in which restaurant, hotel, and construction workers can’t live in the city they serve, and first responders are forced to turn down jobs because commuting to a San Francisco hospital isn’t possible. “There is nowhere for them to go,” said Tavaglione. She worries that Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss family fortune, is relying on “ corporations and the billionaires, the millionaires ,” to rebuild San Francisco, “but without a plan on where people are going to live.” “Working people are the only ones who keep neighborhoods vibrant,” she said. “So losing working people will destroy neighborhoods.” Whether San Francisco’s comeback becomes a broad-based recovery — or a boom that benefits primarily those who can already afford it — may be the question that defines Lurie’s mayoralty.

Mamdani-inspired tax on SF’s empty grocery stores is off the ballot, but not off the table

Supervisor Bilal Mahmood spent months working on legislation to tax San Francisco’s vacant grocery stores. But when it became clear that the measure wouldn’t have the votes to make it through committee, let alone to the fall ballot, he changed tack — reaching out to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team, whose own push for city-run grocers inspired his plan in the first place. Now, instead of bringing a measure to the city’s electorate , he’s asking the Board of Supervisors to pass a narrower version by ordinance. The new proposal will trade what he called his original “carrot-and-stick approach” for incentives alone: fee waivers, corner-store conversions, and a zoning reform borrowed from New York City. Mahmood’s original measure, the Affordable Groceries Act, aimed to subsidize new stores primarily by taxing large chains that leave storefronts vacant. The District 5 supervisor said the fight was never just about empty storefronts: it was about who has to trek the farthest to fill a grocery cart. He represents the Tenderloin, which has the highest concentration of children in the city, and Japantown, which has the highest concentration of seniors. “Even having to walk more than a couple of blocks to get your groceries is a point of inequity,” he said. After Supervisor Connie Chan, the Budget Committee chair, pulled it from the agenda earlier this month, Mahmood asked the Rules Committee to send it directly to the full board instead. Supervisor Shamann Walton, who chairs the rules committee, agreed to hear the motion, a decision Mahmood thanked him for publicly. But based on conversations with other members this week, Mahmood concluded he didn’t have the votes to move it forward. Rather than force a vote he’d probably lose, he asked for a continuance, technically leaving the measure alive for “a future date,” according to a press release from his office. In practice, with the ballot filing deadline days away, that forecloses this November. Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, one of the measure’s original co-sponsors, was among those Mahmood said would not support advancing it. So, Mahmood went back to the drawing board. His retreat, he said, reflects a read on what would actually pass, not a change in goals. “I’m driven by results,” he said. “It’s clear that City Hall right now does not have consensus on a mix of a carrot-and-stick approach. But there does seem to be consensus around incentive-based approaches.” When the ballot measure started to falter, Mahmood said, he called Mamdani’s team for advice on an alternative. They pointed him toward zoning: a density-bonus program for housing developments that include ground-floor grocery stores, part of what New York calls its FRESH program. The plan Mahmood will introduce Tuesday sets out three legislative proposals, which he hopes his colleagues will pass on a rolling basis over the coming year. The first restores funding to Healthy Retail SF , a program that helps convert corner stores into outlets for fresh produce — an idea Tenderloin community groups have pushed for years. The second priority is to expand existing incentives: one that waives permit fees for new grocery stores, which Mahmood’s office estimates could save $50,000 to $80,000 per store, and another that bankrolls capital build-outs for stores opening in neighborhoods without full-service grocery access. The third proposal borrows from New York City’s FRESH program, offering density bonuses to housing developments that include a grocery store on the ground floor. The density bonuses would pair with zoning changes to make it easier to subdivide the oversized empty parcels, often 50,000 to 60,000 square feet, that Mahmood said have deterred new grocers, which typically need only 10,000 to 20,000 square feet. The collapse of the ballot-measure approach caps weeks of tension at City Hall. Mahmood’s measure had cleared an earlier hurdle only to be pulled from the Budget and Finance Committee agenda in mid-July — a move Mahmood said came at Mayor Daniel Lurie’s request. Lurie’s office has said it supports Mahmood’s proposed Affordable Grocery Fund but opposed the vacancy tax meant to help pay for it. “More taxes won’t achieve” more grocery stores, mayoral spokesperson Charles Lutvak said last week. Budget Committee chair Connie Chan’s office struck a similar note, saying through a spokesperson that she agreed with the measure’s intent but felt it wasn’t ready. Mahmood has also pointed to opposition from Amazon, which owns the shuttered Whole Foods on Market Street and would have been subject to the tax. He said a company lobbyist floated the idea of an exemption for that location, which he declined to grant, and warned that Amazon could spend heavily to defeat the measure — comparisons Amazon lobbyist David Noyola has disputed as inaccurate. Even with the ballot-measure setback, Mahmood’s push forced City Hall to reckon with the issue at a moment when food affordability has become a national flashpoint. A poll he commissioned in July found 61% of likely voters in San Francisco backed the vacancy tax, he noted. Public sentiment was on his side, he said, it was just a matter of political will. Mahmood’s pivot mirrors a broader search playing out in cities nationwide for politically viable ways to fight food deserts and tackle rising grocery costs. In Seattle, Mayor Bruce Harrell issued an executive order this year directing city departments to explore tools, including eminent domain, to keep grocery stores open in underserved neighborhoods. In Congress, a bipartisan bill would offer tax credits to small grocers serving food deserts, while a separate proposal would fund a USDA grant program to help open new stores in underserved communities. “Affordability is the crisis of our generation,” Mahmood said. “Every year, more families are forced to make impossible choices between rent, groceries, medicine, and childcare. This proposal may have been blocked, but the problem it sought to solve has not gone away.”

Three grocers walked away from a vacant Fillmore Safeway. Now it’s a political battle

Three separate efforts to bring a grocery store back to a vacant Safeway site in the Fillmore have collapsed, deepening a political fight over who’s to blame — and what San Francisco should do about it. Grocery Outlet, Smart & Final, and Sprouts Farmers Market have all explored taking over the former Safeway at 1335 Webster St. on a short-term basis, as Safeway finalizes the sale of the property to Align Real Estate, which intends to build housing on the site. The collapse of all three efforts leaves the Fillmore, a historically Black and low-income San Francisco neighborhood, without a full-service grocery store for the foreseeable future — more than a year after Safeway’s Webster Street location closed. The failed talks come amid a broader political fight: Supervisor Bilal Mahmood is pushing a ballot measure to tax vacant grocery stores and subsidize new operators, an effort now tangled up with accusations that Safeway hindered efforts to bring in a new grocer . In an interview, Mahmood said negotiations to bring a grocer back to the site are dead in the water, and emails his office provided in response to a verbal records request back up that account. Sprouts’ interest in the site has not been previously reported. “Oh my God. It’s devastating news,” said Majeid Crawford, a Fillmore native. “We were really hoping something would happen; the community has been waiting and hopeful.” In the months before Safeway closed in February 2025, neighbors rallied and pushed for the grocer to stay open, or for a new grocer to take over the space. Crawford — executive director of the New Community Leadership Foundation, a group trying to prevent the Fillmore’s gentrification — said the failure to find a new grocer will send shockwaves through the neighborhood. Safeway’s Webster Street store served the Fillmore community for four decades. The new owner, Align Real Estate, plans a mixed-use project on the site with more than 1,800 housing units and a ground-floor grocery. Lawmakers had hoped a temporary grocery store could load Fillmore neighbors’ shopping bags in the years before the project breaks ground. Mahmood is hoping his ballot measure to establish a fund to subsidize grocery stores and levy a tax on vacant supermarkets will pressure grocers to lease to new operators or reopen. The idea resembles one from New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose proposal would establish government-subsidized grocery stores. While Mahmood’s proposal faced a setback last week from the Board of Supervisors and opposition from Mayor Daniel Lurie , he’s planning to introduce a motion Tuesday for the Board of Supervisors to re-hear the measure by the end of the month, which would restart the process of placing it on the ballot. Lurie previously said he’s working to bring more grocery stores to San Francisco, but new taxes won’t help that effort. Mahmood alleges the negotiations between the three grocers, Safeway, and Align Real Estate failed because Safeway impeded efforts to find a replacement grocer. Emails Mahmood provided offer a behind-the-scenes look at negotiations marked by canceled meetings, stalled talks, and growing frustration. “It shows us that Safeway was never intending to actually put a grocery store in there,” Mahmood said of the emails. “We know of three grocers who were made an offer to go onto that property.” Safeway, Grocery Outlet, and Sprouts declined to comment. Smart & Final did not respond to a request to comment. David Balducci, a principal at Align Real Estate, told The Standard they’ve not given up. “The Fillmore community deserves a grocery store, and we will do everything we can to bring one to the site,” Balducci said. “Unfortunately, Supervisor Mahmood’s tax on grocery store vacancies would only make it more difficult to open a store.” Mahmood told a different tale. “Align told me that there is no plan to do a short-term activation with another grocery operator anymore,” he said. The effort was difficult from the start — Safeway promised to rip out its freezers at the end of 2024, before it even closed, making it more difficult for a new grocer to move in. In January last year, Grocery Outlet made an offer to Safeway to take over the site. In an email sent Jan. 9, Bill Coyle, vice president of real estate with Grocery Outlet, aired a hopeful tone about his meeting with the supervisor and Align Real Estate. “You have [Grocery Outlet’s] commitment we shall pursue with vigor and hope for the best outcome,” he wrote. On Jan. 22, 2025, Grocery Outlet sent a proposal to Safeway, outlining a “scaled-down” version of its store for two to three years, paying Safeway $400,000 in annual rent. The hope, Coyle wrote, was that Grocery Outlet would become a permanent grocer once Align Real Estate’s project was complete. “Politicians happy. Community happy,” he wrote. His optimism was short-lived. Coyle said he wrote to Mahmood Feb. 4 that “I have NOT heard back” from a consultant working for Safeway. In an email venting his frustration over the process, he alleged Safeway has a pattern of making it difficult for other grocery stores to open. “It’s what they do,” he wrote to Mahmood, “impede competition.” By Feb. 19, the parties met once again. Coyle emailed Mahmood shortly before, noting that the cost to open a grocery store there — even a temporary one — would be at least $2 million. Emails revealed the deal’s definitive end in April: Eric Holzer, senior director of corporate real estate at Albertsons, which owns Safeway, wrote to Mahmood acknowledging that Grocery Outlet “dropped their interest.” In the intervening months, Safeway and Align Real Estate held discussions with Smart & Final, a grocer with other San Francisco locations, and Sprouts, a Bay Area staple exploring its first San Francisco location in the Showplace Square neighborhood. Sources with knowledge of the deal rejected the notion that Safeway had impeded efforts to bring in a new grocer and said the grocers walked away from the deal for financial reasons. The amount needed to bring the building up to code, which may have been $2 million to $4 million, was so high that they would need to operate a store there longer than the proposal allowed for it to pencil out. Mahmood said the emails show Safeway “intentionally dragged their feet to allow the deal to die.” The lack of a local grocery store hurts low-income Fillmore families, people with disabilities, and seniors who can’t travel far, according to Crawford, the neighborhood advocate. He knows its importance personally: His mother was an artist and single parent who shopped at Safeway when he was a child. She would stretch her limited dollars and buy ingredients to whip up a family favorite: spaghetti and meatballs. “To hear all those things fell through,” he said, “it feels like our community is being erased.”

