It's become something of a meme that the phrase "This year's election is the most important of our lifetimes" gets repeated ad nauseam when every US presidential election rolls around. In a way, it is true, insofar as every presidential election is the most consequential and will have a greater impact than any other on the direction of politics pretty much everywhere.
On the local level, there is actually a good case to be made the collection of local offices up for election in San Francisco this November will constitute the most impactful election since perhaps 2000.
Since some of the readers of this blog substack collection of deranged ramblings aren't well-versed in the agonizing dynamics of San Francisco municipal politics, it may be worthwhile to look at the current state of play to help understand just what makes this election so consequential.
Let's start with the actual Capital-P Politics of San Francisco. Like most representative democracies, San Francisco has an executive, a legislature, and a collection of administrative agencies that, combined, constitute "The Government". Unlike most representative democracies, San Francisco doesn't really have political parties in the traditional sense. The city is a de-facto one-party state, where Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats at something approaching a 1-to-9 ratio. Instead, city politics break down between two loosely defined camps that we will refer to as the Progs and the Mods. Looking at the current roster of SF electeds, the affiliation of these camps breaks down something like this:
Executive:
Mayor London Breed (Mod)
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins (Mod)
Legislative:
District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan (Prog)
District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani (Mod)
District 3 Supervisor and Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin (Prog)
District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio (Mod)
District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston (Prog)
District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey (Mod)
District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Neither)
District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman (Neither)
District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen (Prog)
District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton (Prog)
District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí (Neither)
It's worth noting that these affiliations are kind of squishy and not very closely tied to the national conception of what Progressive and Moderate means, hence the abbreviated names. Someone in the Mod camp like State Senator Scott Weiner Wiener, for example, who is routinely demonized by national Republicans as a drug-pushing, big-government, sex-weirdo, is also demonized by SF Progs as a shill of police and real estate interests.
Regardless, as things currently stand, the city seems to be split pretty cleanly between the Progs and Mods, with the Mods in control of the Mayor's office and the Progs with a plurality, but not outright majority on the Board of Supervisors. But this is itself a bit misleading. As highlighted in this piece by GrowSF, while the Mayor may be a member of the Mod faction, decades of procedural changes by Board President (and mayoral candidate) Aaron Peskin have left the mayor unable to set policy without the support of the BoS, which has been in various states of Prog plurality, majority, or even Supermajority for more than a decade. This is why you frequently see Mayor Breed unable to push forward priorities like expedited housing approvals and SFPD procedural streamlining. because she does not exercise effective control over the city bureaucracy that she is nominally the boss of and is stymied by a hostile BoS.
But beyond the politics, San Francisco is also in a precarious economic state. Since the pandemic and the shift to remote work in the tech sector, San Francisco has been reeling. Workers not coming into the office has lead to a reduction in tax revenue downtown, both on the sales side (fewer patrons for local businesses) and property tax (office buildings are worth less when no one wants to rent them out). High-income employment in sectors like financial, information, and business services (read: tech and tech adjacent) is also dropping significantly, with the city shedding more than 30,000 jobs in that sector in 2023 alone. This has lead to a situation where the city is facing an $800m budget deficit in the coming years that could require 10% cuts to every city department. The San Francisco Unified School District is arguably in even an worse facing fiscal insolvency and a possible state takeover.
So why does this election matter? Well as noted above, San Francisco is currently living under divided government with Mods controlling the mayor's office and Progs in functional control of the Board of Supervisors. But that has the potential to change in this election. Mayor Breed is fighting for reelection against Prog Aaron Peskin and several other Mod candidates in a race that's going to be extremely close. Beyond that, the Board is also very much up for grabs. Two Prog supervisors (Peskin and Ronen) are termed out, while two others (Preston and Chan) won their initial elections by extremely narrow margins. Coupled with the anti-incumbent mood in San Francisco overall and there's the potential for a significant swing in this election. If November again delivers a divided government or full Prog control, San Francisco could buckle under the combined strain of crushing housing costs, the risk of population loss, and the fiscal crisis. But if the city elects a government that's ready and willing to make tough choice and turn a corner on making sure the city actually functions, then the city could be slated to rise from the ashes of the pandemic and the housing crisis.