San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
S.F. moderates self-destructing
Democrats backed by San Francisco’s growing web of moderate political advocacy groups trounced their progressive opponents in March, winning a majority of seats on the Democratic County Central Committee, an obscure but influential group that governs the local party and hands out coveted endorsements. Voters also approved ballot measures championed by many of the moderate groups, including to expand police powers and to require adult welfare recipients to be screened for illegal drug use.
Clearly, moderates’ rhetorical focus on delivering results and streamlining sluggish, corruption-enabling bureaucratic processes — issues that many frustrated voters had come to associate with progressive governance — was effective.
But it’s one thing to talk about prioritizing policy outcomes over political machinations and another thing to actually do it. Moderates have learned that the hard way over the past few weeks as messes of their own making have rapidly overshadowed their policy agenda.
Exhibit A: The revelation, reported by my colleague J.D. Morris, that Jay Cheng, executive director of Neighbors for a Better San Francisco — which has funneled nearly $9 million into local races over the past four years — helped connect potential job applicants with the mayoral campaigns of two moderate candidates, Daniel Lurie and Mark Farrell. At one point, Cheng promised a political player that he would hold open a $15,000-per-month consulting position on the Farrell campaign.
Neighbors board members said the group’s lawyer determined that Cheng’s referral didn’t cross any legal lines. But the perception of impropriety lingers — and could hamper Neighbors’ ability to form an independent expenditure committee to back a mayoral candidate for the November election. Under state campaign finance laws, these committees can raise unlimited funds to support a candidate — but only if they don’t coordinate with the candidate’s campaign.
That isn’t the only scandal Neighbors has been dealing with. A nearly 14-year-old sexual assault allegation against Cheng has also resurfaced amid a citywide reckoning with how its toxic political culture enables abuse.
The city’s latest #MeToo movement was sparked by a San Francisco Standard report last month revealing that three women had filed police reports alleging domestic violence and rape by Jon Jacobo, an influential player in local progressive circles whom another woman had accused of rape in 2021. Rumors of allegations against Kevin Ortiz, the progressive co-president of the Latinx Democratic Club, also began circling.
The moderate-controlled Democratic County Central Committee rushed to create a new committee focused on sexual assault allegations. But these members — many of whom Cheng helped elect — didn’t appear to anticipate that Cheng himself would come under the microscope for allegations that he sexually assaulted his then-girlfriend while a student at UC Irvine.
No charges were filed and
Cheng denies the allegations, and although emails have surfaced in which Cheng wrote to his then-girlfriend that he “tried to rape” her, Cheng maintains they were written under duress and are false. (Neighbors board members recently reaffirmed their support for him to continue as executive director.)
Meanwhile, the sexual assault committee itself is mired
nd in its own reckoning. Michela Alioto-Pier resigned from the committee following the recirculation of a 2021 letter she wrote in support of Nate Ballard, a former aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom who was convicted of domestic violence and child abuse. (Farrell also wrote a letter of support for Ballard.) Another committee member, Trevor Chandler, is facing scrutiny for having worked with campaign consultant Duane Baughman, whom a photographer last year accused of sexually assaulting her in 2001.
Unsurprisingly, amid all this political drama, policy has taken a backseat.
TogetherSF Action, another moderate political group led by Cheng’s wife, Kanishka Cheng, is struggling to advance the
reforms it says are crucial to improving City Hall.
Last year, TogetherSF Action withdrew a proposed ballot measure to reduce the number of city commissions after realizing it could have expanded the authority of the Board of Supervisors instead of the mayor. (The group is working on qualifying a revised version for the November ballot.)
And last week, TogetherSF Action announced it would stop collecting signatures for another proposed November ballot measure to empower the mayor to unilaterally appoint and remove department heads and appoint deputy mayors. A TogetherSF Action spokesperson told me the decision was the result of polling that showed voters were hesitant about supporting the measure due to uncertainty over who would win the mayor’s race. The group plans to revive it in another election cycle.
Fair enough — there’s no point in pouring millions of dollars into an initiative likely to fail.
But these blunders still suggest that the group, in its eagerness to criticize San Francisco government and present itself as a savior, hasn’t taken enough time to fully understand the nature of the city’s challenges and potential solutions.
TogetherSF Action is also suffering from an image problem. This week, Mayor London Breed’s campaign announced that she is “reevaluating” whether to participate in a May 20 mayoral debate hosted by TogetherSF Action and another moderate group, GrowSF, amid concerns that TogetherSF Action is too closely linked to Farrell.
Kanishka Cheng used to work for both Farrell and Breed, and multiple former TogetherSF Action members now work for Farrell. Adding fuel to the fire, Mission Local reported this week that a Farrell campaign consultant in a February text message described Kanishka Cheng as helping “guide the ship,” raising concerns about potentially improper coordination.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, seen as the most progressive mayoral candidate, had already declined the debate invitation, posting on X: “TogetherSF is closely linked in an extremely partisan fashion to one or more other campaigns for Mayor.” (Kanishka Cheng has repeatedly emphasized that her group is not working with Farrell or any other candidate, but told Mission Local that as an individual she’s given guidance to all of the top mayoral campaigns other than Peskin’s.)
And so San Francisco remains mired in an endless political soap opera in which the key players change but the underlying dynamic stays the same.
It’s exhausting — and disappointing.
San Franciscans don’t care if “progressives” or “moderates” win in November — the delineation between the two groups is increasingly meaningless, anyway. What we want is less politicking, less drama and more competence — and public servants we don’t feel icky about supporting.
Is that too much to ask?