Follow the $$$
By Julie Pitta
They burst on the political scene with harmless-sounding names – “Neighbors for a Better San Francisco,” “TogetherSF Action,” and “GrowSF” – and slick websites that described what seemed to be grassroots organizations.
Neighbors for a Better San Francisco calls itself “a group of San Franciscans … dedicated to supporting and empowering pragmatic, responsible and neighborhood-focused leaders and organizations.” TogetherSF Action encourages the civic-minded among us to join “thousands of others like you who are ready to commit to rewriting the future of our city.” GrowSF boasts that it “pursues common sense solutions to create a San Francisco that works for everyone.”
Sounds reasonable. Admirable, even. Except for a troubling fact: These organizations are fronts for the latest corporate interests looking to buy influence at City Hall.
Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, TogetherSF Action and Grow SF are Political Action Committees, exploiting a loophole in campaign finance law. By contributing to them – rather than to a candidate, directly – political donors can evade the $500 limit on campaign contributions. Money from groups like these will pour into the coffers of candidates who promise to carry out their agenda, one that benefits big business at the expense of regular San Franciscans.
These so-called “astroturf” organizations create the illusion of grassroots’ support, obscuring the involvement of their uber-wealthy founders. All the better to deceive voters often too busy to dig into details. Neighbors for a Better San Francisco is backed by billionaire investor William Oberndorf, a Republican who lives in Marin County, but spends lavishly on San Francisco political campaigns; TogetherSF Action is the pet project of billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, another big player on the City’s political scene. GrowSF is the baby of tech veterans Steven Buss and Sachin Agarwal, who spent big in recent elections, toppling an incumbent on the Board of Supervisors.
What do they want? A San Francisco even more hospitable to their business interests. For decades, San Francisco has served as a laboratory for the high-tech industry; the driverless cars wreaking havoc on city streets are only the latest get-rich-quick scheme from the geniuses in Silicon Valley. They’re gambling that buying an elected official or two will allow them to conduct business as usual without the nuisance of government regulations.
They’re committed to removing any barriers to the construction of new housing, demanding changes to the City’s building code. The result will be more housing, yes, but not the kind San Francisco so desperately needs – affordable homes for working people.
Finally, they call for a “tough-love” approach to the San Francisco’s drug crisis, demanding that users who resist treatment be arrested. No matter that countless scientific studies have proven that forced treatment rarely succeeds.
“The literature does not support mandatory treatment on any level to help the public health situation,” said Daniel Ciccarone, a physician and professor of family community medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who studies drug addiction.
Mayor London Breed is listening. That should come as no surprise since she was elected with sizeable campaign contributions from the tech and real estate industries. So are her political allies, recently elected Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Joel Engardio who won their elections due to corporate largesse.
These big-money backers are already receiving a handsome return on investment. Breed’s blueprint for meeting the state’s housing requirements – enthusiastically supported by Dorsey and Engardio – is nothing more than a gift to wealthy backers. Among its proposals, is it relaxing height restrictions on future housing developments. Tenants living in rent-controlled apartments could find themselves displaced as older buildings are torn down to make way for luxury high-rises, adding to the glut of expensive housing now sitting empty.
Forced drug treatment has also earned the mayor’s full-throated support as well as that of Dorsey and Engardio. On her orders, the San Francisco Police Department is arresting drug users, a return to failed “war on drugs” policies that will drain scarce city resources and lead to the loss of countless lives.
Two elected officials, who have been reliable obstacles to the billionaire takeover of San Francisco, now find themselves with targets on their backs. In recent months, GrowSF launched the “Clear Out Connie” and “Dump Dean” campaigns to oust District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan and District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston. Preston and Chan are champions for regular San Franciscans, tenacious fighters for tenants as well as for affordable housing. A word of advice: Pay close attention to the candidates backed by corporate interest in the November 2024 election.
Moritz recently earned headlines for being one of a half-dozen tech billionaires to buy 55,000 acres of pristine farmland in Solano County. Their plan to build a 21st century “utopia,” a Garden of Eden for the well-heeled. Locals are promising to fight back.
San Franciscans would do well to follow their example. Moritz, and his billionaire brethren, are aiming to refashion our City to their exacting specifications. Theirs is a vision that has little room for most of us.
Julie Pitta is a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and senior editor at Forbes Magazine. She is a neighborhood activist and an officer of the San Francisco Berniecrats. You may reach her at julie.pitta@gmail.com. Follow her on X (Twitter): @juliepitta.
