Three months ago the people of San Fran Recalled three School Board members. On June 7 they Recalled the terrorist DA. Little noted, the people also stopped the financing of corruption of the city—they defeated a $400 million bond (total cost, including interest is $800 million) of the poorly run, disease and crime ridden Muni. Could San Fran be turning into a responsible city? Is it too late to save it?
The Boudin recall crashed Muni’s $400M bond. The same consulting firm led both.
Data from most updated vote count reveals extremely high correlation between voting to sink the DA and voting to sink the Muni bond
by JOE ESKENAZI, Mission Local, 6/13/22
“Information gladly given, but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation.”
On election night, politicians and Muni officials backing the massive transit infrastructure bond were waiting for their political bus to arrive. But, just like a real bus, complications ensued, and things got messy.
Bonds require two-thirds voter approval and, when the initial ballot count dropped at 8:45 p.m., Proposition A was at just 64 percent.
“It’s reasonable to make that up,” Muni director Jeffrey Tumlin told our reporter, Annika Hom, at the time. But not really: It would have been reasonable if Mayor London Breed’s signature infrastructure bond, backed by every vestige of political power in the city, facing no significant opposition and touting a healthy war chest of nearly $1.5 million, had been into the 70s and gained from there throughout the evening.
But that didn’t happen. In fact, Prop. A lost ground with every successive tranche of votes tabulated on election night.
As of Sunday, with essentially all the votes counted, Prop. A has 65.1 percent of the vote. Again, it needed 66.7; the bus is not coming.
If you’re keeping score at home, the last mayor to fail to pass an infrastructure bond carrying his or her imprimatur was Gavin Christopher Newsom in November, 2005 (Prop. B, a street and sidewalk improvement bond). This is humiliating, and it doesn’t happen a lot. Lessons were learned and, in recent years, applied.
One of the biggest lesson learned in the ensuing decades: Massive infrastructure bond campaigns have typically been led by not one, but two, consultants. This indicates the huge dollar numbers at stake, as well as the vital and bipartisan nature of this giant ask of the voters. In hiring both a moderate-aligned consultant as well as a progressive one, no electoral stone was left unturned. “You want to have two campaign consultants,” explains a veteran of multiple bond campaigns. “That gives you 100 percent coverage. Getting two-thirds of the voters is hard in a town that’s so [politically] split up.”
Prop. A, however, had only one lead consulting firm: KMM Strategies, helmed by Maggie Muir, Breed’s preferred consultant. KMM was facing the additional hurdle of being on the same ballot as Prop. H, the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin. And this was a truly odd situation, because the consulting firm handling the recall was — you guessed it — KMM Strategies.
Among San Francisco political insiders, who long ago feared this bond would be derailed, this was something of a head-smacking situation. Weeks before Prop. A’s dismal election-night showing (and eventual ignominious defeat), city politicos worried that an influx of voters driven to the polls to oust Boudin, after a steady drumbeat of ads playing up the dysfunction, filth and wrongheadedness of this city, would not bode well for a chronically dysfunctional transit system asking for a massive handout.
On election day, Mission Local predicted that Prop. H’s success could come at the expense of Prop. A. That appears to be exactly what happened.
Precinct-level election data gleaned by Mission Local’s Will Jarrett reveals a 0.74 “Pearson correlation” between Yes on H votes and No on A votes. The “Pearson correlation,” named for British mathematician Karl Pearson, indicates the linear relationship between two issues. A “-1” correlation indicates a complete opposite relationship; a “0” correlation indicates no relation between two variables; and a “1” indicates an identical, perfect correlation.
So 0.74 is pretty damn high.
What does it mean? It means that in precincts where more people voted to dump Boudin, they also voted in greater numbers to stiff Muni.
Digging further, Jarrett unearthed data regarding individual voters. Of the people who voted to recall Boudin, only 48.7 percent of them also voted in favor of the Muni bond. But of the people who voted to not recall Boudin, 76.7 percent of them voted for the Muni bond.
