Social Justice Slate Dominated San Francisco’s DCCC Race

By Kevin Bard–

The Social Justice slate—with a lot of help from the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, Pissed Off Voters, the Berniecrats, the Guardian, and others in our progressive alliance—completely dominated in the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) race in a way that is almost unimaginable.

Results as of this writing are still coming in, but it is shocking that the top 12 winners in AD 17 are all members of David Campos’ slate. In 13th place right now is Gloria Berry, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. The Milk Club proudly endorsed her in December, despite her not being on the Social Justice slate. So, she won solely due to her grit and her wide swath of progressive endorsements. I was always nervous about Gloria’s chances ever since she filed the day after the DCCC refused to endorse Dean Preston and Chesa Boudin in August of last year. I am not nervous anymore.

But what may be even more shocking is that Kevin Ortiz (who is in 15th place) has an outside chance of booting former DA candidate Nancy Tung (who is in 14th and is winning, for now). And Ortiz stopped campaigning two months ago to work for Speaker Nancy Pelosi! If Ortiz pulls an upset, then all of the winners in AD 17 will be Harvey Milk Club endorsed candidates. All of them! That’s something I’ve never seen before. Not bad.

As for the DCCC race in AD 19, it seems to be that, once again, the only real hope out there for the moderate Democratic side is a former district attorney candidate: Suzy Loftus. Everyone else, besides Mary Jung, is a Social Justice candidate. It is very difficult to imagine former DCCC chair Mary Jung losing her race, but she is in 10th place right now and barely hanging onto it. It looks like the moderate Democrats on the DCCC barely have any members and probably won’t have a minority leader. The Milk Club and others will ensure that David Campos takes advantage of that.

As for the presidential primary numbers here in San Francisco, it is a little embarrassing that Joe Biden got more votes than Elizabeth Warren (at least so far) and that Michael Bloomberg got over twice as many votes as Pete Buttigieg. And this is coming from a Bernie supporter!

Kevin Bard is the President of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club. Previously he worked as a campaign organizer at the Nancy Pelosi Red to Blue Office and as a volunteer coordinator for the California Democratic Party during the 2008 coordinated effort with the Obama Campaign.