By Carlie Leduc, HANC Board Member
Calvin Welch started our meeting by presenting “How the Haight Ashbury Voted”. He has been tracking voting patterns for the past 40 years and while the socio-economics of our neighborhood have changed, the voting has stayed the same. While San Francisco is the progressive bubble inside of California, the Haight is the progressive bubble inside of San Francisco. In addition to being some of the more progressive voters, we are also constituents who turn out to vote. As a comparison, District 8 had a Supervisor’s race and 53% turn out. The Haight had 58% turn out and District 5 as a whole had 55% turn out.
Calvin separated the Haight into three groups, North Panhandle, the Flats, and the Hills. In his presentation slides (which can be downloaded from https://www.hanc-sf.org/the-voice-and-docs/general-reference/Haight-Ashbury---D5-Vote-Analysis-June-2018-Primary/), you can view the borders of each region. Now let’s dive in to how we voted.
For mayor, in the Hills, Breed and Leno were more popular and Kim less so. Breed received 38% of the Haight’s and 39% of District 5’s and city wide 37% of the vote. This showed that her being District Supervisor did not significantly increase the likelihood that someone would vote for her.
Proposition C (property tax for affordable/free childcare) passed with 50.8% in San Francisco, while the Haight Ashbury passed it with 58% of our vote. This proposition would benefit working people, especially in the middle and lower income brackets. Proposition F (no eviction without representation) passed in the city with 56% of the vote. Within the Haight Ashbury it passed with 66% of our vote. The North Panhandle and the Flats passed it with 70% of our vote, while the Hills it passed with 55% of the vote. This decrease is probably due to the increase of home ownership as you move up the hill.
Moving on to Proposition D (funding for housing that would have negated Prop C) and Proposition H (Tasers), both of these propositions failed citywide. For Proposition D the citywide No vote was 55%, and within the Haight-Ashbury it was 54%. Proposition H no votes were 62% citywide and 77% in the Haight.
Coming back to the mayor’s race, and specifically addressing Ranked Choice Voting (RCV): The city initially switched to RCV because they thought it would:
- Turn out more voters
- Stop negative campaigning
- Save money on run-off elections.
Of these points, really only the third one has proven true, but if it is a matter of the city residents getting who they voted for in office, wouldn’t it be worth the additional cost? We still see negative campaigning today and this process has not proven to turn out more voters.
Given the algorithm for RCV is copyrighted, no one actually understands how it works and where their vote goes, so it leaves voters with the experience of lost votes.
If we look at RCV within the mayor’s race, what we’ve learned about Ranked Choice Voting is that the first place vote is worth more. Breed received 37% of first choice votes, Leno and Kim each took 24%. Of all the RCV votes (1st, 2nd, & 3rd combined) Breed did not receive a majority, but since she received a majority of first place votes, those seem to be weighted heavier; it appears that pushed her over the top for her votes as mayor.
Successful Prop F Campaign
Next we heard Jen Snyder from the Proposition F campaign and about the campaign’s strategy and how Prop F passed with 56%. This proposition was never a shoe-in. In general ‘Yes’ propositions are harder than ‘No’, especially if they will cost a lot of money. Many of the voters are typically moderates and homeowners. Prior to the election, the campaign was not sure if it would be able to get homeowner support. They discovered through calling homeowners and looking at the numbers after the fact, female homeowners supported this proposition whereas male homeowners did not.
Other factors that made this campaign unique: they didn’t ask for establishment sponsorship and they didn’t take special interest money. The campaign was banking on our two-thirds renter city showing up to the first vote after Trump. The displacement crisis in San Francisco is bad enough that the campaign was hoping the Proposition would seem reasonable and voters would be open to bolder solutions. They were also hoping the crisis would push more people to volunteer and inspire more local donors.
They focused their campaign on renters who vote and it worked out. The one exception to this rule was in the Marina, probably because those renters are future homeowners; regardless, they did not support the proposition. Prop F was an issue that really focused on class and renters, and the results showed, including the number of people who voted on this issue.
What people voted for most:
- Mayor
- Governor
- Prop E (Flavored cigarettes)
- Prop F
Proposition F has 1 year to be implemented. Malia Cohen just allocated a bunch of funding for it and Our City, Our Home has allocated $2 million towards F. We expect the expenses to at least break even with savings towards homeless services. In New York City, for every $1 spent on eviction prevention, $3 is saved on homeless services.
This campaign cost $210,000 and had lots of donors. Another factor that contributed to its success was the lack of a serious “No on F” campaign. This was an issue that was in everyone’s best interest and the voters expressed that.