Election season is here and with it a pile of mailers, delivered to online and physical mailboxes throughout San Francisco. Among them are “slate cards,” the list of candidates and ballot measures endorsed by a variety of organizations, some with deep roots in the community and others with the most tenuous of ties. 

Busy voters default to slate cards especially when faced with long lists of candidates for what may seem like minor offices, and ballot measures that are all but indecipherable.

The mega-millionaires and billionaires spending millions to move San Francisco to the extreme right have taken a seat at the table, joining the card game in the hopes they can convince overwhelmed voters to further their selfish interests. Slate cards are a critical piece of their strategy.

Let’s be clear: The city’s mega-millionaires and billionaires do not have the needs of most of their San Franciscans uppermost in their minds. They are obsessed with protecting — and even increasing — their vast repositories of wealth. To do that, they’ve devised a cynical plan to foment discontent over troubling issues like crime, homelessness and drug use. The idea is to leverage these issues, offering simple solutions to complex problems.

Their solutions sound good — as quick fixes do — and will succeed at bringing some to their side. Unfortunately, they will also fail, wasting precious city resources. The uber-wealthy will see it as success if they are able to prevent voters from insisting they pay their fair share to support a city that’s made them obscenely rich.

The truth of their intentions can be seen in their slate cards. An examination of their endorsements reveal that San Francisco’s mega-millionaires and billionaires are remarkably aligned when it comes to the candidates and ballot measures they’re willing to endorse and finance. For mayor, most prefer former Supervisor Mark Farrell, the most conservative candidate in the race.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who has publicly criticized the role big money is playing in local elections, has earned their opprobrium. “His far left policies are not common-sense nor moderate and he should not be ranked,” states ConnectedSF led by former Republican and one-time Trump appointee Marie Hurabiell. ConnectedSF is financed by Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, San Francisco’s wealthiest astroturf organization, created by Republican billionaire William Oberndorf, a long-time donor to far-right candidates and ballot initiatives in San Francisco and beyond.

When it comes to ballot initiatives, their endorsements mirror those of the San Francisco Republican Party. This aligns with similar threads showing the overlaps between Republican Party endorsements and those of GrowSF and TogetherSF in the March election.  

Billionaire-backed TogetherSF Action, the political arm of TogetherSF, claims its picks were made with an eye toward “fixing” San Francisco. The group is all-in for Farrell, who proposes increased policing as an answer to nearly all thorny issues facing the city including that of drug use. Farrell’s pro-police policies sound good to San Franciscans weary of the misery on city streets. However, it will be San Francisco’s version of that trillion-dollar failure, the Reagan Administration’s “War on Drugs.”

On its slate card, TogetherSF promotes Proposition D, a November 2024 ballot measure it created to consolidate power within the executive branch and further reduce police oversight. It  does it by slashing  the number of city commissions in half and giving the mayor more control to appoint and fire commissioners on the remaining or newly formed commissions. It also hands the mayor power to appoint directors to city departments; as well as to give the police chief sole authority over adopting rules guiding police officer conduct.

It radically alters the city charter to allow for more consolidated, top-down control. Prop D is endorsed by all of the other members of the Astroturf Network, including GrowSF, ConnectedSF, and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco — and their friends at the San Francisco Republican Party. 

 It’s useful to see what the mega-millionaires and billionaires oppose: TogetherSF, GrowSF, and Connected SF are against Prop G, a ballot measure directing part of the city’s general fund to rental subsidies for affordable housing for seniors, families and people with disabilities. San Francisco’s mega-millionaires and billionaires have little interest in seeing tax money go toward the most vulnerable among us. They  also oppose Prop L which taxes ride-sharing services like Uber, Lyft and Waymo to fund MUNI, which is facing a drastic budget shortfall. Tech investors like GrowSF’s Garry Tan have enthusiastically embraced rideshare startups with little concern for San Franciscans who rely on public transportation. 

While it’s good to know where all of these groups align – which can be easily seen through their referendum endorsements – it’s also helpful to understand where they deviate. This can be most clearly seen in the disparity in candidate endorsements between ConnectedSF, which calls itself the only “non-partisan voter guide” and those of TogetherSF and GrowSF. 

Most notably, ConnectedSF ranks Lurie as its top choice in the mayor’s race and Farrell, second. Lurie’s mother, Mimi Haas, it’s worth noting, is one of Neighbors for a Better San Francisco’s largest contributors (remember, Neighbors almost fully funds ConnectedSF). Another difference, it fails to endorse a big money-backed slate of school board candidates, giving a nod to the only Republican in the race, Min Chang, as well as arch-conservatives Laurance Lem Lee and Ann Hsu. A former mayoral appointee, Hsu lost her seat in 2022 after calling Black public school families “riff-raff.”

ConnectedSF also fails to endorse many of the supervisorial candidates backed by GrowSF and TogetherSF, which include Marjan Philhour D1, Danny Sauter in D3, Bilal Mahmood in D5, Matt Boschetto in D7, Trevor Chandler in D9 and Michael Lai in D11. While Hurabiell’s group gives the nod to Philhour, Boschetto, and Chandler, it parts ways with GrowSF and TogetherSF on the rest. Of Sauter, it states, “This candidate is a progressive wolf in moderate sheep’s clothing, He supports a vacancy tax on privately owned property and ‘de-militarizing’ the police.” Mahmood gets subjected to similar treatment: “We see a progressive idealist trying to convince voters that he is actually a moderate.” Lai is called out for an “anti-car position [that] that makes him seem less moderate.”

Replace the word “conservative” with “moderate” and ConnectedSF’s endorsements make more sense. Its top choices for supervisor are right-wing candidates Matt Susk in D3, Autumn Looijen in D5, Jose Morales in D11, all proponents of law-and-order approaches to dealing with social problems.

Beyond the Republican Party, the San Francisco Democratic Party also has a role to play in supporting the Astroturf Network. Remember, conservative forces spent an unprecedented $2.2 million in the March 2024 election on their “Democrats for Change” slate to take over the DCCC’s Executive Board. The DCCC, along with the group that ran the Democrats for Change slate – recently rebranded Abundance Network – handed a sole endorsement to Breed, a thank you gift to crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, a longtime supporter of the embattled mayor. Larsen has helped fund the campaigns of Democrat for Change members who have gone on to run for supervisor.

The mega-millionaires and billionaires, through their interconnected astroturf organizations and corresponding slate mailers and voter guides, have taken a seat at the table and anteed up to the tune of millions. That should be clear evidence that this card game is rigged.