Last week, Mayor London Breed was endorsed by San Francisco’s Democratic Party. four major candidates are running for mayor against Breed including a longtime party activist who once chaired the city’s Democratic Party. Despite ranked-choice voting, Breed was the only candidate they chose to support. No surprise since the endorsement was all, but paid for by a coalition of deep-pocketed donors that included technology investor Garry Tan, cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen and wealthy software entrepreneur Zack Rosen. 

That group poured an unprecedented $2.2 million into the March 2024 race for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, largely through their Families for a Vibrant SF PAC, as another part of their plan for moving a city, long known for its progressive values, rightward. Tan, the chief executive of world’s leading startup incubator, Y Combinator, along with sitting on the local PAC GrowSF’s board of directors, is a conservative ideologue who believes tech elites should exit democracy and establish their own sovereign states. Larsen, Vibrant SF’s biggest financial backer, is a believer in all things law-and-order, and has a fetishistic interest in high-tech surveillance. Rosen, one of Vibrant SF’s directors, adheres to the fanciful idea that removing barriers to real estate development will magically result in lower rents for working and middle-class San Franciscans. All are ardent supporters of Mayor London Breed.

Their goal is to maintain and increase their massive wealth while making San Francisco a testing ground for their right-wing libertarian policy ideas.

To that end, they plotted a takeover of the Democratic County Central Committee, an obscure body mostly known for the importance of its elections endorsements. By wresting control from a bloc of left-leaning members — and placing their allies on the committee — the oligarchs effectively handed the DCCC endorsement to Breed. 

Of the 32 members of the DCCC, 21 voted for Breed, six voted for Board of Supervisor’s President Aaron Peskin, and two cast their ballots for former Supervisor Mark Farrell. Breed’s DCCC support in no way reflects the feelings of most San Francisco Democrats, many of whom have consistently expressed their dissatisfaction with the mayor. 

Congresswoman and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi cast a no-endorsement vote in the mayor’s race. Notably, she bucked the DCCC on its support for two conservative candidates for the Board of Supervisors — Bilal Mahmood and Marjan Philhour, a former Breed aide, and instead, gave the nod to their opponents, District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston and District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, targets of the reactionary tech elite. Tan’s GrowSF has created Dump Dean and Clear Out Connie PACs to oust Preston and Chan, longtime advocates for working San Franciscans.

How did the San Francisco’s Democrats move to the right of Nancy Pelosi, the party’s standard bearer? When the 24 seats on the DCCC came up for grabs in March (the remaining 8 slots go to Democratic office holders), Tan, Larsen, and Rosen handpicked a slate of candidates chosen for their loyalty to their patrons. The slate was also selected for their support of increased policing, and their commitment to pro-real estate industry policies. The richly bankrolled Democrats for Change slate, outspent a competing progressive slate by more than three-to-one with the results being all-too-predictable. The conservative slate won 18 seats versus six for the progressives.

Now the local Democratic Party represents the sentiments of the tech elite and has rewarded Breed, long willing to serve their narrow — and selfish — interests. By siding with Tan, Larsen and Rosen — rather than Pelosi, who is revered in party circles — the conservative members of the DCCC have cheapened the group’s once-coveted endorsement. 

During the hours-long DCCC meeting, Republican mayoral candidate and Donald Trump enthusiast, Ellen Lee Zhou took the microphone to plead for an endorsement: “[You] might be Democrats on the outside, but [you] think like Republicans.” Indeed. Just ask Nancy Pelosi.