SF was headed for Mamdani-style grocery stores. Those plans have been spiked

Supervisor Bilal Mahmood said Mayor Daniel Lurie and another lawmaker have derailed part of his government-backed grocery store proposal after it was kept off the agenda of a committee hearing. He said Amazon also played a role in its destruction. The proposal, a two-part ballot measure authored by Mahmood last month, would establish a fund to subsidize grocery stores and levy a tax on vacant supermarkets and pharmacies owned by large businesses. Mahmood said he received a call Thursday afternoon from Supervisor Connie Chan, chair of the Budget Committee, informing him that the tax proposal would be stricken from Wednesday’s Budget and Finance Committee agenda. Chan told Mahmood of her disapproval and signaled that the mayor was opposed to the legislation, he said. “This is frankly just bad governance at the board,” said Mahmood. Mahmood said Lurie and Chan’s intervention makes it difficult for the proposal to move forward since it needs to be heard by the full Board of Supervisors by late July to make it to the November ballot. The dispute highlights competing visions for reviving San Francisco’s economy. Mahmood argues that vacant grocery and pharmacy sites should face financial pressure to reopen or lease to another operator, while Lurie has emphasized incentives and public-private partnerships to encourage businesses to return downtown. “Mayor Lurie is working to bring grocery stores to San Francisco’s communities,” his spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, said in a statement. “More taxes won’t achieve that. We support the Affordable Grocery Fund and will continue working with Supervisor Mahmood and the entire board to bring more grocery stores to the city.” Robyn Burke, a spokesperson for Chan, said the supervisor “agrees” with the intent of the measure, “but she also understands that much work needs to be done to this measure. Supervisor Mahmood has amendments he wants to make to his legislation. With that, she came to the conclusion that this measure is not ready at this time.” Mahmood says he has faced stiff opposition from business groups opposed to the proposal, including Amazon. The supervisor said a lobbyist for Amazon suggested last month that the retail giant could mount a campaign against the tax and requested that its vacant Whole Foods storefront on Market Street be exempt from the legislation. The supervisor declined to grant the exemption. Amazon lobbyist David Noyola denied this. “Amazon is in full overdrive trying to kill this ballot measure,” Mahmood told The Standard, adding that the company doesn’t “want to be held accountable for the zombie stores they hold,” using a term critical of companies that close a storefront but continue to hold the lease. Pro-business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce and Advance SF, have expressed skepticism about the idea to the supervisor. Nationally, the idea has proved controversial as moderate Democrats contend with a growing populist fervor within their party and the country reels from an affordability crisis. Amazon’s Whole Foods site on Market shuttered in 2023 after being open for a little over a year, emblematic of the anxieties surrounding downtown’s post-pandemic economy and worsening street conditions at the time. Since then, Lurie and others have launched efforts to rehabilitate the neighborhood, as office vacancies remain a challenge. Recent figures show some recovery as artificial intelligence companies increase demand. In April, the Downtown Development Corporation, a group created by Lurie’s allies in an effort to revitalize the neighborhood, announced a $25 million initiative to help businesses with below-market rate loans and move-in grants. Mahmood said he is spearheading the ballot measure because of the growing problem of disappearing supermarkets and pharmacies across the city, as well as rising food prices that are a national problem. Mahmood’s district covers the Tenderloin, a neighborhood known for a lack of pharmacies and supermarkets. The city in 2024 opened a free grocery store for low-income residents in the Bayview. Mahmood’s ballot measure would have a dual purpose. It would create a fund, fueled by philanthropic dollars or city coffers, to subsidize the conversion of corner stores into grocery stores with fresh foods or, as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has suggested, to lease out city-owned spaces at below-market rates to affordable grocers. It would also tax vacant grocery stores and pharmacies operated by large chains at $3 per square foot in the first year, $5 in the second, and $10 annually thereafter, capped at $250,000. Mahmood maintains that the tax would not affect small businesses, and that the affected companies would be able to avoid the penalty if they lease their vacant space to someone else, abandon their lease so someone else can take it over, or reactivate the storefront themselves. He said the argument businesses have used to defend closures — that crime and homelessness make it difficult to run a storefront — doesn’t pass muster. “I recognize during COVID there were concerns, but the data show that crime is down,” he said. “That excuse is no longer valid.” Amazon’s vacant Whole Foods site is roughly 65,000 square feet. A report from the city controller on the proposal’s cost is pending, said Mahmood. He claims the measure could generate several million dollars in tax revenue. Noyola pushed back against Mahmood’s description of Amazon’s position. “That’s an inaccurate characterization of a conversation I had with Supervisor Mahmood. Full stop,” the lobbyist said, adding that the business community at large tried to propose an exemption for the downtown neighborhood, not for the Whole Foods site specifically. Mahmood stood by his account, saying Noyola told him Amazon spent $250,000 opposing Proposition D — the Overpaid CEO Tax that failed in June — and could spend a similar amount opposing his measure. New York City’s Mamdani, whose progressive politics have proved popular after a slate of congressional wins by democratic socialist candidates during the city’s June primary, announced his first city-owned grocery store in May at an affordable housing complex in the Bronx. The SF Board of Supervisors’ rules committee is set to vote Monday on the fund aspect of Mahmood’s law. Mahmood said he has four supporters of his proposal: Supervisors Cheyenne Chen, Danny Sauter, Stephen Sherrill, and Myrna Melgar. He would need a vote from one more supervisor to move the fund measure from the full board to the November ballot.

