by Josh Koehn : sfstandard – excerpt
No ballots were cast last week in San Francisco, but that didn’t stop some of the city’s most influential political players from gathering for an election party in the Mission.
That may sound a bit unusual, but in many ways, this was not a normal party.
The gathering—held Tuesday at a condo owned by Garry Tan, the vociferous CEO of tech startup incubator Y Combinator—was designed to celebrate victories scored by moderate Democrats in 2022, as well as bring together an eclectic cast of elected officials and political organizers in a rallying cry for two elections in 2024.
According to several people who attended the party, a dramatic shift is underway in how local political organizations and their campaign committees are aligning to defeat progressives and confront a range of issues next year—from passing ballot measures and winning supervisor races to unseating incumbent judges. A leader of one of these political groups estimated they could spend as much as $15 million combined in next year’s elections…
“We’re all trying to respond to similar problems but have different takes on what the solutions are,” said Kanishka Cheng, the head of TogetherSF Action. “I think people like Garry and others in leadership roles are doing their best to present this as a coalition of organizations that are working together to solve these problems.”…
Todd David, a political director for Abundant SF who attended the party, said the groups seem to be aligned on almost everything outside of possibly the mayor’s race. Abundant SF is backing the reelection of Mayor London Breed but does not plan to spend money on the race…
“We don’t all agree on everything, but that’s the beauty of this coalition: no purity tests,” Buss said. “We are just focusing on getting the basics, like clean streets, safe streets, building homeless shelters, building housing and helping small businesses. Garry is a great cheerleader for commonsense causes.”…
Jim Stearns, a longtime political consultant in San Francisco who works on competing progressive campaigns, called the gathering at Tan’s condo “extremely dicey” as it gives off the appearance that candidates are improperly coordinating with political committee…
The major disagreement among the people I know who are in those groups is over transit and car issues. Some of Marjan’s supporters hate SFMTA because they are killing the merchants with thier anti-parking and anti-car acitons. They are primarily united over teh crime isseus. That is why YIMBY switched to crime and homelessness. I am glad to see they do not all agree on the solutions. – Mari