This provides mathematical evidence to what was an intuitive prediction: Campaigns attempting to drive Prop. H voters and Prop. A voters to the polls were at cross purposes. So, truly, it was a remarkable decision to have one consulting firm handling both.
Two days after the recent election, KMM Strategies disseminated a mass-email with the subject line “KMM Strategies Helps Recall San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin.”
“For the KMM Strategies team (based in both San Francisco and Seattle), this fight was a personal one as we fought to make our city safer for everyone,” read the communique. “Branding the campaign Safer SF Without Boudin, we led the TV and digital efforts that shaped the overall narrative … ”
You’re not going to believe this, but there was no mass-email sent hither and yon by KMM announcing the jaw-dropping results on Prop. A.
There were no laws broken here, and KMM helming both campaigns was no secret. But it was also no secret that Prop. A and Prop. H were, as noted above, at cross purposes. A number of experienced political hands I spoke with in recent weeks, some of whom had zero sympathy for Boudin, also predicted this recall would undermine the Muni bond.
I have not yet received any answers to my questions of KMM: Were there internal strategies to keep Prop. H voters from derailing Prop. A? What steps were taken to reach the progressive voters most likely to vote for this bond — who were also most likely to vote against the recall? And why was there no second lead consultant for Prop. A, one with deeper ties to city progressives?
Of the people who voted to recall Boudin, only 48.7 percent of them also voted in favor of the Muni bond. But of the people who voted to not recall Boudin, 76.7 percent of them voted for the Muni bond.
While the recall campaign clearly got its preferred voters out, it’s hard to say the same for the Muni bond. The Prop. A campaign donated to only a handful of Democratic clubs or other city outfits of the sort doing slate mail campaigns or voter outreach. And it donated more money to Democratic clubs pushing for the recall in their outreach materials than anti-recall clubs.
With all the votes counted, the recall triumphed, by a 55-45 margin. That’s not the evisceration that earned national headlines on election day, but it’s still a comfortable margin. A heavy investment by the Prop. A campaign in getting lefties to the polls would not have changed the results of Prop. H.
But it could well have turned the tide for Prop. A. Yet, for whatever rationale, this didn’t happen. Coincidentally or not, the Prop. A campaign seemed more inclined to support partners who also supported the recall.
Some after-the-fact rancor is being directed at the left-leaning League of Pissed-Off Voters for its neutral stance on Prop. A.
That was bewildering and unfortunate. That was a bad look; it was shortsighted to punish Muni for its poor performance by ensuring more of it. But it’s hard to see it as a significant factor in the overall outcome when compared to the goodly number of motivated, pro-recall voters handily rejecting the bond in what turned out to be a fairly high-turnout election.
Besides, delivering endorsements like the League and other lefty political groups is ostensibly why you’d have that second, progressive-friendly consultant on the payroll in the first place.
Where does this leave Muni? Where it was before, only worse off: It remains San Francisco’s political orphan.
Muni is under the aegis of the mayor, who appoints its entire oversight commission and can micromanage agency leadership as much or little as she pleases. On this critical bond measure, it’s hard to say this mayor broke much of a sweat. Few people did, and the results are telling.
You can’t have a functioning city without a functioning public transit system. But, it seems, a significant portion of the electorate is okay with that. Better-off people are, increasingly, opting out of Muni, just as they’re opting out of the public school system. For more and more San Franciscans, this just ain’t their problem, and the results are telling.
So, Muni is in a bad way. And the city must, in November, get two-thirds of the voters to reauthorize the Prop. K sales tax to fund roads and transit — which, unlike a bond, is actually a regressive tax.
Polling is, we’re told, on the sales tax’s side, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the case if the big Muni bond is tossed onto November’s ballot for a second run. That may yet happen; a lot can happen between now and November.
Voters, in short, are surly. If city officials need to win their confidence and prove some competence before the next handout, we could see more election nights like June 7.
The gravy train seems to be stuck. And, as a result, so is the Muni train. ……
