Thread by @_fruchtose

Hello San Francisco. I'm at a meeting of the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council for December. Calvin Welch will speak tonight.

A member of San Francisco Heritage is speaking. Her group owns the building at the northwest corner of Haight/Ashbury. They're working to create a cultural destination at that corner.

They've also been hired by The City to do a cultural study of events related to counterculture.

Tes Welborn says that Calvin Welch will have an hour presentation. Jen Snyder will also be here. After that there's a party celebrating HANC's anniversary. She says people will get together to share stories of the "good ol' days."

Calvin Welch is up. He notes that we have two successful "left-liberal" campaign managers here. Jen Snyder will talk about D5 with "stupefying maps" and a political consultant named Jim Sterns will talk about citywide data.

"As San Francisco is to California, the Haight is to San Francisco." He wants to make some "outrageous projections" lol

Jim is up. He worked on Props D&E, Dean Preston, and Chesa Boudin. He's presenting a map of D5 precincts and voter turnout.

Jim: one thing is, we have too many mayoral races [laughter from room]

Jim: D5 had really good turnout. Second highest in the city.

He notes that all of the progressive candidates won on Election Day. Put Chesa and Dean over the top.

Jim: major things citywide. Mayor unopposed except for Joel Ventresca.

Almost no precincts were against the affordable housing bond. None in D5 opposed. Parts of D5 voted for it at 85+% levels.

Juul lost majorly.

Prop D was fairly popular in D5. Every part of D5 west of Western Addition went heavily for it.

"Affluent and conservative areas" in D4 did not like Prop E, but most of the city went for it.

Prop F was very popular in D5.

Mission, Bernal Heights, Upper Haight, and Western Edition all gave >50% of the first round vote to Chesa.

47% of D5 voters gave their number one vote to Chesa. Loftus came in second, people skipped the other candidates.

Jim notes that you can do analysis of individual RCV ballots. Suzy had more people than Chesa list her SOMEWHERE on the ballot [weird, and interesting]

Summary of RCV rounds for the District Attorney's race. Chesa blew everyone else out if the water in D5

Jen Snyder is up. Thanking the audience—many here campaigned for Dean.

Jen: it was the result of tons of campaigns/organizing done with Dean. Did Prop F right to counsel, Prop C in 2018 for homelessness, 2016 D5 Supervisor race.

Comparing this race to 2016. Jen: what Calvin said [in the newsletter] before is accurate.

Jen: when Breed took seat as mayor, she didn't appoint a supervisor immediately, to give the incumbent a longer period in office due to election timings.

Comparison of demographics. Big buildings have 10+ homes in them.

Jen notes that big buildings are harder to get to and often rent controlled.

Jen says she'll tell us all the secrets of the campaign so we can have the city 😆

They had a really intense comms strategy to reach bigger buildings. Best penetration into them was 10%. Sometimes they used tech bags to get into buildings, but that wasn't reliable.

Door knocking and bus stop awareness were important. Bus stops committed >500 people to vote for Dean.

Jen: turns out homeowners are super cool. My mom's a homeowner. I want to be a homeowner.

Election Day saved the campaign. And turnout helped. Raised $450K during the campaign without the establishment endorsement. Says no voter cared about it. Won by 187 votes.

Jen: ethics fillings showed contributions from healthcare/education.

Vallie had statewide California Association of Realtors going for her. They came out of nowhere. And it led to the cool nickname Extreme Dean. "Fabricated bullshit" flyers.

Jen: the flyers were effective. 12 negative flyers on Dean. Dean's campaign did one flyer, plus one with the San Francisco Tenants Union about Vallie Brown's eviction scandal.

Jen: campaign work is so much better with allies. Notably, Chesa Boudin. But 2020 is coming already! But we'll be okay. People who voted for Dean will be there next year.

Jen: if you're an elected incumbent, you never lose. Appointed incumbents mostly lose.

Calvin Welch says that the population of D5 is 57K as of the 2010 Census.

Jen: many people register to vote at the DMV then never vote. E.g. if you never vote for Trump you won't vote in a special election for Dean lmao

Vallie won 50/71 precincts through Vote By Mail. But Dean won 50/71 precincts on Election Day.

Jen: "if you're a slacker, you're a Dean person"

Audience Q: did Vallie Brown's scandal affect Election Day?
Jen: maybe. But VBM voters are more conservative (homeowners, older) in general.

Jen: we asked people to vote by mail in case preferred voters couldn't make it on Election Day due to shift schedule changes, etc. They tried asking for permission to turn in ballots for voters. But still, most Dean Voters showed up on Election Day.

Jim notes that 75% of voters are registered to vote by mail. Almost everybody interested has already signed up.

In most D5 precincts, Dean got 54-68% of first round votes in RCV.

Jim: more people in D5 placed Dean first in RCV. He was ahead before Ryan Lam or Nomvula O'Meara came into play.

Jim: Dean positioned himself as an anti-establishment candidate. The other candidates also positioned themselves that way.

Jim: how did Dean's and Vallie's voters vote for DA? Vallie's voters did not go for Suzy. Suzy "did not have the same coattails" Chesa got.

Jim: the major win came from campaign collaboration

Jen: the Chesa staff worked out of our office for 3 months

Calvin Welch is up next.

