Has San Francisco lost its liberal soul?
Have San Francisco voters lost the bleeding hearts they are known for – or are they just frustrated?
City voters this week overwhelmingly passed two ballot measures that probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day just a few years ago. One measure gives more power to police, and the other requires welfare recipients suspected of being addicted to drugs to enter treatment as a condition of continuing to receive benefits.
Critics of the measures said residents had moved to the right and that billionaires had bought the city by throwing money at campaigns for the measures. But Mayor London Breed, facing a tough race for re-election in November and who placed the two measures on the ballot, brushed aside claims that the city had lost its liberal soul.
In her annual State of the City address on Thursday, Breed argued that it is progressive to invest in public safety to protect vulnerable older residents and immigrants, and to push for drug treatment for those who need it.
“We are a progressive, diverse city, living together and celebrating each other,” she said, standing at a podium at the city’s cruise ship terminal, apparently to highlight the recovery of San Francisco’s tourism industry. “That hasn’t changed and won’t change.”
San Francisco’s reputation has plummeted — many residents say unfairly — since the pandemic began, due to outdoor drug use, property crime and the sharp decline in downtown office occupancy. Breed, a political moderate by San Francisco standards, has responded by moving right, and voters this week backed her priorities.
In addition to the police and drug measures, voters in Tuesday’s primary backed a moderate slate of candidates for the Democratic County Central Committee, the governing body of the local Democratic Party, whose support is likely to carry weight in the mayor’s race.
They also approved a city policy to encourage the city’s schools to offer algebra to students beginning in eighth grade. The district had dropped the course from the middle school over concerns that Asian and white students were making progress in math while black and Latino students were not.
Proposition E, which gives new powers to the San Francisco Police Department, was approved by just under 60 percent of voters. The measure allows police to use drones and install surveillance cameras, and relaxes restrictions on car chases.
About 62 percent of voters supported Proposition F, which would require people receiving public financial assistance who are believed to be drug users to be screened and seek treatment if found to have an addiction.
Lydia Bransten, executive director of the Gubbio Project, which provides services to the homeless, had strongly opposed Prop F, arguing that forcing people into drug treatment would not work.
She believes the city’s long-delayed plan to open supervised locations where people can use drugs, under the watchful eye of harm reduction specialists, is the real answer to solving the city’s devastating drug crisis, with an average of two people die every day.
The success of Prop F, she said, meant that people were simply exhausted by the drug epidemic and the lack of a coherent solution from City Hall, and were eager to support anything that resembled a real plan.
“San Francisco is still a progressive city at its core,” she said. “Even progressives can become exhausted if they are not presented with ideas that are effective.”
Nancy Tung, a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office who won election to the Democratic committee this week as part of the moderate slate, agreed that the city is still liberal at heart.
“San Franciscans want to make sure our streets are safe,” she said. “They want better public education. They want a government that works. When are those no longer democratic values?”
Heather Knight is bureau chief of The New York Times in San Francisco.
Tell us
Amid all the turmoil caused by the pandemic, there have been moments of hope and positive change. What have been your pandemic silver linings? Tell us at CAtoday@nytimes.com. Please include your full name and the city where you live.
And before you go: good news
Elephant seals, once hunted nearly to the point of extinction, are recovering, with colonies steadily expanding northward to breeding grounds on California’s Pacific coast. Bay Area News Group reports.
Scientists and researchers monitoring the seal population believe there are at least 25 breeding colonies on the Pacific coast today, with approximately 200,000 seals breeding and giving birth in the region’s five national marine reserves.
The figures represent a spectacular recovery for the seal species, which was hunted aggressively for its blubber in the 19th century and was thought to be extinct by the late 1870s. But a small colony, which at one point numbered fewer than 100 seals, survived in Baja California. After the species was given legal protection, the seals gradually began to rebuild their numbers and spread north again. According to researchers, all modern colonies in the Pacific today are descended from that one colony.
The seals have become prosperous in recent decades thanks to federal protections and because of their feeding habits, which are not directly affected by ocean currents. As the population grew, seals continued to establish colonies further up the coast, with one colony as far north as Humboldt County.
“It’s a conservation success story,” Dawn Goley, professor of zoology at Cal Poly Humboldt, told the news station. “They were in big trouble.”
Thank you for reading. We’ll be back on Monday. Nice weekend.
PS Here it is today’s mini crossword.
Soumya Karlamangla, Maia Coleman, Kellina Moore and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team via CAtoday@nytimes.com.
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