San Francisco’s high-stakes mayoral race has the potential to re-shape a city long known for its fierce progressivism. As the Los Angeles Times reports, executives from the local tech sector have poured millions into the election with the goal of moderating the city’s politics.
There are 13 candidates running for mayor. San Francisco has ranked-choice voting, which makes alliances and endorsements highly important in this race.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin is the progressive choice among the top four. The other frontrunners are Breed, former Supervisor Mark Farrell, and Levi Strauss heir turned nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie.
Chris Larsen, co-founder of crypto company Ripple, has donated $600,000 to an independent committee backing Mayor London Breed’s re-election, while DoorDash co-founder Tony Xu has donated $100,000.
An independent expenditure committee supporting Farrell has received $500,000 from real estate investor Thomas Coates, $450,000 from billionaire William Oberndorf, and $250,000 from Eversept hedge fund manager Kamran Moghtaderi.
Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp, has given $500,000 to a committee supporting Lurie. That committee received $300,000 from Ironwood Capital Management Chief Executive Jonathan Gans and $250,000 from Oleg Nodelman, who founded biotech investment advisory firm EcoR1. Lurie and his family have poured millions of their own dollars into the race.
Larsen, who was raised in San Francisco, summed up the goal when he lamented the changes he’d personally witnessed in city government over the years. The shift was “very far left, sort of performative sort of politics, rather than looking at outcomes,” he said.
You’d be hard pressed to find a tech mogul who thinks that shift was a good thing. They see a throughline from the city’s progressive politics to its problems with homelessness, crime, open drug use, and housing.
The progressives see it differently. Some have blamed tech for the city’s faults — for driving up the cost of housing and displacing residents.
Peskin wears the tech sector’s opposition as a badge of honor. He says he’ll fight for the city’s average workers.
“My opponents are mostly supported by billionaires,” he added. “And presumably that is who they will fight for.”