My first run for elected office was in 1980, a failed campaign for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Education. Ten years later, I won that spot, coming in first and kicking off a string of campaigns, many successful and a few not. I spent 4 years on the Board of Education, followed by 14 years on the Board of Supervisors before being elected to the California Assembly in 2008. I ended my career on November 20, 2014 after finishing 6 years in the Assembly.

Serving the people of San Francisco was a privilege. I like to think the city was rewarded by my advocacy for the voiceless. I considered it a gift to my adopted home, a refuge for a young gay man escaping a closeted New Jersey boyhood.

Today, I enjoy a unique vantage point, having been both at the center and, now, somewhat on the sidelines of San Francisco politics. What’s been consistent during the more than three decades I served the city is this: Money in the political process. Wealthy individuals, connected to the city’s downtown businesses, have always rewarded candidates they deem friendly to their cause with large sums.

Moneyed interests never backed my campaigns. They usually lavished it on my opponents. The needs of my constituents were at odds with their desires. Even so, I was often successful. A highlight of my political career was waging a write-in campaign that forced then-Mayor Willie Brown, Mr. Downtown, into a runoff election. Brown raised a couple of million dollars for the run versus our $300,000. It began the revival of a progressive movement that struggled after the assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

Today, money in politics is  far more pervasive. The attitude towards it is almost cavalier. In my time, the easiest way to smear political candidates was to highlight the corporate money in their campaign coffers. No more. Today’s candidates have no shame about the support they receive from Astroturf groups financed by the most conservative people in San Francisco.

Of course, the groups make it easier for their money to be accepted. They do it by masking their involvement, hiding it behind cheerful names like TogetherSF, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco and GrowSF. They hire expensive spin doctors to craft compelling messages, spinning their policy positions as “common sense” when retrograde would be a far better description.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, TogetherSF was started by billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who spends millions waging war on unhoused people. He’s also the money behind The San Francisco Standard, an online news site propagating conservative ideas. Neighbors for a Better San Francisco was created by William Oberndorf, a right-wing Republican who endorses a return to a trillion-dollar failure, the Reagan Era’s War on Drugs. GrowSF was founded by two tech bros who advocate for more police, fewer social services and giveaways to real estate developers.  A recent addition to GrowSF’s board, Garry Tan, calls for techies to exit democracy and establish their own sovereign state. He recently earned himself unwanted headlines for threatening seven members of the Board of Supervisors he believes are hostile to his plans.

These people make the previous generation of business leaders who dabbled in city politics look like raging leftists.

How did we arrive at this moment? The flood of corporate money in political campaigns is a backlash to the city’s earnest attempts to lessen the influence of money on politics. San Francisco has some of the most restrictive campaign finance laws in the state. Political donations are limited to $500 per individual. Laudable efforts like these were dealt a blow when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations should be treated as individuals when it comes to campaign contributions.

In San Francisco, wealthy individuals are exploiting a loophole in the city’s campaign finance laws, allowing PACs to receive unlimited money. At a recent forum, mayoral candidate Mark Farrell all but admitted he is happy to be on the receiving end of Astroturf generosity. “I’m not the only campaign trying to get these endorsements,” Farrell claimed. 

There’s a quid pro quo. Donors want more than the ability to call their favored candidate. They have a laundry list of proposals they want passed. A recent news report revealed that candidates on a slate running for the county’s Democratic Party were hand-picked by GrowSF and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco for their support of specific policy proposals. Laughably, the slate was called “San Francisco Democrats for Change.”

The amount of money the right-wing is willing to spend dwarfs the sums spent during my runs for public office. That should come as no surprise: Fourteen of the state’s 186 billionaires live in the Bay Area. Not all spending money in San Francisco campaigns live in the city. Oberndorf lives in Marin County. Another billionaire donor, John Kilroy Jr., a real estate mogul with buildings in the city, makes his home in Malibu.

San Francisco is best served when its elected and appointed bodies reflect our rich diversity. When I was a member of the Board of Supervisors, we created the Health Care Security Ordinance, making San Francisco the first city in the country to provide universal health care. I co-wrote legislation to force companies doing business in the city to extend employee benefits to unmarried domestic partners. The amount of money they’re spending makes it highly unlikely that a candidate like me, a one-time civil rights activist, a full time special education teacher and a sometime comedian can be elected. That has to change.