Episode 10: The Final List of Mayoral Candidates

In the Episode 10, Richie Greenberg discusses the 13 final, "official" candidates vying for mayor appearing on the ballot in San Francisco November 2024. From knowns to unknowns, we will learn about the benefits and pitfalls of funning as a prominent public figure. 

Transcript

Episode 10 What Would Richie Greenberg do as mayor podcast.

July 14, 2024.

Thanks for joining and welcome to episode 10 of WWRGDAM podcast, I’m your host, Richie Greenberg here in the San Francisco studio.

Its July, 2024 and we’re just about 4 months til November’s Election Day. 

It’s a little quiet out there, the streets are fairly quiet understandably, since we are in Summer vacation mode, and next month, August, I expect things to be even quieter. Many San Francisco residents travel now, especially if they have school-aged kids. The city feels noticeably less crowded. Even empty in certain parts. Traffic is lighter, getting across town is a little faster and parking is easier than usual.

Last month, June 11th, was the deadline for candidates who wish to run for mayor to complete the necessary paperwork and pay the filing fees.

Over the last year or so, the number of mayoral candidates reached 53, yes fifty-three. But by 5pm on that day to finalize their candidacy, June 11th, the vast majority had dropped off the list, leaving 13 to move forward as official, qualified candidates to appear on the ballot in November.

I'll note the use of the word "qualified". in this particular case, it means, individuals who have satisfied all paperwork and filing requirements.

Five of the final thirteen are being referred to as the “prominent” mayoral candidates, and much of the media all but ignore the remaining eight which are deemed to be not “prominent”. 

The prominent front-runner five are: current mayor London Breed who’s seeking reelection; two currently serving members of the board of supervisors ( our city council) namely Ahsha Safai and Aaron Peskin; there’s a previous member of the board Mark Farrel, who also temporarily served as mayor for 6 months in 2018, and finally there’s the outsider who comes from a wealthy multi generation family in San Francisco, Daniel Lurie. Lurie is the non-politician. That the list of the front-runners.

These front-runner five have the name recognition, a following, the funding and the fundraising capabilities.

So, the media, journalists, TV networks and organizers of three recent mayoral candidate debates and town halls covered by local media only focus on these five prominent candidates. As of the latest available financial reports, these five combined have raised more than $6 million dollars and this tally is sure to rise much much higher over the next months. The latest campaign financial reports will be updated by the end of July. Current tallies are reports of January thru June 30tha few weeks ago , so expect a big jump in reports of money raised a few weeks from now. 

As for the remaining eight, there are apparently no campaign finance reports yet, and it can be assumed at this point these eight will not raise significant monies through the end of the campaign season. Under San Francisco campaign rules, once an individual raises $1,000, they must register as a candidate campaign committee and file all fundraising and expense transactions, and appoint a treasurer to file reports. To date, none of these additional 8 candidates have formed and filed financial reports for campaign funding.

This is a reason local media have all but ignored and discounted these candidates. No funding means no realistic way to gain name recognition, no way to get their voices heard and so they are ignored, except for one candidate, Ellen Lee Zhou.

Ellen has run for San Francisco mayor twice before, in 2018 as an independent, or what we call  NPP, No Party Preference. She then switched to Republican shortly afterwards to run in the 2019 mayoral election She came in second place, losing to London breed, current mayor.

Ellen fundraising numbers are not yet reported, as I just explained, We’ll see in a few weeks.

What’s disturbing to me now is that all 13 mayoral candidates were required to complete the same paperwork, the same initial financial asset disclosure reports, and pay a filing fee of over $7,000.00 That’s no small feat for many.

Yet these 8 outlier candidates are quickly discovering they very well may have wasted $7 grand. 

[PAUSE]

These last few days I’ve attempted to learn a bit more about who these eight “other” mayoral candidates are.  I’m more than simply curious,  I’m genuinely  interested to hear their views and proposals, perhaps they can offer a perspective on an important issue here in San Francisco which has been overlooked. Unfortunately, most of the eight don’t have a website. Two of these eight don’t have contact information available, and one has a published email address which bounced back when I sent a hello email to them to introduce myself.

This is quite puzzling! You’d think that as a San Francisco resident engaged enough to want to run for mayor and paying the city govenemt a $7,000 fee, that’s a serious amount, that they’d want to be found, to contacted by media, by people to donate, people would perhaps want to work on the campaign, to volunteer. Why on earth would they hide?

None of these outlier 8 are current or former city officials. All but one are in the public eye , that’s Ellen Lee Zhou, and she’s been labelled a MAGA Republican hard-line Trumper evangelist. Her ideology doesn’t really meld very well with voters in this liberal city.

Though these 8 are most likely going to continue to be in the shadows, their views could actually be important.

There was a candidate debate earlier this week, televised live by local KTVU channel 2 , featuring the top candidates. Outside, Ellen Lee Zhou set up a table with literature, a few campaign signs and flags. She was there alone, and it appeared nobody was talking to her, except those who may now her personally. I know her and went over to say hello and take a quick selfie. When the debate was over, and people exited the building, Ellen was gone.

This is the reality, the tough uphill battle, perhaps even futile and quixotic, for the lesser-known candidates for mayor.  Personally, I am torn, as I want to hear what everyone who’s made the effort and qualified as a candidate, what they have to say, to offer. 

Here in San Francisco, we make use of the controversial Ranked Choice Voting system, if you’re not familiar with this, its an instant run-off method, where voters choose multiple candidates in a preferred order if the first choice does not make 50% of the vote election day. Some candidates believe they have a chance by merely being on the ballot, when voters choose those top 5 candidates to win but none earn 50% and votes trickle down to the less popular 8 candidates. In this year’s elections for mayor, however, this scenario is highly, highly unlikely as the votes will be distributed between those top five. 

Under the ranked choice voting system, up to ten candidates may be chosen on a grid. However confusing this may seem, there is no obligation to mark ballots for ten. In fact, one tactic is to only select one candidate and leave the rest of the grid blank. This will ensure your vote is cast only for your favorite candidate and will NOT count towards an undesirable candidate. Therefore, the lesser-known candidates again have little to no chance at the polls. The tactics of Ranked Choice Voting is an excellent topic for another day, another podcast episode.

Stay tuned for updates as we move forward deeper into looking at the candidates for mayor this election season.

I’m Richie Greenberg and thank you for listening.