After Swalwell and Platner, Cheyenne Hunt is building a new #MeToo movement

Former East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell dodged more than a decade of misconduct rumors on Capitol Hill. Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner withstood allegations of physical misconduct, disturbing Reddit posts, and a Nazi tattoo. Then they encountered Cheyenne Hunt. A 29-year-old political activist, attorney, and content creator with a vast social media following, Hunt has spent several months organizing women behind the scenes to amplify allegations of sexual misconduct, including rape, against both Swalwell and Platner . She has connected accusers with lawyers, therapists, and reporters while using her own online platforms to share their stories. The result: Swalwell resigned from Congress, shelved his campaign for governor , and has largely disappeared from public view amid multiple investigations into his alleged misconduct. Platner is thought to be on the verge of dropping out of his Senate race after losing critical endorsements from key progressives , including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and California Rep. Ro Khanna. Swalwell and Platner have denied the allegations. “This is a reckoning,” Hunt told The Standard on a Thursday morning in June from the living room of the inland Orange County house she shares with her boyfriend, where stacks of law books fill three large shelves and a vase of pink peonies serves as the backdrop to the Zoom calls that fill her schedule. “No predators in power.” Hunt hasn’t had time for a break in the three months since the Swalwell story broke. Her days start early and end late, a drumbeat of staff meetings and check-ins with organizers. She forgets to stop and eat, she said, and her boyfriend often reminds her she needs a meal. During a day spent shadowing Hunt, The Standard watched her prepare for another cycle of chaos. In between back-to-back meetings, she was on frequent, feverish calls with a Politico reporter working to break the Platner story. Even she is shocked by what has unfolded in the weeks since her friend Annika Albrecht texted to ask if Hunt would post a video about the sexual harassment Albrecht claims she experienced from Swalwell . Hunt didn’t know that her March 31 video , which has generated more than 150,000 views on TikTok and Instagram, was the beginning of not only Swalwell’s downfall but her new mission. But Hunt wasn’t working alone. Arielle Fodor, a content creator and former teacher who goes by “Mrs. Frazzled” online, had also been posting cryptic messages about rumors of misconduct by Swalwell. Hunt, Fodor, and Albrecht teamed up to take the allegations that were circulating on social media to reporters. They collaborated with CNN for a story that broke April 10 with Albrecht’s allegations, along with accusations from three other women that ranged from harassment to sexual assault. Hunt has since resigned as executive director of the advocacy organization Gen-Z for Change and started Reckoning Action, a political organization with the goal of ending misogyny in places of power. Fodor is an adviser to the group, as are some of Swalwell’s accusers. Hunt said the group’s goals are to change sexual harassment laws and raise enough money to build a robust network of legal aid and other support services for victims. But this is not a millenial #MeToo movement. A key pillar of Reckoning Action is leveraging social media to inspire cultural change. TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram are increasingly where people — especially Gen Z — find, read, and talk about serious issues, Hunt said. And with her 220,000 followers on TikTok and 222,000 on Instagram, she is uniquely positioned to use social media as a tool to spark another #MeToo chapter, this one adapted for a digital-first era. “If you’re not having conversations with people where they’re listening, then you’re not in the conversation at all,” Hunt said. “It was content creators that blew the door open and found all these sources and made it happen.” ‘I had something to say’ Hunt’s political activism began in California’s rural Lake County, where she was raised by her single mom and grandmother. Hunt moved to Orange County when she was 14 and, two years later, graduated early from high school. She went to the University of Denver and moved back to Orange County for law school at UC Irvine. It was at law school in 2020, when she joined Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s office as a Senate Judiciary Committee law clerk, that Hunt found her calling in politics. She arrived in D.C. just as the first impeachment trial against President Donald Trump was beginning. It was evident how toxic a workplace the Capitol could be, Hunt said, especially for the many “hungry, ambitious young women” staffing lawmakers’ offices. “Many of whom this is the first job that they have ever had, and they’re looking for their big break,” she said. She returned home for law school graduation and to take care of her dying grandmother, then moved back to D.C. to work as a Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer advocacy organization. “She’s a troublemaker,” Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said of Hunt. “A good troublemaker.” Weissman said he was impressed by Hunt’s creative approach to using social media to identify and solve problems. “It’s not just having the information, but how to frame the information, present the information, in a way that excites people in the algorithm nowadays,” he said. “And she had found a key.” Disillusioned by the lack of Gen Z representation in Congress, Hunt returned to Orange County with a plan to run for Congress in 2024 against Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in what was then California’s 45th District. She lost badly, earning just 8% of the vote in the March primary. “At the end of the day, like, I had something to say,” Hunt said of the experience. “There was a generation of women that was completely unrepresented at the federal level, and I wanted to take my swing at it.” As executive director of Gen-Z for Change, an organization that uses social media as an advocacy tool for progressive causes, it became her job to be “chronically online,” she said. But after the Swalwell news broke, Hunt said it became clear that she needed to focus on the strategy full time. She started Reckoning Action and, as executive director, oversees a team of about half a dozen women and men. “I have a habit of doing things that people think are insane,” she said. “But I think them through. I didn’t want to start something unless it was really clear that there was a place in the movement for it and that it would be sustainable.” Responding to #MeToo backlash Hunt said hundreds of women have reached out in the weeks since Swalwell resigned with their own experiences of sexual misconduct. It became clear from those conversations how much had changed since the #MeToo movement first went viral in 2017. What she learned: #MeToo is out; the manosphere is in. “I just think that we see politics so often function as a pendulum, where there’s progress, and then there’s backlash,” Hunt said. “And the backlash to the #MeToo movement was a generation of men that, for the first time, was realizing that they may not be able to act towards women with impunity anymore, and that was stark.” Young men are increasingly enamored with media figures like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Christopher Rufo and the late Charlie Kirk, and even far-right extremists like Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic white nationalist streamer. Hunt blames much of the rise of the manosphere on social media and its proliferation of right-wing accounts that once existed on the fringe but in recent years have exploded into the mainstream. Right-wing content creators have gamed the algorithm to prey on lonely young men, Hunt said, “offering them something that looks like community and is really just isolation, for their own kind of political agenda.” Hunt worries about women too. After a decade of the #girlboss, women seem less interested in the C-suite and more intrigued by the “Make America Healthy Again” and “trad wife” movements. From Hunt’s perspective, the same digital rabbit hole that pulls men into the manosphere is working to drag women back to the 1950s. “That’s why MAHA content exists,” Hunt said. “It starts because they’re, like, making banana bread, and then at some point they start talking about, I don’t know, fucking ivermectin or something.” A key pillar of Reckoning Action is promoting “narrative change,” not just through stories in traditional news outlets but through social media. Hunt wants to replicate the right-wing playbook of going viral, but to the left’s benefit. To do that, she envisions contracting with left-wing influencers on paid anti-misogyny campaigns, leveraging their specific brands to appeal to broader audiences. Hunt imagines collaborating with the podcast “The Basement Yard,” a comedy show with Joe Santagato and Frank Alvarez, who spend an hour gabbing about random topics. Under Hunt’s playbook, they would be paid to spend a few minutes railing against misogyny. “The people that listen to ‘Pod Save America,’ they already agree with us,” Hunt said. “That’s not going to reach new audiences and make meaningful difference. It’s not going to break out of the echo chamber. We need content that can compete with their content. Entertainment-first content.” Fodor has been doing this for years. Users might come to her initially for education news , but they will also find her “gentle parenting” spoofs on political topics, like a recent video in which she pretends to talk to a kid about how “yucky” it is that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of states with bans on transgender kids playing in girls sports . “I think everybody tries to hit it differently. And that’s kind of a cool thing about content creators,” Fodor said in an interview. “Is that everybody is pulling on their little thread in their corner in their own way.” Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of political science at UC Berkeley, said social media has always been an incubator for social and political movements, many for progressive causes. The #MeToo movement started with a hashtag, of course, and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 began with the video of George Floyd’s murder spreading online. “In the U.S. and around the world, we’ve seen movements that can emerge almost out of nothing,” Wasow said. But the right has commanded social media in recent years, to great political effect. “It’s not just activists who are taking this up. It’s the most powerful people in the world in the current presidential administration,” Wasow said. Hunt noted that right-wing influencers have become “masters” at pushing online fringe ideas that eventually make their way into real-life politics. What was once considered “radical” is now law, Hunt said, like the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and subsequent state legislation to criminalize women who get abortions. That same strategy won’t have an immediate impact for Hunt’s cause, she conceded over a lunch of vegan pho at a favorite Orange County Vietnamese restaurant. “I’m known for being pretty impatient, but I also understand that’s going to take time,” she said. “Institutional change takes time.” Her goal of ending misogyny in places of power is going to require a coalition of “unlikely bedfellows” working together. One of her goals, for example, is to change House ethics rules to make it safer for accusers to come forward with claims of inappropriate behavior. Reckoning Action is already working with the Democratic Women’s Caucus on the effort, but Hunt acknowledged, “we’re gonna need everybody on board,” perhaps including some Republicans. Old and new media partnerships But there could be limits to Hunt’s vision. Putting such an emphasis on social media is risky, said Juliet Williams, a gender studies professor at UCLA. The country’s major tech companies are run by “a bunch of super regressive dudes” who have cozied up to Trump. Old-school, grassroots organizing is still important, she said. “There’s no feminist Elon Musk,” Williams said. “Technology, social media, influencing — these platforms are not why #Metoo didn’t go where we wanted it to, and it’s not what is going to save us now.” There’s also a line that content creators can’t — or shouldn’t — cross. Both Hunt and Fodor said there was a limit with the Swalwell allegations that they felt comfortable posting on their pages. That’s when they turned to legacy newsrooms with the story. “I don’t want to see creators thinking that they should be talking about sensitive sexual assault stories or anything that’s of that level of consequence,” she said. “Because they don’t have the resources to do the corroboration and the independent fact-checking and what needs to be done for those [stories] to be told in a way that’s absolutely unimpeachable.” But even news organizations can’t prevent the repercussions victims may face after coming forward. A private investigator has contacted at least one former Swalwell staffer about her time working for the congressman, according to the news site NOTUS . Swalwell’s attorney Sara Azari confirmed to the outlet that she had hired the New York firm Beau Dietl & Associates as part of an investigation into the allegations. Azari did not respond to The Standard’s request for comment. “That is purely an intimidation tactic that is all about intimidating these women and trying to silence other ones from coming forward,” Hunt said. It’s why many women never come forward with their stories, said Gloria Allred, a women’s rights attorney who has represented victims in cases against Harvey Weinstein , Bill Cosby, R. Kelly , and Jeffrey Epstein. Allred said she wants women to know there is “another option.” “And that’s within the justice system,” she said, which allows victims to receive compensation for alleged abuse without any impact on their public image or threat of retaliation tactics like defamation lawsuits. “There are still some people who do not wish to live their life on the internet.” Allred said. “I understand the desire that young women have to hold the accused accountable. I agree that the accused should be held accountable. The real issue is, how can they best achieve that with the minimum harm to themselves and a maximum benefit to themselves?” If there’s anything Sacramento lobbyist Samantha Corbin has learned since she helped launch “ We Said Enough ,” the #MeToo movement in the California Capitol, it’s that “no one cares about women.” Corbin said since the coalition launched with an October 2017 letter exposing the “pervasive” culture of sexual harassment in the Capitol, she has received weekly calls from people alleging misconduct in and around the Legislature. The group notched some initial wins when several lawmakers resigned amid allegations of misconduct. Additionally, the Legislature in 2019 launched a Workplace Conduct Unit to independently investigate anonymous complaints of wrongdoing in the Capitol. The unit has received roughly 840 complaints, according to a February report, and “resolved” around 97% of them. Corbin acknowledged how difficult it is for advocates to maintain the momentum and progress made after a news cycle ends and public attention inevitably turns to other issues. “You consistently have to have people who have energy, who have a new way of telling the story and engaging people,” Corbin said. If Hunt is willing to carry the baton — and use new tools to tell women’s stories — then “fuck yeah, girl, get it.” Beyond Swalwell and Platner During a recent Zoom meeting with Reckoning Action organizers, Hunt was grappling with what comes next. The group was planning several weeks’ worth of social media and Substack content, not just on Swalwell but on other topics that could help push their anti-misogyny message. She was also preparing, ahead of Politico’s Platner story, to face down the same accusations that surfaced during the Swalwell allegations: that she was secretly working with Republicans to sabotage Democrats, that she was a shill for billionaires who want to buy U.S. elections. In his statement denying the allegations, Platner accused “out-of-state establishment operatives” of working to sabotage his campaign, a characterization that Hunt laughed at during her CNN interviews . These are the moments when Hunt refers back to her mission: No predators in power. “Period,” she said. “Women should not be sacrificed at the altar of the next election,” she argued. “If you think that it’s politically strategic to knowingly put someone in power that has a history of violence against women, then you are ceding the moral high ground that we so frequently claim to differentiate ourselves as Democrats.” Hunt, and Reckoning Action at large, has called on Platner to withdraw from the Senate race before a July 13 deadline for Democrats to replace him. Beyond Swalwell and Platner, Hunt has big plans over the next year for Reckoning Action. She wants to hire more organizers, and dreams of getting federal legislation introduced this year to ban politicians who are accused of misconduct from using campaign funds for legal bills. (Swalwell has used more than $300,000 in campaign funds to pay his attorney , according to state financial records.) The team also wants to ramp up messaging around the “Epstein class” and to target vulnerable Republicans in the midterms who voted against making the Epstein files public . Hunt was spending her birthday Tuesday evening recovering from the exhausting media blitz following the Platner revelations and fielding a steady stream of profile requests from reporters. “Eventually, this reckoning media moment, it will end,” Hunt said. “Does that freak me out, that we won’t squeeze every bit of juice out of it that we possibly can? To hold every single predator accountable that we possibly can? Yeah.” For now at least, the reckoning is still trending.

