The message was brief, even by the standards of Twitter/X. “I am stepping back from GrowSF,” Tweeted Garry Tan, San Francisco centi-millionaire and political provocateur. “I’m spending more time on startups and AI and in DC this year.” 

With that, Tan announced his exit from city politics after a disappointing local election for GrowSF and its partners in the Astroturf Coalition. His allusion to Washington, D.C. would seem to indicate that he’ll be joining tech leaders like his mentor Peter Thiel, David Sacks and Elon Musk, who have signed on as advisors to President-elect Donald Trump.

Tan’s decision is part of a clear shift rightward by Silicon Valley. Thiel, Sacks, Musk and others have embraced Trump in the hope that he’ll keep federal regulators at bay, and by doing so, make them even richer than they already are.

The early signs are promising. David Sacks, a well  well-connected San Francisco tech investor, was recently appointed to a newly created job, White House Artificial Intelligence and Crypto Czar. In a recent spat over H-1B visas between the techies and longtime supporters like nativist Steve Bannon, Trump sided with his new Silicon Valley friends. H-1Bs have long been used by the tech industry to circumvent the United States’ strict immigration laws, while hiring a relatively cheaper labor force from abroad.

A national stage is what Tan was angling for all along. He was a keynote speaker at the Reboot 2024: The New Reality, a conference that he organized last fall in San Francisco. Among the sessions at the conference was one titled From Sand Hill Road to Pennsylvania Avenue, in reference to two major streets in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., respectively. Featured in that session were representatives from the Abundance Institute and Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank responsible for Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump Administration. In his keynote address, local journalist Eddie Kim described Tan’s talk as: “How things are not pro-capitalism enough and anti-regulation enough and not pro-individualism enough, [and] If you don’t get it, you are part of the problem and standing in the way of progress.”

Lately, Tan has used his relatively new-found fame to promote pet projects like the Network State, a peculiar scheme in which tech elite would exit democracy to form their own sovereign states. An example of this, Próspera in Honduras, was covered earlier this year by the New York Times. When discussing San Francisco, Tan said in a video uploaded to his youtube page that "If we can build [a Network State] here (San Francisco), we can take over the whole country – we're going to take over every nation in the world."

Tan dates his start in San Francisco politics to the COVID-19 pandemic when elderly Asian-Americans in San Francisco found themselves the target of hate crimes. Tan’s account of his political awakening is not entirely accurate. He supported the removal of three members of the San Francisco Board of Education followed by crusading against progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whom he blamed for the anti-Asian crimes. Tan never mentioned that Trump is thought to have incited the assaults, having called COVID-19 “the kung flu,” and pointing to China as the origin of the pandemic. Rather than criticize the president for his intemperate — and downright dangerous — remarks, Tan took to Twitter/X to amplify crime and attack the progressive school board members — Collins, Moliga and Lopez — along with DA Boudin, eventually donating over $100,000 to the two recall efforts. 

The following year, Tan ponied up $25,000 for a ballot measure, Proposition D, that attempted to raise the ceiling on who qualifies for affordable housing. Prop D proposed that $166,250 for a family of four — 140% of the Bay Area’s median income — should be the new standard for affordability, allowing real estate developers to evade the city’s stricter requirements. Voters saw through Prop D, delivering Tan’s first political setback. 

In 2023, Tan’s volubility landed him in trouble. The staunch supporter of law-and-order policies  was forced to apologize for drunkenly posting death threats on X to seven members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It resulted in a self-imposed — albeit brief — exile from Twitter/X. Tan routinely uses his massive following on the platform to uplift right-wing ‘doom loop’ narratives, reposting right-wing activists like Tom Wolf and Susan Dyer Reynolds, while attacking progressive politicians and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Elon Musk. 

Since then, he’s been the Astroturf Coalition’s Pied Piper, hosting gatherings at his Mission District home for wealthy political donors and candidates wishing to curry their favor. After one party, Tan told the SF Standard that the get-togethers were “part of the evolution of a new San Francisco that is turning the page on the failed leftist politics of the past.”

Tan’s departure from GrowSF may leave the still-young political group short of funds. Tan, who took over Y Combinator from now-mayor Daniel Lurie’s AI advisor Sam Altman, was among GrowSF’s top donors and used his position as one of Silicon Valley’s premier kingmakers to persuade others in his orbit to contribute to his preferred anti-progressive campaigns.

Tan’s decision to step away leaves a vacuum that will be filled by others. TogetherSF has a multi-year plan to remake City Hall. Abundant SF – part of the Abundance Network and a relative newcomer – is another group likely to fill the opening. For San Francisco’s ultra-wealthy, many of them billionaires, the money they spend on political campaigns is insignificant.

As we have reported, the ten biggest individual/family political donors spent a collective $21.7 million on the last election, representing just .015% of their collective wealth. Of course, these donations are just another investment, one with the potential to return a handsome profit.