By Louise “Lou” Fischer–
Get your blue or black pen ready; San Francisco voters are finally approaching the electoral denouement of this crazy, madcap year that included a whopping four elections. If this were a four-act opera by Bizet, Puccini, or Verdi, now would be the time when everyone who wasn’t already dead would be singing about the people who did die (Carmen, La Boheme, and Aida, respectively).
If you are not registered to vote, you have until October 24, so get going. A vote-by-mail (VBM) ballot was sent to every registered voter in California on October 10. San Francisco City Hall is open for in-person voting and ballot drop-off daily and during the two weekends before Election Day.
There are a crap-ton of candidates and two crap-tons of ballot measures. While the State of CA whittled it down to seven propositions, the city legislators are abrogating their responsibilities to actually legislate, so it is up to the voters to become instant experts on public works, tax policy, infrastructure, and other abstruse topics that everyone ignored in middle school civics class. Be a mensch; send in your ballot on time because elections have consequences.
Federal and State Elections
I covered most of these candidates for the June Primary Election, but here they are again in case you slept through the month of May:
U.S. House of Representatives, CD11: Nancy Pelosi
U.S. House of Representatives, CD15: Kevin Mullin
U.S. Senate: Alex Padilla
Governor: Gavin Newsom
Lt. Governor: Eleni Kounalakis
California Secretary of State: Shirley Weber
California Treasurer: Fiona Ma
California Controller: Malia Cohen
California Attorney General: Rob Bonta
California Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond
California Board of Equalization, District 2: Sally Lieber
State Assembly, District 17: Matt Haney or no one, you decide
State Assembly, District 19: Phil Ting or not, your call
San Francisco Elections
City Attorney: David Chiu now and again in 2023
District Attorney: Brooke Jenkins
Assessor-Recorder: Joaquin Torres
Public Defender: Rebecca Young, who? I’m going off-script, but I met her and was impressed. When in doubt, support a highly-qualified woman of color.
District 8 BART Board: Janice Li
Board of Education (3 seats): Lainie Motamedi and Lisa Weissman-Ward
City College (4-year term, 3 seats): Thea Selby, Jill Yee, and Vick Chung
City College (2-year special election): Murrell Green
District 2 Supervisor: Catherine Stefani, for D2 Supervisor and any future position; she’s an unsung hero at City Hall who gets things done without fanfare.
District 4 Supervisor: Joel Engardio—yes, he ran in D7 recently, but the 2020 census re-drew the lines and the “border crossed him.”
District 6 Supervisor: Matt Dorsey
District 8 Supervisor: Rafael Mandelman
District 10 Supervisor: Shamann Walton
State Propositions
Proposition 1: Maintaining the reproductive rights women have had since 1973: YES—If you live in San Francisco and vote against this, you should just leave now.
Proposition 26: Legalize more gambling while pretending to help tribes and homeless: NO
Proposition 27: Allow gigantic gambling companies outside of California to make bucket-loads of money by making it easier for people to gamble their lives away: NO—Don’t believe the hype and the ceaseless commercials; this isn’t helping most Indian Tribes. There are already 66 tribal casinos, 84 card rooms, and 33 horse racing facilities in CA. Get off your damn phone and go out if you want to gamble.
Proposition 28: Funding for K–12 Art and Music Education: YES—Do you want to go up against my partner, Amy, who teaches middle school music? Now you listen here, never vote against education!
Proposition 29: Put more restrictions on dialysis centers (again): NO—3rd time (in four years) is not the charm; stop putting kidney patients’ health at risk.
Proposition 30: The most beguiling and confusing State Proposition in the history of California with no good outcome but includes the words “electric vehicles” and “climate change” so every environmental do-gooder in CA thinks they should vote in favor. YES if you want to give Lyft a billion-dollar corporate handout or NO if you don’t and are OK with waiting for a better idea in future elections.
Proposition 31: Stop tobacco companies from trying to kill young people (again) with candy-flavored products: YES—Stop your crying about “adult choice”; tobacco companies use these products to target children, and besides, you shouldn’t be smoking either.
San Francisco Ballot Measures
As always, the devil is in the details; what seems like a good idea is often a wolf in sheep’s clothing, so without killing any more metaphors, here are the ballot measures for San Francisco with new jaunty names that I invented because I didn’t like the real names and it’s my column so I get to do that.
Measure A: Cost of living adjustment to keep retired, low-wage city workers from being homeless, hungry, and broke: YES
Measure B: Stop spending millions on duplicative administrative bureaucracy and just keep the damn streets clean: YES
Measure C: Waste more money on combating homelessness with another useless commission in the name of oversight: NO
Measure D: Just build more affordable housing and stop the petty politics and allowing every damn yahoo in the city to block construction of much-needed new housing: YES
Measure E: Hijack any chance of building affordable housing in the city: NO
Measure F: Keep libraries from crumbling to dust while supporting the only institution that provides childhood (and adult) literacy programs, offers free use of computers and printers, and has a free electronic book lending system: YES
Measure G: Grant funding to schools to support programs for student wellness and achievement: YES—Never vote against education.
Measure H: A solution chasing a problem; move elections of certain city elected officials to even-numbered years because one cranky-pants member of the Board of Supervisors saw an opportunity for a power grab: NO
Measure I: A measure pretending to be about Golden Gate Park when it is really about a futile effort to fight Mother Nature and spend billions in the future to keep open the Great Highway, which never should have been built in the first place: NO
Measure J: It used to be my favorite shortcut to the Sunset District, but it’s the right thing to do; no more cars whizzing through Golden Gate Park (permanently close part of JFK Drive): YES
Measure K: The so-called “Amazon tax” that won’t impact Amazon at all but will screw over small businesses and is so bad that even the group that put it on the ballot declared “my bad, didn’t mean it” and suspended the campaign: NO
Measure L: Keep SF public transportation from going off the rails literally and financially with a teeny-weeny sales tax that you won’t notice: YES
Measure M: Support the effort of an anti-housing Member of the Board of Supervisors to implement a lame vacancy tax on housing to draw attention away from the BOS being the single biggest impediment to housing construction in SF: NO
Measure N: Change the arcane and corrupt governance structure of the underused Golden Gate Park underground parking garage so people do not have to spend a fortune to park a car: YES
Measure O: Approval for an itsy bitsy teenie weenie parcel tax to help City College: YES—I’m not thrilled about another property tax, but never vote against education.
Be a good citizen; don’t forget to vote on or before November 8, 2022.
Louise (Lou) Fischer is a Former Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club and has served as an appointed and elected Delegate for the State Democratic Party. She is a proud graduate of the Emerge California Women’s Democratic Leadership program, was a San Francisco Commissioner, and has served in leadership positions in multiple nonprofit and community-based organizations.
Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History
Published on October 20, 2022
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