Billionaires pour funds into S.F. judicial races

Unprecedented amounts of money from wealthy investors have poured into the campaign accounts of two attorneys seeking to unseat San Francisco judges in next week’s election. Meanwhile, the leaders of a public campaign to oust the incumbents have portrayed Judges Michael Begert and Patrick Thompson as soft on crime.

Superior Court judges are rarely challenged for reelection and instead are generally confirmed to new six-year terms without having to appear on the ballot. What is even rarer about Tuesday’s race are the dollar figures.

Attorney Alfred “Chip” Zecher, seeking to unseat Begert, has received $100,000 from billionaire Chris Larsen, a founder of Silicon Valley technology companies, according to campaign finance filings. Another billionaire, William Oberndorf, a major financier of the 2022 recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, has contributed $20,000 to Zecher and $30,000 to Deputy District Attorney Jean Myungjin Roland, who is opposing Thompson.

The challengers received $50,000 apiece from venture capitalist Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners in Menlo Park. Zecher got $50,000 each from Todd Kaplan, an investment banker at Centerview Partners in San Francisco, and Kevin Hartz, co-founder of AStar Capital in San Francisco and the Eventbrite ticketing-services company in New York.

Roland also reported contributions of $10,000 from Hartz and another $10,000 from the real estate firm Boston Properties. Each candidate has received $2,500 from the San Francisco Apartment Association, while Zecher received $25,000 and Roland $20,000 from the San Francisco Police Officers Association.

Donations to the two challengers so far add up to about $923,000 — $669,000 to Zecher and $254,000 for Roland. The incumbents report smaller contribution totals — $180,000 for Begert, $129,000 for Thompson and $137,000 to Safe and Accountable San Francisco, which has sent mailings backing the judges. Begert also loaned his campaign $100,000 in October.

“If the tech barons win, the message is that you can buy a judge,” said J. Anthony Kline, a retired state appeals court justice who supports the two incumbents and contributed $500 to Begert’s campaign.

Begert raised the subject Thursday at a debate sponsored by the Bar Association of San Francisco.

Citing some of Zecher’s contributions, including $100,000 from Larsen, Begert said that when cases arise involving a donor or the donor’s interests, “regardless of whether the judge can set aside how the judge feels, there is a perception in the public that’s problematic that the integrity of judiciary is being compromised.”

Zecher did not attend the debate. His campaign said he was on a visit to San Francisco’s Tenderloin district to see conditions on the streets.

Larsen, Oberndorf and Liew did not respond to requests for comments on their contributions.

The totals appear to be a record for judicial spending in San Francisco. In 2018, when four deputy public defenders ran unsuccessfully against four Superior Court judges appointed by Republican governors, the candidates spent a total of $800,000.

It’s still only a fraction of the spending on the June 2022 recall of Boudin — $7.2 million by his opponents, $3.3 million by supporters. But why would a campaign that has focused on law-and-order issues — allegations, largely unsupported by case records, that the judges have released dangerous criminals to the city’s streets — be largely funded by multimillionaire business investors?

It’s similar to what’s happening in judicial elections across the country, said Bruce Freed, president of the Center for Political Accountability, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that tracks corporate contributions. He said wealthy individuals and corporations had donated heavily to recent campaigns for control of state Supreme Courts in North Carolina, Illinois and Wisconsin.

“A great deal of large corporate money and individual money is coming into these highly charged judicial races at the state level,” Freed said. “It’s money to tilt state Supreme Courts to the right, but also wherever you have elected judicial seats. … And it fits in with what’s happening up and down the ballot in San Francisco,” he added, citing police-related measures on Tuesday’s ballot that have drawn nearly $2 million in funds from all sides.

It’s also reminiscent of the 1986 campaign that swung the California Supreme Court majority from liberal to conservative by denying new terms to Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, said Kline, who spent more than 40 years on the bench before retiring.

Their opponents used the campaign slogan “Cast three votes for the death penalty,” but Kline — former legal affairs secretary to Gov. Jerry Brown, who had appointed the three justices — noted that the opposition campaign was funded by businesses angered by rulings expanding corporate liability.

If the judges are unseated this coming week, Kline told the Chronicle, “people with deep pockets will realize you can very inexpensively defeat a public official by putting enough money into it. … People will be encouraged to challenge other judges in future elections and the system will become politicized. … The rule of law is undermined.”

He also said the assertion that judges are responsible for crime is “an illusion.”

“Police, the district attorney and the mayor’s jobs are to reduce crime,” Kline said. “It’s not the job of judges to reduce crime, nor do judges have that capacity.”

Zecher and Roland have made general statements saying they would improve public safety in San Francisco while refraining from criticizing the incumbents’ records. That has been left to Frank Noto, founder of Stop Crime Action, a nonprofit leading the public campaign against the judges.

Noto has distributed a “report card” giving both Begert and Thompson failing grades on crime, and has accused them of releasing dangerous defendants instead of keeping them in jail before trial. He described Begert as a judge who takes a “revolving-door approach” to criminal cases by referring cases to the Drug Court he heads.

But Begert said the cases were referred to his court by the district attorney’s office, which could have chosen to bring them to trial but agreed instead to let them seek treatment. Similarly, Thompson has produced court records showing prosecutors consented to the pretrial releases Thompson has approved.

Zecher