{"id":32477,"date":"2024-03-26T12:30:17","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T19:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=32477"},"modified":"2024-03-26T12:30:18","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T19:30:18","slug":"moderate-on-moderate-violence-sf-mayoral-races-next-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/03\/26\/moderate-on-moderate-violence-sf-mayoral-races-next-act\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Moderate-on-moderate violence:\u2019 SF mayoral race\u2019s next act"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\" by\u00a0JOE ESKENAZI<\/a><\/strong>MARCH 25, 2024 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"George
Luis \u00c1ngel Firpo puts Jack Dempsey out of the ring in 1923 in the famous painting by George Bellows. In what may or may not be an analog of San Francisco’s forthcoming mayoral election, after Dempsey was knocked from the ring and pummeled by Firpo, he rallied to win the fight in the next round.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do you know how many votes you get to cast for mayor in November? If so, you\u2019re better informed than many of the folks working this year\u2019s mayoral campaigns \u2014 or running in them \u2014 who tend to default to \u2018a lot.\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re not wrong, but the Department of Elections informs us that the exact answer is 10. Ten! Can you imagine it? Can you envision the thought process behind parsing your sixth, seventh and eighth choices? It\u2019d be like asking Elizabeth Taylor to rank her ex-husbands (and Liz would complicate her ballot<\/a> by putting Richard Burton twice). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will most San Francisco voters dutifully fill out all 10 spots? Of course not; that\u2019d be a lot to expect out of a voter, especially when, like the roster of a city Little League team, the talent level among the mayoral candidates really drops off after the top four or five. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, no, most San Francisco voters will not emulate David Letterman and craft their own Top-10 lists<\/a>. But the vast majority will be voting for multiple candidates, as the system allows. The national ranked-choice voting advocacy group Fair Vote<\/a> crunched 20 years of San Francisco data, and noted that the median number of city voters who\u2019ve been opting for multiple candidates is 74 percent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a lot<\/em> of extra votes out there. Candidates neglecting, ignoring or disdaining the voting system we\u2019ve had in place since 2004 are setting themselves up to be neglected, ignored or disdained. And yet, it happens more than you\u2019d think. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mark
Your challengers: (L-R) Mark Farrell, Daniel Lurie, Ahsha Safa\u00ed. Photos, from left, by Eli Turner, Xueer Lu and Joe Eskenazi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With the dust settling from the March 5 election, we\u2019re entering into a period of what one pithy city player calls \u201cmoderate-on-moderate violence.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up in the political heavens, our Masters of the Universe are turning on one another<\/a>. Some of the billionaires will support the incumbent. But some won\u2019t: Don\u2019t look now, but Mark Farrell established a candidate-controlled committee<\/a> last week to push the mayoral-strengthening ballot measures from Michael Moritz\u2019s TogetherSF \u2026 which also enables Farrell to raise unlimited funds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a more terrestrial plane, the competition for mayoral endorsements will be fierce. And multifaceted. This is a multi-front war. It will be fought over the now moderate-heavy Democratic County Central Committee, the big-money groups spending with sailor-on-liberty ferocity over the last several election cycles, neighborhood and ethnic Democratic clubs, and influential and quasi-influential individuals. When it comes to bending the ears of individual DCCC member-elects, we\u2019re told, \u201cthe wooing season has already started.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor London Breed\u2019s team has, additionally, made it clear that it is not interested in any dual or ranked endorsements. This is a loaded decree coming from a sitting mayor who\u2019ll be running this town for the next eight-odd months (and may yet win in November). It\u2019d be nice if she picked up the phone for you, right? Political and governmental issues aren\u2019t supposed to bleed into one another, but it often happens here on planet Earth.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, this is just a battle over endorsements. Breed\u2019s demand that she and she alone be recognized makes political sense. It does not benefit her to have other people\u2019s names and photos on the campaign brochures she\u2019d rather have featuring her and her alone. That\u2019s hardly unwise or crazy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s a difference between consolidating endorsements for a campaign and actually running a campaign. <\/em>And, at this point, everything seems to point toward the mayor having little interest in engaging with the ranked-choice strategy that has governed San Francisco elections for a generation and will decide this one, whether she likes it or not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Mayor London Breed in November 2018. Photo by Abraham Rodriguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do you know what percentage of the time the candidate who wins the most first-place votes goes on to win in a ranked-choice election? According to the data sets<\/a> over at Fair Vote, it\u2019s around 94 percent. Didn\u2019t Mayor Breed finish first in a 2018 election in which she put minimal effort into a ranked-choice strategy, and then hang on to beat Mark Leno and Jane Kim, who put a maximal effort into such a strategy? Yes, that happened. So what\u2019s the big deal? