By Calvin Welch, HANC Board
Going into the June primary, election media coverage almost exclusively focused on the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin. The stories written immediately after the election reported a massive vote in favor of the recall. But those reports were, in fact , factually wrong as they were based on Election Day reports, which were less than half the votes actually cast. In fact these early reports were based on returns from the more conservative portions of the City that supported the recall. For example the deeply conservative voting District 2 (Marina, Pacific Heights) had fully half of its total vote reported in these early returns while our district ( District 5) had but 43% of its total vote reported at the end of Election Day. It took another fifteen days during which another 120,000 votes were counted. Unreported by the media was that in these late counted votes the DA recall actually narrowly LOST 59,217 to 57,686.
As usual Haight-Ashbury residents voted significantly different than other San Franciscans. While the recall passed citywide by a margin of 55% yes and 45% no, it failed 61% no to 39% yes in the Haight-Ashbury The DA recall did not carry a single precinct in the Haight-Ashbury. And while the MUNI bond (Propositon A) failed citywide Haight-Asbury voters gave it the highest vote in the City, a whopping 78% Yes . Turnout was higher in the neighborhood than citywide, with 59% for the entire Haight-Ashbury as opposed to 52% citywide. Voter participation was even higher in the left liberal precincts with a 60% turnout in the North Panhandle ( Fell to Grove, Stanyan to Baker) and 61% in the "Flatland" precincts ( Oak to Frederick, Stanyan to Baker).