Jen: we won't have our Supervisor office until after the recess, so we'll be in a conference room until then. Movers coming after the winter break.

Calvin Welch: Jen "will be our friendly neighborhood socialist."

Calvin: HANC was born to fight the Panhandle Freeway. HANC goes hand-in-hand with electoral politics, especially progressive campaigns. Many here support those.

Calvin: you may not know your neighbor, but you won't be embarrassed by how they vote because unity and power exist at a neighborhood level. It's critical that neighborhood groups talk unfiltered by the Chronicle—a player in the great game of land use politics, heart of politics.

Calvin: you can beat money, cynicism, hate and disunity. We on the left own "red." [Laughter] Red is victory, and victory is red, because it makes the other side seem red.

Calvin: Haight-Ashbury is not the Upper Haight. That's a real estate invention. I live at Haight and Ashbury.

"If you believe in market solutions to housing, to healthcare," that's a conservative position.

Three divisions of Haight-Ashbury. Panhandle is liberal. Flatlands are socialist, hills are conservative.

Calvin: HANC is a 501(c)(2) org, can't endorse candidates. But when they endorsed ballot props between 2010 and 2019, voters agreed with HANC on 95% of the measures.

Calvin: we have several billionaires in our neighborhood, probably due to real estate.

Going over how 2019 ballot props did in the Haight. Props A, B, E, and F all got between 71-88% of the vote.

He notes that Prop E got more support than Prop A—191 more votes. Vallie Brown's picture was on the Prop A mailers. The mayor used her to campaign for Prop A. It's a "delicious" irony for Vallie's campaign.

Now open for Q&A.

Q1: did the late appointment of Suzy Loftus help Dean?
Calvin: I believe that there was unity among left-progressive forces. A number of people voted for both Chesa and Dean. And Breed supported neither.

Jim: the week after Suzy's appointment was the biggest Chesa/Dean rally ever.

Ozzie Rohm: do you think in 2020 we'll have Scott Wiener help bring more progressives to vote?
Calvin: I think Trump will bring a lot of progressive voters to the polls. Expect huge turnout in March for important ballot measures, rent control in 2020, Prop 13 amendment.

Calvin: you want to know why suburban counties don't approve housing? Residential properties don't provide enough property tax revenue. After Prop 13, cities all wanted to build commercial properties. It made it impossible for commercial/residential tax to charge differently

Calvin: commercial development has received billions of $$$$ from Trump. 2018 Prop C is tied up in court due to Prop 13. I hope when CA votes against Trump, they'll have enough bandwidth to vote for other measures.

Calvin: March measure will index office approvals to affordable housing production. It's ridiculous that tens of thousands of approved but unbuilt housing units are in the pipeline.

Q3: another important contest in March. Prinary against Scott Wiener. What about that?
Calvin asking Jim, what's wrong with recent statewide candidates losing once and never running again?

Jim: I'm glad Jackie Fielder is running against Wiener. It's 14 year term limits now—we can't live for 14 years without a progressive challenger. She's thinking about fighting climate change, income inequality, for affordable housing. You get a lift when you believe in something.

Jim: Dean won because he believed in something. You get people to help you when you run like that. There was a line at 4 AM on Election Day to get into Dean's campaign headquarters. Brought tears to his eyes.

Jim: Same goes for the DCCC. People shouldn't run for a job and then turn their backs in the city.

"Tweet that," the lady in front of me heckles at me.

Calvin: we should have a candidate forum for the DCCC election.

Q4: do we have data on evictions has been reflected in voting profile?
Jim: it's a really serious problem. SF has lost 34K low-income households in the last 8 years. The Haight is still progressive but D5 is a battle. The City is the same

Jim: D6 "is a whole new conersative zone" with SoMa, South Beach, etc. Calvin told me that every real estate campaign in SF 20 years ago was meant to change demographics to create more homeowners
Ozzie: it's true! All the yuppies!

Jen: we know that building more market-rate housing is BS won't do anything when none of it is rent controlled. The divide is really wealth.
Calvin: the stability of the city is remarkable. Sunset, Richmond, Western Addition are remarkably consistent. Voting patterns are the same

Calvin: if you make $1M/year and you can afford a $1M home, you can live anywhere in the Haight. "The secret of our side is, people want the City of San Francisco to remain the way it was when they moved here."

Calvin: there are national and local anomalies in the economy—we're undergoing a change never before seen. In WW2, the government made an investment $6B in 2017 dollars which transformed shipbuilding. $30B of venture capital money recently has gone into real estate.

Calvin: "struggle is between who London Breed wants to live here, and who lives here"

Q5: what about measures for the homeless?
Calvin: Prop A won with the least margin of any housing bond in the last 30 years. Willie Brown introduced the first affordable housing bond in the US in 1992.

Calvin: homelessness advocates told Breed that we create more shelter beds for the homeless than low-income housing which can house them, so Breed devoted more money for deeply affordable housing

Calvin: Prop A will affect homeless, yes. But we need Mental Health SF. There's a belief that all the homeless are mentally ill. But the Health Department says 3,000 out of 4,000 homeless people are street drunks.

Tes: we want 730 Stanyan to have housing for seniors, families, and transitional youth.

We're transitioning into the party part of the meeting. I'm out!