The Mayoral Election and the Purpose of San Francisco
The unspoken question at the heart of this election is what, and who, is San Francisco for.
An absolutely essential question at the heart of any election is what the city, state or country is for. In other words, what is the purpose of the city, state or country where the election is occurring. That question is also inextricably linked to the question of who the city, state or country is for. In the race for president it is very easy to see that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have competing visions about who the US should be for, with Harris favoring a diverse pluralist society and Trump one where, at the end of the day, the US is for white, straight, Christian men with everyone else playing, at best, a supporting role.
This question is particularly acute in large and medium sized diverse American cities, and is a helpful lens through which to understand this year’s mayoral election in San Francisco. At the core of that election is a dispute among the candidates, and perhaps more importantly among the financial backers of some of those candidates, about what and who San Francisco should be for.
This is a much more helpful approach to understanding the discourse around housing, one of the key issues in this election, then through repeating misleading tropes about NIMBYs and YIMBYs.
The supporters of Mayor Breed’s upzoning plan and the voodoo YIMBY orthodoxy that if you build housing in one highly desirable city, the rents will magically come down for everybody, are not so much making an argument about housing, as they are promoting a vision of San Francisco as a much bigger city that caters primarily to the wealthy from all over the world, rather than the city of neighborhoods that it has been for a long time.
Critics of that upzoning plan, some of whom, like Aaron Peskin, are also advocates for affordable housing, have a very different vision of the purpose of San Francisco. For them, the purpose of San Francisco is for distinct, diverse, vibrant and affordable neighborhoods to exist so that the people in those neighborhoods can lead lives that might not be possible in other places. That explains, for example, the candidates’ different views regarding expanding rent control.
A major component of the former vision supported largely by Daniel Lurie, Mayor Breed and Mark Farrell, is that the city is for the wealthy. For those candidates, the needs of the wealthy, whether it be for luxury housing, a greater sense of order or an economy focused on tech and finance, come before the needs of working San Franciscans who might be more focused on affordable housing, public schools and good public transportation.
This is very apparent in the varying approaches to homelessness. Breed, Lurie and Farrell have taken positions that seem to be driven largely by anger at the people who are homeless, leading to performative angry policies that are rarely effective. Peskin, on the other hand, appears to have adopted a more pragmatic approach to homelessness that, while not driven by the cruelty we see in the other campaigns, is not exactly indulgent of homelessness.
Asha Safai, the other major candidate in the race, seems to be splitting the difference and landing somewhere between these two competing visions. Safai's candidacy remains intriguing because he probably is the most broadly acceptable candidate but will struggle to be one of the last four, let alone two candidates standing. Ironically, if he is one of the last two candidates, he will almost certainly win.
There is obviously some common ground among all the candidates. All would like to see a safer San Francisco, while none want homelessness to continue to be a major problem in San Francisco. However, the competing big picture visions lead to very different ideas about how to address these problems.
For example, the vision of San Francisco as a city whose purpose is to facilitate economic growth and wealth, and to be a comfortable easy place for people who have accumulated that wealth leads, to a public safety policy that is very heavy on enforcement and much lighter on accountability and exploring the root causes of these problems.
The fetishization of increasing the number and power of the police reflects a vision for San Francisco that centers those who are most comfortable with police and who see the police as their friends and allies, but the history of police in San Francisco, as in most major American cities, is something very different, leading other people to not quite see police that way. Therefore, a vision of San Francisco driven by diversity, addordability and different neighborhoods might lead to an approach public safety that recognizes the obvious important role police play, but that sees them as part of a bigger public safety solution.
Not surprisingly, there is an enormous amount of money supporting the positions and candidates who want to remake the city into one run by, of and for the wealthy. The billionaire backed groups like GrowSF, TogetherSF and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, despite their innocuous names and efforts to present themselves as fun good-government organizations, have brought resources to this project that propel campaigns and drive narratives.
In many respects, this year’s election is just the latest iteration of this primal conflict that has defined San Francisco for much of the last 80 years. You cannot understand this election, and the tension between Breed, Lurie and Farrell on one side and Peskin on the other, if you do not understand the Freeway Revolts, fights over Manhattanization and even the efforts to bring about district elections. The biggest difference now is that neighborhood activists are going up against global money.
Yes, indeed. Whether the money is global or local, the "domain assumption" (hats off to the late Alvin Gouldner) that ought to be taken seriously is that the billionaires' and the corporations have gotten fat on "other peoples' money" (thank you Louis D. Brandeis) and voters need to wise up and use their power in the voting booth to rein in the money power in the USA and abroad, instead of being distracted by chauvinism, celebrities and sensationalism,