First, a confession: In March 2002, San Franciscans voted to pass ranked choice voting (RCV) as an amendment to the city charter, and I was one of those voters. The measure passed, and it has been confusing voters in every city election since 2004. Not only that, RCV often leads to the least popular and least qualified candidates slipping into office and the most popular candidate not winning (confusing, I know, but that’s how District 7 got Myrna Melgar instead of Joel Engardio for supervisor in 2020).
Here is a simple rule of thumb to follow: Rank the good, blank the worst, and vote for at least two candidates whenever possible. Absolutely leave the candidate you can’t live with off the ballot, and do not vote for the same candidate more than once because it won’t count. You can practice marking a ranked-choice ballot with the San Francisco Department of Elections Ranked-Choice Voting Practice Tool.
Ballot packets will be mailed about a month before Election Day, which is Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
No doubt you’re already seeing myriad mailers with the official stamp of approval from the San Francisco Democratic Party. Last March, a slate called “Democrats for Change” ushered in what moderates thought would be a fresh start for a stale, out-of-touch, left-of-progressive city leadership, and they won big. Alas, their official picks for this November’s election turned out to be the same old incumbents, earning them a new nickname — “Democrats for No Change.”
Not only that, but the official San Francisco Democratic Party picks broke the cardinal rule of RCV: they made sole endorsements in all but one race. While they said running up to the March election they wanted change, for the most part their choices were incumbents (London Breed for mayor, Myrna Melgar for District 7) and party golden boys (Bilal Mahmood for District 5, Danny Sauter for District 3, Michael Lai for District 11). They went with Marjan Philhour in District 1 over the far-left progressive incumbent, Connie Chan, and duel endorsed Trevor Chandler number one and Roberto Hernandez number two for District 9. …
Speaking of moderate golden boys, District 5 candidate Mahmood is being hailed as the best chance for the new Democratic leadership to beat socialist incumbent Dean Preston. There’s only one problem: he doesn’t appear to be all that moderate. Mission Local has the best election dashboard of any publication — it’s a must visit to get to know the candidates before you vote. In their “Meet the Candidates” series, you can also see their endorsements and fundraising in each post, and it also asks competitors in each district a weekly question. On Aug. 27, the question for District 5 was “Who do you support for district attorney and why?” Preston, no surprise, supports Ryan Khojasteh, a public defender and former Chesa Boudin staffer fired when incumbent District Attorney Brooke Jenkins took office, along with 14 other former public defenders. Khojasteh leans with Dean — to the left. According to the X account that spearheaded the successful recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, Khojeasteh recently left his job as a part-time prosecutor for Alameda County’s embattled District Attorney Pamela Price because he didn’t want to do standard rotations through the specialized units. I spoke with Khojasteh and he vehemently denied the allegation, showing me his resignation letter that indicated his reason for leaving his part-time position with Price was to focus on his campaign. “I qualified for the ballot and resigned from my job. It’s pretty standard,” Khojeasteh said.
Autumn Looijen and Scotty Jacobs, also seen as moderates, voiced their support for Jenkins, but Mahmood said, “I will personally be abstaining from the District Attorney’s race.” He followed that up with a vague statement about recognizing the importance of having a collaborative relationship and building consensus “even with differences of opinion, between the supervisor and district attorney’s office in making continued progress for safe streets.” It appears that Mahmood could be a progressive in moderate’s clothing. …
Board of Supervisors President and mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin was up in arms this week over a venture capitalist purchasing a number of commercial properties on Fillmore Street in Pacific Heights. At a press conference Monday in front of La Mediterranee (which the San Francisco Standard described as “veering at times into a stump speech for November’s mayoral race”), Peskin pitched a plan to introduce temporary zoning controls for the Upper Fillmore Neighborhood Commercial Historic District, which spans four blocks between Jackson and Pine streets. On the social media platform X, Peskin said, “We can’t let venture capitalists buy up entire blocks of a neighborhood to create their own playground for the ultra-rich. SF won’t tolerate displacement in the name of economic revival.” That’s a quite different tone than Peskin took when iPhone designer and venture capitalist Sir Jony Ive started using his half-a-billion-dollar fortune to buy up nearly an entire block in historic Jackson Square — which happens to be in Peskin’s district. While he originally said he “had his suspicions,” the notoriously NIMBY Peskin changed his mind after dining with Ive at the exclusive and expensive Cotogna. “He loves and cares about Jackson Square,” Peskin gushed to the Standard. “There are people who are responsible investors and those who are not. He’s definitely one of the responsible ones.” Peskin also enjoyed the $90 box of L.A. Burdick Chocolates Ive sent to his office after the meeting. …
Eleven small business owners wrote a letter recently titled “Dean Preston is Not A Small Business Owner.” It reads in part, “We, members of the small business community in San Francisco District 5, are concerned about the health of our small businesses. Our concerns have often been dismissed or ignored by our Supervisor, Dean Preston, so it has been upsetting to see Dean suggest that knows what our community needs because he is a ‘former small business owner.’ … But the truth is that Dean is not, and has never been, a small business owner. He was at most a small business investor. His modest investment was in a business that operated the music venue Cafe Du Nord. That business (“Cafe Du Nord Partners LLC”) was owned and operated by Guy Carson and Kerry Labelle, who (according to their LinkedIn bios) handled all aspects of the business. Dean’s investment in the business concluded when Carson & Labelle sold their lease in 2013. Read that again: Dean did not sell the business. Carson and Labelle did. They were the ‘owners.’ Not Dean.”
In fact, during the time Preston claims he was a small business owner, he was actually running Tenants Together, the nonprofit he founded in 2008. As executive director, Preston advocated for legislation and helped form local tenant unions to promote rent control and tenant rights laws. Tenants Together also operated a renters rights hotline and a network of tenant attorneys. Between 2015 and 2017, Preston led tenant bootcamps to teach renters how to protect their rights in San Francisco. Ironically, his wife, Jenckyn Goosby, along with the Goosby-Preston children, stand to inherit millions in rental properties through the Goosby family trust. The same year Preston founded his tenant advocacy group, his grandmother-in-law, Jackieline Goosby, filed an unlawful detainer suit in San Francisco Superior Court to evict a tenant from the Goosby’s building at 3233 Scott Street (you can’t make this stuff up).
The letter from the small business owners concludes, “Dean’s lack of knowledge about small business in San Francisco has been reflected in his leadership. He has done nothing to address the lengthy permitting process keeping storefronts empty and struggling in our neighborhoods. He has proposed ordering businesses to stay open even when they are failing. When crime shot up after the pandemic, he ignored our pleas when we asked for help, and said it is “pointless” to arrest the drug dealers that have made so many of our customers feel unsafe and have led directly to so many small businesses closing in D5.” …
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Updated: 12:18 p.m. Aug. 29
