As the race to represent the Richmond at the Board of Supervisors enters the home stretch, campaign spending surges, with attack mailers aimed at frontrunner Marjan Philhour hitting voter mailboxes. Meanwhile, incumbent Connie Chan seemed to move closer to the challenger on the issues at the district’s final candidate forum, held last week at the Internet Archive.
The forum, organized by Mission Local, featured all the candidates: incumbent Connie Chan; business advocate Marjan Philhour, who has run against Chan twice before and is considered the frontrunner in this race; Republican marketing entrepreneur Jeremiah Boehner; local business manager Sherman D’Silva; and physician assistant Jen Nossokoff.
Being held this late in the election calendar, the event attracted only a small crowd dominated by supporters of Philhour and Chan, whose campaign headquarters are right around the corner on Clement Street. Reflecting the return engagement atmosphere of the event, Philhour decided to pare down her opening statement midstream to a basic theme she kept to throughout the event: The city has been run to satisfy ideologically aspirational and self-actualization-related goals without satisfying more basic needs first.
“I think that over the years, we have lost sight of the actual basics that are needed for families, for working people and the most underserved … we need a supervisor who is going to represent everyone in this neighborhood and understand that we’re going to disagree on things, and that’s O.K.; we can’t go on with an us-against-them-mentality when we’re not meeting the basics of public safety, we’re not meeting the basics around housing, shelter, and food security.”
Meanwhile, Chan, clutching a notepad throughout the proceedings, defended her record, sometimes displacing blame on others. Answering questions on public safety, she alluded to what she called “slow response time from our law enforcement” as “creating the impression that we’re not safe.” She also cited her service as the Board of Supervisors’ budget chair, supporting pay increases for police and fully funding the police academy, as well as nonpolice solutions such as street ambassadors.
She also, following the lead of the moderator, Mission Local reporter Junyao Yang, emphasized that crime rates were declining in the district, which most of her challengers, including Philhour, acknowledged, while also citing continued incidences of high-profile property crimes in the district, including storefront break-ins.
Despite the cordial language at the forum, the tension between the two frontrunners was palpable. Among those present were Chan supporters David Heller, the president of the Greater Geary Boulevard Merchants and Property Owners Association, who allegedly initiated a physical confrontation with Philhour at a previous campaign forum at the same location Sept. 16, and Julie Pitta, a former neighborhood columnist who lost her post at the Richmond Review neighborhood newspaper after being caught removing Philhour campaign signs from neighborhood businesses back in February. Pitta now runs The Phoenix Project, an online commentary site that recently published a scathing editorial screed denouncing Philhour’s candidacy.
That editorial coincided with a ramping up of negative campaigning against Philhour.
The same week as Mission Local’s forum, Clement Street mailboxes were flooded with leaflets from “Fix Our City SF,” funded by two local unions representing civil service and nonprofit organization workers, that portray Philhour as beholden to interests wanting “to bulldoze Clement Street.” Fix Our City and other front groups associated with organized labor have launched similar campaigns in other districts, such as a mailer attacking District 3 candidate Danny Sauter as being “landlord approved” with “a housing agenda [that] means higher rents.”
A look at the San Francisco Ethics Commission’s Campaign Finance Daily Digest Dashboard for District 1 reveals that both Philhour and Chan have amassed campaign donation war chests approaching half a million dollars, with newly reported funding of over $1 million for spending by third parties, including $229,000 opposing Philhour.
The new spending by the labor-associated groups was accompanied by a decision by the city’s Ethics Commission to raise the spending cap for Philhour’s campaign to receive public financing to over $1 million.
Meanwhile, a complaint has been filed with the Ethics Commission against one of the unions funding the attack ads against Philhour for illegally using surplus funds from another committee it formed for the March 2024 election. Philhour supporter Mark Dietrich has accused the Committee to Restore Police Minimum Staffing and Public Safety, organized by SEIU Local 1021, which is also funding Fix Our City, of making an illegal contribution of $100,000 to the new front group.
“The SEIU Local 1021 committee made a $100,000 contribution to the “Fix Our City SF, Sponsored by Labor Organizations” committee. And it did so still as a primarily formed ballot measure committee!” Dietrich states in his complaint. “Indeed, the Prop B committee would not change its status to general purpose until October 3, 2024 (attachment 4) – too late to be able to use its cash on hand for electioneering.”
The spending is starting to mirror a familiar pattern in past Westside supervisorial races, as in November 2022 when labor groups spent $260,000 to defend then-incumbent District 4 Supervisor Gordon Mar against challenger Joel Engardio, including on attack mailers portraying Engardio as a carpetbagger “funded by Trump Republicans.” Engardio ended up winning the race by 479 votes.
So far, over 4,000 out of 47,000 voters in District 1 have turned in their ballots, with Election Day in two weeks.