Scott Wiener got heckled at the Trans March. Then he got a ton of donations

State Sen. Scott Wiener may still be recovering from his beratement at Dolores Park , near the Trans March, but Power Play has learned his rough day had a silver lining. Over the weekend, Wiener’s congressional bid saw the highest number of donors in a single day since the campaign launched. “Since Friday, I’ve just had a tidal wave, an outpouring of support,” Wiener told us. “I have hundreds and hundreds of unread text messages I have not gotten to yet, and direct messages and emails and calls from people.” “I’m just really grateful,” he said. A spokesperson for the campaign declined to share the number of donations or the amount raised. We caught up with Wiener at the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club Pride breakfast, where his viral video was the talk of the annual event, attended by hundreds of volunteer organizers, politicos and their staff under the rainbow-hued lights of the Embarcadero Hyatt. Even gubernatorial hopeful Xavier Becerra had something to say about the incident, telling us, “We want people to be able to express their First Amendment right, but do it in a way that respects one another.” Other support emerged online. Mayor Daniel Lurie condemned the incident as “targeted, hateful, and antisemitic.” The Senate Democratic Caucus called the “harassment and violence” unacceptable, noting that Wiener has advocated for LGBTQ+ people even when it wasn’t politically popular. Retired Politico journalist Carla Marinucci said on X: “I don’t care where you are on the political spectrum — this is an abhorrent attack on an elected official who has dedicated years to public service.” A video of Friday’s incident that went viral, racking up millions of views over the ensuing day, shows Wiener being hounded out of the park by a crowd of people flipping him off and denouncing his past support of Israel. The guy who filmed it, a longtime critic of Wiener named Dimitry Yakoushkin , can be heard shouting: “It sucks because you’ve been wonderful … for trans people, and you’ve been terrible … on Gaza.” When Power Play caught up with Wiener a couple days later, he said his views on Palestine are clear. “I believe it’s a genocide,” he said. “I’m not going to support funding for the Israeli military, and I’m not taking AIPAC money. These are all like crystal-clear positions that people choose to ignore for purely political reasons.” — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez SAVING IT UP : Lurie has accumulated a Levi Strauss-level fortune of political capital during his 18 months in office. Most elected officials would relish the opportunity of spending it in pursuit of building their political dynasty. Just look at New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani , who leveraged his popularity to establish himself as a political kingmaker with a list of congressional primary wins last week. Instead, Lurie is reluctant to flex his political muscles, choosing instead to stay on the sidelines of San Francisco’s — and California’s — biggest ballot box battles. He didn’t help former Supervisor Joel Engardio , an ally on the board , when he was recalled from office in September. He declined to endorse anyone for California governor. Instead of coming out firmly on one side of the business-vs.-labor tax battle in June, Lurie told voters to reject both Propositions C and D . So it will likely go to a heated contest to replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, a once-in-a-generation race with lasting consequences for San Francisco. Lurie has so far avoided adding his name to either Supervisor Connie Chan ’s or Wiener’s endorsement lists — and his spokesperson, Max Szabo, said the mayor has no plans to. Things could always change. And in that case, Lurie would have to weigh the risks and rewards of either choice. Lurie, a moderate Democrat, is more politically aligned with Wiener, a pro-business YIMBY who is backed by some of the same wealthy donors who supported the mayor. But, but, but … Wiener was a staunch ally of former Mayor London Breed , so it’s not unfathomable that Lurie would withhold his endorsement. And, yet … the race is Wiener’s to lose. Lending his support to Wiener and having a like-minded congressman in Washington could benefit Lurie’s political agenda in San Francisco. That would almost certainly fracture Lurie’s ties to Chan, a progressive with whom he’s had an unexpectedly good relationship despite their vast policy differences. Plus, she’s endorsed by Pelosi, a San Francisco icon whom Lurie interned for in college and called a mentor when she announced her retirement in November. Still, Chan did not support Lurie in the 2024 mayoral race. And despite their good working relationship, she has still opposed some of Lurie’s policy priorities, including his signature Family Zoning Plan. Wiener’s and Chan’s campaigns did not respond to requests for comment on whether they had sought the mayor’s endorsement. Szabo declined to comment on Lurie’s decision not to support anyone. But one person familiar with the mayor’s thinking said Lurie “doesn’t alienate people who he needs to work with.” “He understands the importance of maintaining working relationships with everyone on the board,” the person added. “I think he has worked well with [Chan]. And that’s not a foregone conclusion in politics. I would expect that to be the biggest hurdle. Because he and Scott are more aligned.” — Hannah Wiley PROGS HURTIN’ IN SF : Mamdani’s clean sweep of endorsed congressional candidates during the June 23 primary has everyone asking why the heck are progressives doing so well on the East Coast but can’t get their act together in San Francisco . Lincoln Mitchell , a Columbia University politics professor who splits his time between New York City and San Francisco, spoke with Power Play on why the East Coast city is seeing such a lefty renaissance — and why San Francisco isn’t. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. How is the progressive voter in New York different from the one in San Francisco? Mamdani’s core base is not the proletariat; it’s the precariat . It’s the 30-year-old who has a college education, maybe even a decent job, because the market is tough, not easy in New York, and maybe is struggling and working at a couple of gigs to make ends meet, and just doesn’t have a big enough apartment if she and her partner want to have a kid. “How am I ever going to afford to raise a kid in New York?” That is different than, “How am I ever going to afford food for the next two weeks?” And it’s the former that are Mamdani’s base. Those people in San Francisco, I think they skew more rightward because they’re all there to work in tech and AI, for the most part. Has San Francisco changed culturally in ways that hurt progressives? I think New York is still a place where young people go with a dream. San Francisco has become a place where people go with a good job in AI. When I was growing up in the ‘80s, I can’t tell you how many times as a kid in San Francisco, some hippie-looking dude saying, “Yeah, I came out here in 1972 because of my girlfriend or the Grateful Dead show.” But now we’re in 1992 and they’re still there, right? That’s not San Francisco anymore. “I came out here because I could get a really good job with Google, but now I’m with Anthropic.” Is there any chance for progressives to regain political territory? If the AI boom continues and suddenly you know just the rental market goes up and up, that income just gets greater, then there’s no chance, right? This just becomes a different city. So, from that respect, no. — Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler WHAT JUST HAPPENED? They’re calling it the craziest ballot negotiation deadline in years. In a frantic dash to avert a transfer tax apocalypse, state legislators introduced one compromise, scrapped it, and introduced and passed another — all in a matter of days. Let’s back up. The powerful Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association qualified a measure for the November state ballot in May that would cap transfer taxes at 0.11% of sale value and require a two-thirds majority for voters to pass new ones. For context, that would slash San Francisco’s transfer tax rate by roughly 98%, wiping out a major source of revenue that the city — and many other California cities, particularly in the Bay Area — relies on to fund public services. So East Bay Assemblymember Buffy Wicks devised a legislative compromise — a bill introduced Monday that would cut most transfer taxes to 1.5% and some to 3% — in the hopes that she could convince HJTA to pull its measure. Her solution would still mean cutting SF’s 6% transfer tax in half, and housing justice advocates hated it. HJTA wasn’t sold either , and president Jon Coupal announced his group’s measure was staying on the ballot. By Thursday — the deadline to finalize ballot measures for November — Wicks’ bill was dead, and a new deal was on the table: a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote to approve future transfer taxes while leaving existing ones untouched. The legislature quickly approved it, and Coupal agreed to withdraw the original initiative. The compromise pleased almost no one. Anti-tax hardliners wanted the original measure to stay on the ballot. Progressives argued lawmakers should have fought it instead of negotiating. Even some YIMBYs who wanted existing transfer taxes reduced came away disappointed. “Politics is often about navigating imperfect choices. Today’s vote protects critical local funding and removes a catastrophic threat to the fiscal health of our cities,” Wicks said in a statement. But there is one thing everyone can agree on, expressed best by tenant advocate Shanti Singh who was in Sacramento Thursday: “Today has been the biggest clusterfuck I’ve seen in six years of doing this.” — Max Harrison-Caldwell POLITICS IS IN VOGUE: City Hall opened its doors to an illustrious guest this week: Fashion icon and former editor-in-chief of Vogue , Anna Wintour . Wintour was spotted leaving City Hall on Thursday afternoon with her swagged-out entourage before ducking into a black luxe SUV, according to a City Hall employee. A few moments later, the mayor’s Chief of Staff, Staci Slaughter , exited the building. The Mayor’s office declined to comment, but a spokesperson for Conde Nast confirmed that the reason for Wintour’s visit revolved around Vogue’s exploration of having Vogue World in SF, “Anna’s trip is an exploratory one to listen/learn,” they said, The night prior, Wintour co-hosted a party at Penny Coulter , the mayor’s chief of protocol at her home in Presidio Heights to some six dozen of the city’s biggest power players from Garry Tan and Paul Pelosi to Democratic megadonor Susie Tompkins Buell . Read more in The Waggle here . — Sam Mondros DOUBLE YOUR DOLLAR: San Francisco’s budget is finalized, with little fanfare and little controversy. The process got wrapped up on Thursday, and in a surprise to any veteran of the usual long nights and harried weekends, this was tied up in a bow rather quickly. Look for Chan to crow about a few budget wins on the congressional campaign trail: Free City College’s debt relief fund for impoverished students was restored, and nonprofits that were facing massive layoffs are now facing far less draconian cuts. The Mayor’s Office also added back funding for the Board of Supervisors staff and the City Controller’s Office. One group within the city government that not only emerged unscathed but came out ahead in the mayor’s budget is the Mayor’s Office itself. Its salaries and benefits costs totaled $9.2 million under Mayor London Breed in the 2023-24 fiscal year. By the 2027-28 fiscal year, Lurie’s budget has them reaching $10.7 million. Now, to be fair, some of that owes to cost-of-living increases. But not all of it. Lurie instituted a new policy chief structure, with top-tier mayor’s office staffers advising the mayor on key areas, such as public safety and homelessness. That came with a cost — under Breed’s administration, only four mayoral staffers busted the $200,000 salary range (not counting Breed herself). Under Lurie, eight staffers now bust $200,000. As of this week, according to the San Francisco Department of Human Resources, the mayoral staff at the top of the range include Alicia John Baptiste at $276,432, Kunal Modi at $276,432, Ned Segal at $276,432, Staci Slaughter at $276,432, Jessica Macleod at $253,739, Sophia Kittler at $222,622, Aly Bonde at $217,214, and Han Zou at $207,085. — J.F.R.

NYC has the Mamdani squad. Where have all the San Francisco socialists gone?