Categories: Commentary
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
Thank you for sharing this information. As someone who reached out to Together SF regarding the approach to helping drug users as well as their “ Fentalife” campaign I felt very disappointed in the outcome. They try to appease my group, but had no intention in looking at evidence based practices to help those who use drugs or are homeless. It’s all about politics and money not about actually saving lives.
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We are in a delicate time where there are too many Anti-Law and Order Movements in this city that these billionaires will not be building housing for who they think they will be building housing for. People, en masse, are leaving and many are getting ready to pack their bags and exit if these folks are not voted out of power in 2024.
All the groups you have listed supported the Slow Street Movement, which has absolutely NO special laws governing it differently than a road like Geary St. They are literally making people feel safe when they will have ZERO rights if in an accident.
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Not commenting on the substance of this post, but let’s not be hypocritical about “wolf in sheep’s clothing” interest groups. The Bike Coalition and Walk SF are probably the two biggest offenders of a “what you see is what you get” ideal. The City gives them over a half million of taxpayer dollars each year, they set up office at City Hall, and start lobbying under the auspices of making the streets safer and helping the environment. Really? No, the true agenda is to rid the City of all people who drive automobiles; even the families who need to get their children around, the elderly and disabled who can’t ride bikes or navigate busses every time the want to go out, and anyone else who doesn’t have the time or luxury to travel by means other than car. Take the Great Highway, historically the safest 2-mile stretch of road anywhere in SF for walkers, bikes, and drivers, and hands down the most fuel efficient route for traveling the two miles between Lincoln and Sloat. Close it, and force 18k drivers every day onto high injury networks like Lincoln, Sloat, Sunset and 19th, or to travel through residential streets with kids at play, 4-way intersections every block, and a multitude of street hazards that don’t exist on the Highway? Close it and created far more congested hot spots, while forcing18k daily drivers, families, working folks, elderly, etc. to put more miles on their odometers as they detour onto streets that require stop-and-go driving? But wait, what about street safety? What about reducing carbon emissions? It doesn’t truly matter to these groups when there’s an opportunity to punish people who drive cars. So just don’t act like the interest groups discussed her are unique in some way, and don’t cherry pick which disingenuous groups are worthy of criticism.
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By the Way Sunset for Life. The Coastal Commission was to have voted last week to PERMANENTLY close The stretch of road between Sloat and Skyline Boulevard
The Entitled motorists and their enablers now have something else to whine about.
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Another diatribe against citizens attempting to take back the City they love. Of course DSA Pitta wants to support her peeps, Preston and Chan but what has either accomplished? To Pitta, capitalism is a dirty word and anyone pro business is a Republican. The progressive policies she advocates for are destroying SF and most of us are ready to move on to a more moderate and successful future.
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A very worthless comment. What you talking about? What about the mid market tax break or the ability for these companies to make money off of commercial real estate in SF without paying taxes.
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These aren’t citizens trying to take back the city. They are billionaires trying to extend their empires and miximize their profits by engendering fear of poverty and crime, and they have no sympathy for anyone they class as “the other”.
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Good analysis on 48 Hills:
https://48hills.org/2023/09/tenants-community-rally-against-breeds-developer-friendly-housing-bill/
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Connie Chan and Dean Preston have worked tirelessly t o destroy San Francisco by defunding the police and promoting drug tourism. While I don’t agree with everything that GrowSF stands for, voting the progressive wing of the Democratic Party out of office is something that we should all agree on.
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What are you talking about? They both voted to increase the recent police budget. And desiring drug rehabilation efforts is not at all the same thing as promoting drug tourism.
Also, the data that is being used to trot out the “drug tourism” meme is suspect. It came about from a comment made by the Police Chief based upon recent arrests, not from an analysis of a large sample over a long period of time. Politically motivated hackery loves confirmation bias, especially when it serves a political purpose — but Even conservative supervisor Matt Dorsey is asking for better data.
Apparently, “Dude”, you understand the tactics of these astro-turf groups very well because you are using the same false equivalence, straw-man arguments techniques and what you said indicates you are completely clueless about San Francisco politics. Whatever you think of Chan and Preston, they aren’t funded by the billionaires who are obviously trying to buy city government and put their apparatchiks into the supervisor position.
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Julie you are spot on! The entire YIMBY movement started in SF, and is completely funded by big tech and the urban growth machine. They are literally developers shills, and the game is up. https://www.housingisahumanright.org/why-is-california-yimby-hiding-the-names-of-big-money-contributors/
Please join our movement to return to local democracy and find real solutions to our affordable housing and homelessness crisis! https://ourneighborhoodvoices.com/
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