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s address the higher-end issue first. Many elections, if not most, are not particularly competitive. If we had a ranked-choice contest on what to have for dinner and the choices were pizza, haggis or Scandinavian aspic<\/a>, the permutations of RCV would not likely come into play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that leads to the forthcoming San Francisco mayoral election \u2014 and how, in some ways, it\u2019s 180 degrees different than the race Breed won in 2018. One thing it certainly isn\u2019t is a pizza-haggis-aspic competition. It seems plain that this one is going to be competitive, and the notion of any of the declared candidates amassing a double-digit first-round lead<\/a>, as Breed did in 2018, feels more than a bit fanciful. It certainly doesn\u2019t feel like a solid assumption that our deeply unpopular incumbent mayor, who is running in the same ideological lane as two other well-financed competitors, is a lock to finish first at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that 2018 contest, Leno and Kim each garnered about 60,000 first-place votes. That was a good 30,000 behind Breed \u2014 but, combined, the two outpolled her handily. Over the course of eight rounds of ranked-choice tabulations, Leno gained on Breed, eventually losing by just 2,500-odd votes, a 50.55 to 49.45 tilt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, we won\u2019t have two candidates neatly splitting the pie among voters less ideologically inclined to vote for Breed. Rather, now we\u2019ll have multiple candidates on her <\/em>side of the sandbox, splitting her<\/em> voters. There is, clearly, a big center-left lane in which to run. Aaron Peskin is biding his time like Godot<\/a> \u2014 And if he doesn\u2019t come? We\u2019ll come back tomorrow. And then the day after tomorrow. Possibly. And so on<\/em>. But it figures he will eventually arrive. Perhaps as soon as April. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Board President Aaron Peskin. Photo from May 2018.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Peskin is in no hurry. Why interrupt this moderate-on-moderate violence? But when he does finally enter, a ranked-choice strategy among his mayoral competitors would seem to be de rigueur. But it remains to be seen if these candidates can get over individual ambitions and personal animosity to agree on anything. Election professionals worry that these sorts of deals, at least early in the election cycle, project weakness. They also give your chosen voter base tacit permission to vote for another candidate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Election professionals, however, also know the value of (eventually) forming alliances. Candidates, though, often don\u2019t; candidates can be the most inconvenient part of the electoral process for election professionals. So can voters, who are less ideological than political insiders and, messaging be damned, vote for candidate combinations that don\u2019t make intuitive sense. One casualty of moderate-on-moderate violence may be punch-drunk voters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere should be genuine concern about confusing voters,\u201d a moderate operative tells me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Mark Farrell, seen here with London Breed in a 2018 photo. The latter is now San Francisco\u2019s incumbent mayor, while the former is running to unseat her.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ranked-choice voting needn\u2019t be confusing, but politics often is. In 2018, even up to the penultimate seventh round of ranked-choice tabulations, Kim and Leno held nearly 57 percent of the vote. The electorate, at that time, was clearly leaning progressive, so multiple progressives entered the fray, split the vote, diluted their collective leverage, and the mayoral contest was won by a moderate. It\u2019s funny how that works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, the electorate would seem to be leaning moderate. And, lo, multiple moderates have entered the fray. Moderates have the clear advantage \u2014 and, as a result of that, every individual candidate is incentivized to stay in the race, work for his or her own benefit, and dilute their collective leverage. It has the potential to work out funny again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, it will be fascinating to see what comes next \u2014 if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. Possibly. And so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

READ MORE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"London<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

London Breed will be your next mayor, as Mark Leno concedes<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Mayoral<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mayoral candidate Ahsha Safa\u00ed reveals which city officials he\u2019d fire<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Live:<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Live: Mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie with Joe Eskenazi at Manny\u2019s<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Mark<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mark Farrell\u2019s pitch to voters? \u2018Common sense.\u2019<\/a><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

JOE ESKENAZI<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

getbackjoejoe@gmail.com<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Managing Editor\/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour humble narrator\u201d was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0JOE ESKENAZIMARCH 25, 2024 Do you know how many votes you get to cast for mayor in November? If so, you\u2019re better informed than many of the folks working this year\u2019s mayoral campaigns \u2014 or running in them \u2014 who tend to default to \u2018a lot.\u2019  They\u2019re not wrong, but the Department… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32478,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32477\/revisions\/32478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}