Tuesday’s New York City primary contest saw major victories for progressive and Democratic Socialist candidates, solidifying the rise of the city’s left-leaning political power base. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, lefties are licking their wounds after an early June primary contest saw near-total defeat for them as progressive power is on life support at City Hall. The contrasting results, occurring just weeks apart, reveal two of the country’s most influential cities are charting considerably different political paths. Last year, New York City elected its first-ever democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. His preferred congressional candidates — Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, and Claire Valdez — all saw victories on June 23. In San Francisco, a corporate-friendly, technocratic mayor was elected in 2024, Daniel Lurie, and he, too, saw all of his priorities succeed during the June 2 primary . That includes the failure of Prop. D, an increase in business taxes championed by labor interests. The divergence reveals a central tension in urban Democratic politics in the U.S.: whether affordability anxiety pushes working-class voters left toward democratic socialism, pushing for an overhaul of the economy, or toward technocratic moderates promising competence and stability. The answer, it turns out, depends heavily on demographics as much as ideology. “Everybody is looking at New York with a little bit of envy,” said Aditya Bhumbla, former co-chair of San Francisco’s Democratic Socialists chapter. “We want that here.” Nationally, the country has always had a perception that San Francisco is a hotbed of lefty politics. But the reality is a lot more complicated. The last progressive mayor was Art Agnos, who served from 1988 to 1992. In more recent years, the city saw a major backlash to progressivism, with voters ousting three school board members in 2022 who were perceived as too far to the left. The same year, voters booted District Attorney Chesa Boudin over his progressive views on criminal justice . In the 2024 election, progressive candidate Aaron Peskin placed third, while moderate candidates took over the Board of Supervisors. Why the two cities have diverged so drastically in their politics comes down to a number of factors: demographic trends, how the issue of affordability impacts both cities, and structural differences in the way elections are conducted, political observers told The Standard. They warned that the comparison is not a perfect one: San Francisco’s population is a 10th of New York City’s, and it’s also a sixth of the land size of the East Coast city, which features five boroughs, creating a much more diverse voter base when it comes to class and race. The first critical difference is income. Over the last decade, San Francisco’s median household income grew more than twice as fast as New York City’s — 37.5% compared to 15.2%, according to U.S. Census data — leaving the two cities at $150,600 and $85,980, respectively. “I think that explains a ton of it,” said Daniel Anderson, a political consultant who worked on progressive candidate Natalie Gee’s unsuccessful June campaign for District 4, about the income differences. “Just in terms of people’s sensibilities, the things they care about, the things they don’t care about. Those types of [working-class] people are not in [San Francisco] as much anymore.” There are also racial differences. “San Francisco is whiter, less black, and less Latino, and that is going to skew it rightward,” said Lincoln Mitchell, who splits his time between New York City and San Francisco as a Columbia University politics professor. Where those lower income people move to also matters for the electorate. Mitchell said there are many more options for working-class people to move within New York’s five boroughs compared to the Bay Area’s limited geography. “The difference in San Francisco is you get pushed out of the city,” Mitchell said. “You’re in Oakland, and then you’re not voting anymore.” He also said that the way the two cities conduct their elections creates a higher possibility of more left-leaning candidates succeeding in New York City. The East Coast metropolis uses a closed primary system, meaning that only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary. Since the city is majority Democrat, the Republican primary is essentially ceremonial, and the Democrat who wins is all but guaranteed to prevail in the November general election. In San Francisco, the races are nonpartisan and party affiliation doesn’t limit who you can vote for. Mitchell explained that in the case of mayoral elections, a Republican or Independent voter in San Francisco can help push a moderate candidate like Lurie to victory. “Neither of these mayors would have been elected under the electoral system in the other city,” Mitchell said about Mamdani and Lurie. Some blame the lack of progressive success in San Francisco on how moderates have shaped their messaging — an effective one, they admit. “The moderate faction in the city did a better job of painting a story for why the city is currently dysfunctional,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive former aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who came in third during San Francisco’s June congressional primary . “That’s why their version is winning.” He described the moderates’ platform as a form of “reactionary politics.” “That tends to work,” he said. “Blaming progressives for the failures of the city: We’re too compassionate. We’re already taxing everyone too high.” Chakrabarti added that the city’s existing progressive network — that includes his opponent Supervisor Connie Chan, whom he trailed behind in third place — makes it harder for an insurgent style of politics like his to make inroads. A centimillionaire who made his fortune as an early employee of the technology company Stripe, Chakrabarti ran a populist campaign that leaned on affordability and taxing the rich. “In San Francisco, there is more of an institutional progressive establishment,” he said.“There’s the moderate establishment, and then there’s the institutionalized progressives. I would argue that it has been hard for progressives to run on a change message because they are part of the establishment.” Others say the amount of money aimed against progressive causes — most recently from technology interests — has stymied their success. The dueling tax battle in June saw $6.6 million raised for a business-backed ballot measure initiative, Prop. C, against the labor-backed Overpaid CEO Tax, Prop. D, which brought in half the amount of donations. Lurie’s circle of donors also forked over $1.8 million to a PAC called SF Believes , ensuring an uphill battle for the mayor’s opponents vying for Districts 2 and 4 , both of whom lost. “When you look at a city of our size and you look at how much is spent by tech and real estate, it’s obvious that this is a disproportionate priority for them to control and move [the city] in a more conservative direction,” said Dean Preston, one of the first Democratic Socialists elected to the Board of Supervisors in decades in 2019 who lost his seat in 2024 . “We are really the epicenter of tech money in politics.” There are signs that some pockets of progressive politics may be seeing a rise in the city. San Francisco’s DSA former co-chair Bhumbla said membership has seen a big uptick since Mamdani’s primary election in June 2025, from 900 members to 1,300 today. (It’s still only a slice of what NYC’s chapter boasts at over 13,000 members as of December.) But what Bhumbla believes could push San Francisco’s progressives into victory is the same message Mamdani ran on: housing affordability. Efforts are already underway as SF’s DSA chapter gathers signatures for a ballot measure this coming November that would raise money for affordable housing. The time is ripe for a housing affordability message, Bhumbla said, as rents have skyrocketed in the wake of San Francisco’s artificial intelligence boom. “The left in the city should have a clear positive answer on how to bring down rent,” they said. “Especially when the moderates want rent to go up to stimulate the economy.”

The $30M nonprofit quietly fueling Lurie’s domination of City Hall

It’s no secret that Mayor Daniel Lurie has attracted an eye-popping amount of money to San Francisco politics. He spent $10 million of his own cash in 2024 to pave his way to City Hall, and a PAC supporting him that year shelled out $6.6 million. Since being in office, Lurie has personally spent at least $1 million on political consultants, a remarkable expense for a mayor. But an entity linked to him could dwarf all of that. Believe in SF — the 501(c)(3) nonprofit behind the San Francisco hype video released Wednesday that features the mayor, Steph Curry, and other city stars — projects to spend nearly $30 million between 2025 and 2027 on priorities championed by Lurie, according to a previously unreported Internal Revenue Service filing . Who is funding the nonprofit remains unknown. Its website doesn’t disclose its donors, and the group’s yearly financial report with the IRS is not yet available. The organization has also created a 501(c)(4) “action” fund, an entity that can lobby City Hall electeds and is expected to spend roughly $4.7 million through 2027, according to another IRS filing. Catie Stewart, a San Francisco-based political consultant, described Believe in SF’s holdings as “eye-watering” and the strategy behind the group as “very smart.” “It’s unprecedented,” Stewart said of the nonprofit’s spending. “But it’s not surprising. It’s part of their strategy since day one: Poll a ton, be positive, bring in star power.” The spending represents a new dimension in San Francisco politics: a well-financed operation, funded by unknown donors, that can promote the mayor’s agenda without the disclosure requirements that govern campaign finance. Nonprofits are generally not required to publicize their contributors. Taking into account all other spending in Lurie’s orbit since he announced his candidacy in late 2023 , the expenditures are on a scale never before seen in the city. Records show Believe in SF’s 501(c)(3) has established itself as a public relations and policy research arm, founded by Adam Clammer and Alec Perkins, financiers behind the 2024 PAC that helped Lurie get elected. The group has hired public affairs firm The Media Company — overseen by Dan Newman and Brian Brokaw — to manage its activities. Clammer and Perkins were also behind a PAC this year that carries a similar name — SF Believes — and raised $1.8 million for the mayor’s preferred candidates and ballot measures during the June 2 primary. All the money appears to be working : The primary was a boon for Lurie, with the reelection of two supervisors who are allied with him and the rejection of a pair of dueling tax measures he opposed. Public polling shows the mayor is highly popular among San Franciscans. The IRS filing for Believe in SF, submitted in May 2025, offers a breakdown of how the nonprofit intends to spend its money. In 2025, Believe in SF expected to spend $8.27 million, with $5.2 million going toward digital, direct mail, and newspaper advertising and $1.6 million toward polling and policy research, among other expenses. The filing says the nonprofit plans to spend $10 million a year in 2026 and 2027 on similar activities. (Nonprofits registered as 501(c)(3)s are not allowed to support or oppose political candidates.) The video released Wednesday — which shows a coyote running through the city and interacting with the likes of former Mayor Willie Brown and former 49ers quarterback Joe Montana — appears to be just a small slice of the group’s expenditures: The budget for the promotion was in the low six figures, according to a source. The nonprofit fits Lurie’s model of public-private partnership, in which wealthy donors and corporations fill gaps that City Hall’s budget cannot cover. A former nonprofit executive who led Tipping Point Community for 15 years and grew up in the world of socialite philanthropy , Lurie has leaned on corporations and wealthy donors to give money to address homelessness , filling empty storefronts , and other causes. He has inspired the establishment of the Downtown Development Corp. and Partnership for San Francisco to fuel the post-pandemic recovery and establish a better relationship between City Hall and local business leaders. Believe in SF’s filing describes the nonprofit’s activities in detail: Its policy research will commission expert analysis and studies on “critical city issues such as charter reform and government efficiency, public transportation, housing and homelessness, mental health and addiction, the city budget, public safety, and economic development.” Many of those topics go hand-in-glove with Lurie’s policy positions: He is pushing for multiple charter reform ballot measures in November and has called for the reform of permitting , urging more efficiency in that realm. Lurie has also advocated for funding public transit through another November ballot measure , as well as revamping the city’s approach to homelessness and addiction , among other priorities. Meanwhile, Believe in SF’s public opinion research will gauge “awareness, attitudes, and trends regarding new city policies and resident priorities regarding city issues such as public safety, public education, homelessness, and parks will take place through surveys and focus groups.” The organization’s website — which displays the mayor’s commonly used tag line “Let’s go, San Francisco” — states that it “works to help San Franciscans see the city’s progress with clarity and optimism. Through research, storytelling, and public education, we shine a light on how real change is taking shape every day in safer streets, flourishing neighborhoods, and a growing sense of possibility across the city.” Newman and Emily Matthews of The Media Company declined to share the identity of Believe in SF’s donors. “Will of course file and report and share everything as required,” Newman said in an email. Newman said the nonprofit is legally separate from the PACs supporting Lurie and his priorities, and the estimate of the organization’s yearly expenses is “very rough,” since it was filed during incorporation. A spokesperson for the mayor’s office, Charles Lutvak, declined to comment. The nonprofit’s spending comes as Lurie has reached into his own pockets to drive his political career . Throughout 2025, his first year in office, he made regular deposits of hundreds of thousands of dollars into his “Daniel Lurie for Mayor 2024" campaign account, spending big on a coterie of political consultants and a speechwriter. He has also spent about $100,000 on an opposition research firm, an unusual arrangement for a mayor who is not currently mounting a campaign. The spending is allowed under local laws as long as the individuals Lurie hires do not lobby him or make government decisions, such as signing a city contract. His well-heeled donor base has also stepped in to help. During the June 2 primary, Believe in SF’s Clammer and Perkins’ PAC put $389,000 behind Supervisor Alan Wong and $233,000 behind Supervisor Stephen Sherrill. Wong was appointed by Lurie last year, and Sherrill is a close ally of the mayor on public safety, housing, and other issues. The PAC has garnered some controversy: Jan Koum, a WhatsApp founder and supporter of President Donald Trump, gave $250,000 to the committee .

