Second supervisor targeted in five days by billionaire and keyboard antagonist
Elon Musk has once again called for a San Francisco supervisor to be put in prison, the second time in the span of a week.
On Tuesday, Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Board President Aaron Peskin should be locked up: “Prison for Peskin,” he wrote.
Musk was replying to a post from Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, a fellow tech executive who had written that Peskin had “done his part to doom spiral this city” and that the supervisor should retire.
Peskin, in a brief statement, said the incident was beneath him: “My intelligence is insulted by having to talk about Elon Musk and his friend Garry Tan.”
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Peskin is a long-time city politico who became the president of the Board of Supervisors in January. He is well-known as a political operator with a Rolodex filled with city bureaucrats and commissioners, contacts gained over decades in San Francisco government.
Musk’s post was prompted by an article speculating on the possibility of a Peskin mayoral run next year, a prospect Peskin has thus far shot down.
Prison for Peskin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2023
Five days ago, Musk had called for another San Francisco supervisor, Dean Preston, to be put into jail. Musk’s comment last Thursday was made in response to a Mission Local article detailing Preston’s legislation to ban security guards in San Francisco from unholstering their weapons to protect against shoplifting and other property crimes.
The billionaire at the time wrote that “Dean Preston should go to prison.” Preston, like Peskin, is on the progressive wing of the Board of Supervisors. He is the lone democratic socialist on the board.
Musk had earlier pledged $100,000 to a campaign to unseat the District 5 supervisor next year, but his post last week seems to have backfired: The political pressure group organizing the “Dump Dean” campaign said it would not accept any donations from Musk after his comments, saying he was not aligned with their values.
Musk has a propensity for spurious and quickfire online posts dating back several years, in which he replies to all manner of people online at all hours of the day. He has frequently made outlandish and unserious remarks, as when he pledged to fight Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a cage match that never materialized.
Tan, the tech executive to whom Musk was responding, is also on the board of Grow SF, the group campaigning to unseat Preston. Tan has a history of online vitriol against leftists and progressives in San Francisco and has spent almost $300,000 in local political races to back moderate candidates and measures.
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JOE RIVANO BARROSSENIOR EDITOR
joe.rivanobarros@missionlocal.com
Joe was born in Sweden, where the Chilean half of his family received asylum after fleeing Pinochet, and spent his early childhood in Chile; he moved to Oakland when he was eight. He attended Stanford University for political science and worked at Mission Local as a reporter after graduating. He then spent time in advocacy as a partner for the strategic communications firm The Worker Agency. He rejoined Mission Local as an editor in 2023.
