About a year ago, the “San Francisco Doom Loop” was all, but inescapable. Local news outlets and even national media (including the New York Times), painted a picture of a city on the verge of implosion. Office vacancies — and the declining tax revenues that came with them — forced the city to slash services. Fewer services, it was breathlessly reported, were forcing people to leave a once thriving San Francisco.

Adding to the feeling of collective doom were stories of rampant, unprosecuted violent crime, most notably the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee. This story stood as proof to many that no one  was safe on the city’s streets. As it turned out, Lee was murdered by a known associate  in a premeditated act of violence, momentarily silencing the doom loop crowd.

Since then, San Francisco has mostly shaken off the Doom Loop narrative. The facts simply don’t support the narrative. For example, San Francisco has seen major drops in violent and property crimes across 2023 and 2024.

And yet, a number of political campaigns continue to cling to the notion that San Francisco is on the verge of destruction, playing on an imagined threat of crime rather than actual data or trends. For these law-and-order candidates, the Doom Loop is real with the blame sitting squarely on the shoulders of progressive politicians. Again, the facts don’t support the narrative: San Francisco, a strong mayor city, has elected a series of so-called moderate mayors who have stood as major obstacles in the implementation of progressive policies.

Obviously, the promotion of this dystopian narrative serves the same far-right billionaires who have poured their money into punitive approaches to the drug and mental health crisis, diminished power for unions, and reduced city services for working families. Their aim is to maintain — and even increase — their wealth. They simply do not want to pay their fair share to support a city that’s made them obscenely rich.

There’s a clear line from billionaires attempting to move San Francisco in a dangerously rightward direction and the Doom Loop. Among the first wins for Republican billionaire William Oberndorf’s Neighbors for a Better San Francisco was in recalling District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022. Neighbors’ campaign against the newly elected Boudin accused him of allowing violent crime to operate unprosecuted, creating a cycle of empty city streets and even more violent crime. 

Neighbors is repeating the formula in support of mayoral candidate Mark Farrell. Farrell kicked off his campaign saying “We have a doom loop, and we are losing our mantle as a world-class city… We are literally now being compared to Detroit and Oakland. That is not the conversation where San Francisco belongs.” Glaring racial dog whistles aside, Farrell’s campaign continued this line of fear-mongering around crime to justify his campaign’s extreme stances on rounding up the unhoused and drug addicted.

Doom Loop tactics are also being used in supervisor races to defeat progressive candidates. In District 9, Trevor Chandler backed by billionaire-funded TogetherSF, has come out in support of Mayor London Breed’s aggressive homeless encampment sweeps which only serve to criminalize poverty.

In District 5, where Dean Preston, often a scapegoat for city conservatives, faces off against Autumn Looijen, who got her start recalling three members of San Francisco’s school board.  The recall ran parallel to that of Boudin’s recall and was backed by area conservatives groups like Neighbors. 

Looijen has pitched herself as “the only candidate who will compel treatment,” a return to the Reagan Era’s failed War on Drugs. She has eagerly embraced Doom Loop politics, frequently spotlighting stories of violent crime and sowing fears about public safety. No surprise, then, that she’s earned the endorsement of the San Francisco Republican Party as well as the Police Officers Association.

In District 1, challenger Marjan Philhour has run a campaign centered on an imagined crime  wave in San Francisco’s quiet Richmond District where I was born and raised. Her campaign website features testimony from residents concerned about a supposed uptick in assaults on the 38 Geary bus line and a rash of store break-ins. When asked about the importance of crime as an issue in the Richmond, Philhour invoked particularly colorful imagery, stating, “It is important to note that it is not just the instances of crime that affect residents, it is also the brazen nature of the crime (vehicles crashing into banks and local shops, assault with weapons such as baseball bats, knives, or guns) that has a significant impact on our community's concern with crime.” 

While acknowledging that crime is on the decline, she continues to fear-monger. With scant evidence, she conflates crime with homelessness, justifying the cruel policy of sweeping homeless encampments. Her endorsements reveal she has the support of TogetherSF, the organization “guiding the ship” for Farrell’s mayoral campaign also seeking widespread sweeps. 

While the Doom Loop narrative is far less popular than it was in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fears that were evoked by it remain. They are being exploited by right-wing groups and their candidates to provoke an unjustified backlash against progressive policies and politicians. United in an emphasis on “public safety” these candidates have served as effective carriers of a Republican agenda in the city.