Two years ago, a political earthquake struck San Francisco — one that from our perch in the future feels like an early tremor. District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s recall prompted progressive San Franciscans and political prognosticators to crane their necks in an exaggerated L-shape and gaze deep, deep into the depths of their navels. Collectively, pearls clutched, they asked, “Is famously liberal San Francisco shifting rightward?” A couple of years later, we can see the answer is no, followed perhaps by a chiding of “Y’all lost your damn minds.”
Instead, 2024’s local election demonstrated that Boudin’s recall, and its political aftershocks, were a symptom not of a rightward shift but of something less partisan and harder to pin down: San Franciscans rejecting their institutions.
From votes to vibes, how San Francisco moved the needle this year
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If you were in power this year, you most likely lost your reelection bid — whether you’re a lefty, a righty, or politically ambidextrous. Centrist Mayor London Breed moved rightward during her term, reacting to a perceived shift in that direction by voters, but lost handily to Daniel Lurie, whose politics are strictly center-of-the-road. Former Mayor Mark Farrell trailed Breed and Lurie by miles, even though he swung so far to the right he actually called for armed National Guard troops to patrol the Tenderloin. You could picture Fox News opinion hosts salivating at the promised scenes of military-style crackdowns in the city of Saint Francis.
On the opposite side of San Francisco’s political spectrum — from blue to bluer — Supervisor Dean Preston lost his reelection bid too. Being the lone Democratic Socialist in a left-leaning progressive stronghold (the Haight, Tenderloin, and Western Addition neighborhoods) didn’t shield him from the electorate’s taste for change. A more moderate Democrat who was backed by billionaire-funded political groups, Bilal Mahmood, swooped in on Preston’s seat, protective power of incumbency be damned.
Even our local propositions showed glimmers of The Dude telling The Man to get off his rug: The planned closure of the Great Highway after the passage of Proposition K showed urbanist San Francisco doing its best to shake the city’s addiction to guzzling fossil fuel. The rejection of Proposition D, which would have bolstered the powers of a sitting mayor and slashed in half the number of local “small-d” democratic bodies, showed voters’ unwillingness to embrace every idea a billionaire-backed group cooks up — and a distaste for shoring up centralized power in city government, unchecked by citizens. Rather than adhering to any ideological consistency, San Francisco’s rejection of incumbents and institutional stalwarts hewed closely to a political shift across the world toward change, no matter who occupied office beforehand.
At the federal level, Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t shake the shackles of President Joe Biden’s term, leading to her resounding rejection. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party’s 14-year supremacy was trounced by Labour. In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party had its political power encroached upon from the left and the right.
Considering the failures of the 2022 local political class to peer into the mists of the future, The Standard would find it foolhardy to guess if the pandemic-era wrecking ball is done swinging into liberal institutions. Still, it’s safe to say San Francisco’s stint as a land where political elephants roam was short-lived.
Instead, think of the city’s sentiment as “Throw the bums out.” Considering the state of the city, politicians’ collective butts may be sore for years to come.