The ethnic studies class that taught Sydney Sweeney, Elon Musk and political activism

Last July, an American Eagle ad of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress in head-to-toe denim closed on a pun: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” Critics called it a racist dog whistle. Others thought the outrage was overblown. The company’s stock price soared . Within weeks it had become a ninth-grade lesson at San Francisco’s Washington High School. A presentation slide from three of the school’s ethnic studies classes, a year-long graduation requirement at the San Francisco Unified School District since 2024-25, claims that the pun implies that Sweeney’s white DNA makes her “more beautiful.” The slide labels the premise “eugenics,” asserts the ad is “oppressive,” and sits “in a racist political context with [Sweeney] being a Trump supporter.” The slide is one of hundreds of class materials posted on the Google Classroom platform of Washington High ethnic studies teacher Sarita Lavin that offer observations on culture-war issues, U.S. history, and the power of political activism. SFUSD teachers are permitted to use their own supplemental materials, but Lavin’s lessons largely replace the “Voices” curriculum. The “Voices” textbook shows up in the materials only a few times over the course of the year; on one occasion, students were asked to critique it. Controversy has sometimes followed the district’s ethnic studies course. Last spring, the district’s homegrown ethnic studies curriculum came under fire for what some viewed as a political agenda. Superintendent Maria Su planned to pause the class for a year while the district reviewed alternative curricula. Instead, the district piloted publisher Gibbs Smith’s “Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey” at all schools this year before adopting it permanently in April after a controversial review process . As the school year comes to a close, SFUSD finds itself under a federal investigation for its policies and curriculum by a Republican-led House committee. Su will testify Wednesday , along with the leaders of schools in Chicago and Virginia’s Loudon County, on how the district handles teaching about race, gender, and identity. The hearing, “Breaking Trust: Attacks on Parental Rights, Inappropriate Content, and Legal Abuses in America’s Schools,” is part of a broader federal campaign to root out “wokeness” in public agencies, inspired by the second Trump administration. Audra McGeorge, a committee spokesperson, told The Standard specific targets include professional development documents that label perfectionism and individualism as characteristics of “white supremacy culture.” Inside the classroom Starting in 2025-26, SFUSD created rules around supplemental materials, which are required to be aligned with district goals, curriculum objectives, and academic standards. The process includes a feedback form with which parents can request a district review of the materials. If materials are under review, then they are prohibited from being used in the classroom until a final determination is made. “Any time we receive a question or concern, we conduct an appropriate review,” said Laura Dudnick, SFUSD’s communications director. “Because this matter may involve personnel-related issues, we cannot comment on specific details.” Most of Lavin’s class is a discussion of the culture and traditions of ethnic groups, from food to art, along with the U.S.’ historic treatment of minority populations. Another topic that Lavin’s class dealt with was the school’s namesake, George Washington. The “Voices” curriculum portrays some of the complexity of Washington’s legacy, including his “scorched earth” strategy in the Revolutionary War. Lavin’s materials take a different approach. One slide walks students through Washington’s response to “No taxation without representation” — “He was the slave torturing leader of the Revolution,” it reads. “The British were not giving him the ballot, so he gave them the bullet.” “Americans LOVE this story,” it continues, and “celebrate on the 4th of July, have BBQs and blow things up because we just LOVE the idea of a man FIGHTING for his people’s freedom! It’s very American!” Another slide lists the names and ages of people Washington enslaved. Lavin could not be reached for comment. The lesson echoes prior controversies at Washington High. In 2019, the school board voted to paint over a 13-panel, 1,600-square-foot mural that depicted Washington as a slaveowner and tyrant against the Native American population. In 2021, the board voted to rename Washington and 43 other schools after entities with no association to racism or slavery. Both efforts were reversed after the three board members which were eligible for a recall were all overwhelmingly recalled in 2022. Another assignment from Lavin’s class asks students to chart “at least 12 ways you see hegemony in your life today” and to identify “something oppressive everyone accepts.” A slide defines hegemony as “oppression society treats as normal.” Examples listed include “white women in public schools,” “baby boomers in U.S. government,” and “English-only instruction.” Another slide labels the male/female gender binary as “hegemonic.” Two parents who sat on the district’s curriculum review committee for “Voices” — and raised concerns — reviewed Lavin’s materials at The Standard’s request. Dana Bernstein, who has taught history at San Jose City College for 25 years, described the materials as “worse than ‘Voices,’” and said they present the framing of oppression versus resistance “as fact.” Scott Kravitz, another SFUSD parent, rejected the idea that the lessons depart from the “Voices” curriculum, which he said “opens the door to this one-sided narrative with a focus on activism and violent rebellion.” Modern-day activism The class materials also wade into local controversies. One slide asks students how Dr. Martin Luther King would have felt about DA Brooke Jenkins “charging 78 peaceful protesters on the Bay Bridge with multiple trumped up charges.” By the time the slide was shown in class, those protesters had taken a plea deal of five hours of community service and restitution in exchange for dropped charges. Another contemporary issue in the class materials deals with “Karen.” Slides walk students through real and hypothetical scenarios in which a nosy middle-aged white woman confronts a Black person in a park. The class’s syllabus states that the purpose of the course is to train students on how to carry on the actions of their “revolutionary ancestors.” “In this class, students will… examine systems of power, creatively and collaboratively studying how activists of the past and of today have resisted these systems,” the syllabus says. “Most importantly, they will apply their knowledge to their lives to take action on both a personal and community wide scale, will develop knowledge (and love) of self, practice solidarity and pursue self determination.” At least one assignment instructs students to engage in political activism. Students are directed to email a government official about an issue affecting Latine (a term used in the class for Latinos) people, choosing from a suggested topic list, including U.S.imperialism in Latin America, immigration enforcement, and sanctuary schools and cities. The students had to provide a screenshot proving they had sent the email. An example letter Lavin provided is addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla — whom the letter incorrectly identifies as a congressman. “My name is Sarita Lavin and I am a US citizen writing to you today to express my deep disgust and disappointment with the current treatment of unaccompanied minors in our nation,” the letter begins. Power and capital One slide, titled “Cops Aren’t Workers,” tells students that police “unions” “are not true unions,” describing them as having “historically been against workers” and existing to “protect the interests of wealthy/powerful bosses over the people.” The prior slide displays a grid of corporate logos, including those of Target, Costco, and Coca-Cola, alongside the claim that “all of these companies use forced prison labor (aka slavery) to make products.” Another slide displays the faces of tech CEOs Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai — with Elon Musk’s face crossed out and replaced by an explosion. Musk and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon are called “Nazis.” The course materials also address the topic of ethnic studies teaching. One slide catalogs “arguments made by the anti-[ethnic studies] crowd in SF,” including claims that it is “anti-white racism” and that it “teaches students to be political radicals and activists.” Lavin told KQED in September that “Voices” is flawed because “it has no mention of trans people or queer people or their struggles, which is pretty appalling considering the student populations we serve and the fact that we are in San Francisco, which has been a historic hub for queer resistance and rights.” A week earlier, dozens of SFUSD employees spoke at the Aug. 26 board meeting on the “Voices” curriculum, and it was approved. Among them was Lavin, who said ethnic studies is the only academic intervention proved effective for the district’s Black students. “I would like to ask the board — to ask Maria Su — have you ever been to an ethnic studies class before you declared it problematic?” Lavin said. “A lot of things have been said about ethnic studies, mischaracterizing ethnic studies — screenshots pulled out of who knows where.”

