Eight million dollars is heading into the June ballot fights — and down in the Tenderloin, the people who've already lost somebody are the ones carrying the heaviest load in the overdose crisis. Welcome to San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: big campaign money, and real grief on the ground, colliding in the same news cycle. We’re going to sort through who’s spending what to shape your June ballot, and then we’ll get to the family members who’ve ended up on the front line of the overdose fight — stick with us. This one's from Mission Local:
About three-quarters of all the money pouring into San Francisco’s June 2 election is going toward just four measures on the ballot. The majority of that $7.9 million is funding dueling businesses tax measures: The “overpaid CEO tax,” Proposition D, and a competing measure placed on the ballot in hopes of sinking it, Proposition C.
Big credit to Mission Local here for tracing the money on the June 2 ballot. We’re talking almost eight million dollars total, and most of it is jammed into just two dueling business tax measures: Prop C and Prop D, the so-called overpaid CEO tax. The corporate side is dumping money into Prop C to kill the CEO tax, labor is dumping money into Prop D to pass it — and in the middle of all that, Chris Larsen is personally cutting seven-hundred-thousand-dollar checks to fight a tax on executives while also dropping half a million on earthquake safety bonds. One wallet, a lot of agenda. Prop B — lifetime term limits for the mayor and supervisors — is basically an afterthought when it comes to fundraising: three hundred fifty grand, mostly from Larsen and Michael Moritz, with under three thousand dollars raised against it. When billionaires are the only ones paying close attention, that’s worth noticing. From The Tenderloin Voice:
Theris Coats Sr. and Richard Beal like to say they’re turning “pain into purpose” — and both men have experienced pain in profound excess. But on a sunny late April afternoon in the Tenderloin, they were celebrating. It was the one-year anniversary party for their organization, Brothers Against Drug Deaths, formed to support people battling addiction.
From The Tenderloin Voice: a story about Brothers Against Drug Deaths, which just marked its one-year anniversary. Theris Coats Sr. and Richard Beal lost family to drugs, and they’ve turned that grief into a push for better addiction services and legislative change. That’s the kind of ground-up organizing I want to see more of — people who actually lived the crisis, not policy consultants flying in from out of town. The Tenderloin’s been failed by programs that look good on paper and do nothing on the street. They’re also in Sacramento fighting to protect funding for the Tenderloin farmers' market — a food access program that serves low-income residents and local farmers alike. So it’s two fights at once: state and local. If Sacramento cuts that farmers' market funding, they’re taking away one of the few things that makes the Tenderloin feel like a neighborhood instead of a containment zone. Real residents, real produce — that matters. Got a tip, a correction, or a story idea about San Francisco politics, housing, or City Hall? Send it our way at sfdailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read every note.
We’ve put links to all of today’s stories in the show notes, so if there’s one you want to dig into more closely, you can find it there.
That’s San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily for this Friday. This is a Lantern Podcast.