A nonprofit keeps 95% of clients out of jail and in court. SF courts want to kill it

Tierra Simms has walked the two blocks from her SoMa workplace to the 7th Street jail countless times. After each visit, the 37-year-old returns with one or a handful of people just released from jail. Many lug their belongings in transparent plastic bags as they follow her back to her office. Her job — and the bulk of the work at the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project — is ensuring that those released from jail during their legal proceedings return for court hearings and stay out of trouble in the meantime. By most accounts, the nationally recognized nonprofit has been living up to its responsibilities. A recent report found that an average of 95% of the organization’s clients returned to court as scheduled in 2025. An even higher number — 97% — were not rearrested or charged while awaiting trial. But a year-old squabble with the San Francisco Superior Court may lead to the dissolution of the nearly 50-year-old nonprofit. For decades, SF Pretrial, and then Santa Clara County, were the only counties with such programs. Since its founding, the nonprofit has expanded to more than 100 employees who at any time serve roughly 1,800 clients. The organization has an annual budget of roughly $16 million, funded by city contracts, grants, and donations. In addition to making sure clients return to court, SF Pretrial helps them find housing and treatment for drug and mental health issues, among other services. There is even a hotel near the office, with which the group contracts for clients with no place to go. In 2018, when California passed a law reforming the money bail system, it authorized county probation departments to operate pretrial services. That led to most counties adopting a pretrial system run by law enforcement agencies. But the law had a carve-out for SF Pretrial due to its success and long-standing relationship with the courts. San Francisco Superior Court said it has asked the city’s Adult Probation Department to take over pretrial services to centralize its control over released defendants. The court cited financial issues and a lack of transparency by the nonprofit as the reasons. ‘This decision is not based on sound public policy or what’s best for San Francisco and public safety.’ If Mayor Daniel Lurie’s budget, to be worked out by the end of June, allocates the necessary funds to the Probation Department for a new pretrial services program, the move will be final. SF Pretrial leaders — who include a former San Francisco Police Department chief — say they don’t understand why an organization that has had success for decades is being dismantled. They warn that a law enforcement agency tasked with tracking people who have not yet been convicted of a crime is problematic and that a ham-fisted transition could create chaos for courts already plagued by backlogs and lawyer shortages. They contend that the court’s mismanagement claims have been rectified and that the transparency allegations are unfounded, while stating that the Probation Department has its own troubled history. “This decision is not based on sound public policy or what’s best for San Francisco and public safety,” said SF Pretrial CEO David Mauroff. “The goal is to consolidate power and control between the superior court and adult probation, which is under the court’s authority.” The population of those awaiting trial outside of county jail has been a central focus of debates around public safety. The group is likely to grow following a state Supreme Court ruling on bail reform, clarifying that only people who pose a danger to the public can be held without bail — everyone else must be charged bail they can afford. ‘When I call them by their names, they are always surprised.’ A years-long battle Efforts to move pretrial services under the Probation Department go back years. In 2019, the department tried to take over SF Pretrial’s work by applying for a state pretrial pilot program. It failed to be selected. But in March 2025, SF Pretrial got into hot water over mismanagement of its retirement fund . This led to an investigation by the district attorney and a city review into the nonprofit’s compliance with contracting rules. The upheaval prompted the court to begin its own inquiry into the organization. On June 18, 2025, SF Superior Court CEO Brandon Riley notified Mauroff that the court had filed a Public Records Act request seeking documents about SF Pretrial’s contracts and internal finances. As Mauroff conferred with the nonprofit’s board, he was rebuffed from participating in the court’s investigation. “Hello, Mr. Mauroff. The Court is currently investigating more serious issues regarding San Francisco Pretrial and exploring potential solutions. We respectfully decline your offer to participate,” Riley wrote in an email. ‘Most of the time they are people of color. It feels like they have fallen through the gaps.’ Weeks later, Mauroff sent a follow-up notifying the court that the city no longer viewed SF Pretrial as a seriously problematic nonprofit and that the DA’s investigation had been closed. When the nonprofit refused to hand over the documents, citing the limits of public records laws over nongovernment entities, Riley responded that the court would begin the search for a replacement: “Great! I figured it would come to this.” In October, Riley wrote to the state’s judicial council about his plan to move pretrial work to the Probation Department. Still, the nonprofit continued to inform the court about its improved oversight program for defendants and updates on how it was living up to requirements for city-contracted nonprofits. As the months ticked by, SF Pretrial remained unsure of its future. The nonprofit responded to a Request for Proposals from the SF Sheriff’s Office for the same services it has provided the court, and was awarded the contract. In March, the Probation Department requested $12.8 million from the mayor to stand up its own pretrial unit, saying it was prepared to begin operations July 1, 2026, and would hire nearly 30 new staffers. The issue bubbled to the surface at a hearing last week of the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee, at which members of the Sheriff’s Office, the ACLU, and dozens of other public commenters spoke in support of SF Pretrial as the panel weighed approval of the sheriff’s contract. ‘I was in the Probation Department. This is not what we did. Here, it’s “How can we help you not go back into custody?”’ “It is a challenging process, and one that we feel would take, at minimum, a year,” Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said. “We just had our first meeting with the Probation Department in terms of talking about what their plan is.” Anya Worley-Ziegmann, a coordinator with citizen watchdog group the People’s Budget Coalition, decried the switch to the Probation Department. “No other agency is hiring new positions,” Worley-Ziegmann said. “They are ramming this through and steering us toward a collapse of our pretrial system.” Supervisor Connie Chan said she had questions about the decision, but no representative of the court was present to answer them. The three-member body ultimately forwarded SF Pretrial’s$22.5 million, three-year contract with the Sheriff’s Office to the full board for approval. The court justified its actions, claiming the Probation Department will be more accountable and transparent and will improve public safety. “SF Pretrial refused to provide the records requested by the court, leading to the court’s decision to discontinue its partnership,” a statement said. “The fiscal implications, along with reporting inaccuracies and limited information to judges, demonstrated the urgency of the court’s decision to move forward. The court claimed the nonprofit’s work was shoddy and unaccountable but did not provide data to support its claims. ‘I’ve been homeless before. I can relate to them. When I tell my clients that, they are able to open up.’ No one from the court agreed to an interview to explain its course of action. SF Pretrial responded by pointing out that it handles nearly 40,000 client check-ins each quarter, and occasional discrepancies are addressed in real time. The Adult Probation Department has been planning a takeover since the court reached out last year — yet none of the pretrial services positions have been filled, and no launch is expected until 2027. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ Numerous former judges and lawyers, and the San Francisco Bar Association, oppose the court’s decision to cut ties with the nonprofit. Defense attorney David Rizk called the move “ridiculous” and “foolhardy,” contending that the court, which falls under the state’s judicial branch, has no legal authority to tell the city how to spend its funds. A retired Superior Court judge, who asked to remain anonymous, said she doesn’t understand why the court is playing hardball. “My experience with Pretrial has been, they go the extra mile,” she said. “They go and find the people, look in encampments. They do the kinds of things adult probation’s not going to do. It’s just not in their DNA.” ‘We are not here to put you in jail.’ Elston Mallory, an SF Pretrial case manager and former Marin County probation officer, said the Probation Department’s message will be “Show up or go back to jail,” while the nonprofit’s message is “How can we help you not go back into custody?” SF Pretrial board member Toney Chaplin has been on both sides. A retired Hayward police chief who served in SFPD’s ranks for nearly 30 years, Chaplin said this work has gone under the radar for years. But as a cop, he saw the way that the nonprofit’s employees built trust and relationships in a way that law enforcement simply can’t. “Those people come to court because we make sure they do,” he said of the nonprofit. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Additionally, transitioning pretrial services to probation could negatively impact public safety, said retired appeals court Judge Anthony Kline, noting that it could lead to fewer people showing up to court. “It’s a huge mistake,” Kline said. “The public safety of San Francisco, which is pretty high right now, is heavily attributable to this pretrial project.”

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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

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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

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Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 2

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 3

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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.

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Malcolm Yeung

Jose F. Almanza

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Virginia Donohue

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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.

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Debra Walker

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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

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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

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Richard Lee

Stephen Wasserman

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.

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Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 2

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Claire Ervin Lee

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.

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Marc Dickow

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Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 8

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

Assessor-Recorder

Joaquín Torres