General Election 2024 Preview Part II

California

Block quotes are from our March primary preview unless otherwise indicated.

CA-12 (East Bay, including Oakland)

Lateefah Simon vs. Jennifer Tran

Round 1: Simon 56.0%, Tran 14.7%

After Barbara Lee opted to run for Senate rather than reelection to Congress, a rare moment of unity in East Bay politics was achieved when progressives, leftists, labor, and the Oakland establishment all quickly agreed that her successor should be BART Board member Lateefah Simon—not a hard choice considering she’s also clearly Lee’s chosen successor. Not on the same page as everybody else were the moderates, who ended up stuck with Jennifer Tran after she was the moderate candidate who happened to make it out of the primary. Tran has run a rhetorically right-wing campaign that’s absolutely toast in the left-leaning East Bay, and that’s about all there is to say here. Simon, a down-the-line progressive, will succeed Lee and likely provide the same excellent quality of representation as the outgoing incumbent.

CA-16 (Silicon Valley)

Sam Liccardo vs. Evan Low

Round 1: Liccardo 21.2%, Low 16.6%

Sam Liccardo is the former mayor of San Jose, a pro-business type who built his career on going to war with the public employee unions. Liccardo has since built up an image as a good government urbanist type, but he shouldn’t be trusted with public employee pensions ever, and Congress obviously handles those. Somehow, he’s marginally better on Israel-Palestine than most candidates in this race.

Evan Low is the assemblymember for Silicon Valley, and, predictably, a Big Tech mouthpiece. It makes some of the other good positions he’s taken harder to accept.

Of course Silicon Valley wasn’t going to nominate a progressive, but did both options have to be so uninspiring? The runoff has been marked by the CA Dems and organized labor going to the mat for Low, while Silicon Valley billionaires are trying to push Liccardo over the line. That’s not what we expected the contours of the race to be when the runoff match was finally set. Uber mouthpiece Evan Low somehow not being the candidate friendliest to Silicon Valley interests is surprising…and depressing. Low also surprised us by coming out against tough-on-crime ballot measure Proposition 36. Internal polling from Low ally Equality California has Liccardo ahead 48%-45%, and we guess we hope Low pulls it out.

CA-34 (Downtown Los Angeles)

Jimmy Gomez (i) vs. David Kim

Round 1: Gomez 51.15%, Kim 27.9%

Jimmy Gomez and David Kim are now on their third straight runoff. Gomez, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus but by no means an ideological standout, especially by the standards of downtown Los Angeles, defeated Kim by a 53%-47% margin in 2020 and a 51%-49% margin in 2022, making it the 19th closest general election in the House, and by far the closest same-party contest. Kim is a socialist who has woven together a coalition of young progressives and the large Korean and Chinese communities in the district. 

Kim is, like last cycle, running on a mixture of big lefty policy proposals like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and ideas that are less associated with the left specifically, like UBI and public campaign financing. As has happened around the country, it's Kim’s progressiveness on two specific areas that have begun shaping the contest in the closing stretch. One is Israel-Palestine, as AIPAC seemingly realized around October that there was a pro-BDS gay leftist with a shot at making it to Congress, and began airing ads against him. The other is cryptocurrency: Gomez is largely pro-crypto, and the industry hasn’t been shy about showering its friends with money. AIPAC’s $2.3 million represents a majority of all money spent in the contest, but even the $511,000 from crypto industry front Protect Progress is more money than Kim has raised this entire cycle. Kim is facing enormous headwinds, but his primarily volunteer operation got him tantalizingly close in 2020 and 2022, so he shouldn't be counted out.

SD-07 (East Bay, including Oakland)

Jesse Arreguín vs. Jovanka Beckles

Round 1: Arreguín 32.5%, Beckles 17.3%

Progressives, a coherent faction with real power in the East Bay, are supporting activist Jovanka Beckles, a socialist who previously ran for state house in 2018, and is endorsed by the DSA this year. The YIMBY/moderate alliance that exists in San Francisco isn’t as well solidified in the East Bay, but both sides of the equation are probably looking at the same candidate: Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín, who is getting YIMBYs because he’s been an actual YIMBY mayor, and moderates because they’re going to want whoever is running against a progressive. 

While Arreguín did finish well above Beckles in the first round, a majority of voters went for another candidate, meaning Beckles has had ample opportunity to make up ground in the runoff. While there have been some promising developments for her, most notably US Senator Bernie Sanders making an endorsement for her, things have been pretty quiet on the trail for most of the year, which isn’t what you want as a candidate when you’re starting down. Also not helpful to Beckles is current SD-07 senator Nancy Skinner endorsing Arreguín. A Beckles win would be fantastic news for the East Bay left, given the total statewide establishment support for Arreguín, including Gavin Newsom, but not enough has broken her way since the primary for us to be particularly hopeful. 

SD-09 (Contra Costa County)

Tim Grayson vs. Marisol Rubio

Round 1: Grayson 60.0%, Rubio 40.0%

Beauty pageant primaries tend to get pretty close to the final result, which is a bad sign for progressive Marisol Rubio. Rubio, who has previously challenged retiring conservative Democratic state Sen. Steve Glazer, is progressives’ pick to succeed him, but moderate, Glazer-backed Assemb. Tim Grayson appears to have a formidable advantage. Progressive independent expenditure groups have largely abandoned Rubio.

SD-35 (Compton and South LA)

Laura Richardson vs. Michelle Chambers

Round 1: Richardson 27.8%, Chambers 24.5%

California is absolutely lousy with retired congressfreaks with nothing better to do than run for lower office. One of those is Laura Richardson (CA-37, 2007-2013). Her endorsements page is conspicuously free of former congressional colleagues, maybe because she left office under an ethical cloud after losing a nasty member-on-member race with Janice Hahn, who is now a LA County Supervisor. [...] And they’re all fighting for the right to lose to Michelle Chambers, the leader in fundraising and endorsements and a former staffer to AG Rob Bonta. Since Chambers is also the only candidate whose bio and platform don’t throw up any obvious red flags, we’re fine with this. (If we had to guess, the runoff will be with Richardson.)

Well, we were right about the final match-up, but we didn’t expect how poorly Chambers was going to show in the first round. Since then, we’ve thankfully gotten more information to ideologically distinguish the two candidates. Chambers has been embraced by the progressive wing of the party, including the Sierra Club and the Working Families Party. That has been perhaps surprising to see, when Chambers supports Gavin Newsom’s plan to criminalize homelessness, but it makes more sense in contrast to how tightly Richardson has been clinging to police unions lately.

The race has turned nasty in the final stretch, with both candidates devoted a page of their website to listing every negative angle they can think of regarding their opponents. Chambers highlights Richardson’s corruption, while Richardson seemingly mostly wants voters to know that Compton sucks and Chambers used to be a city councilmember there, though Richardson does also bring up an old criminal conviction of Chambers’s and an allegation that Chambers used a racial slur in a closed-door city council meeting, which Chambers denies.

Richardson is, unfortunately, no longer an underdog, thanks to LA Mayor Karen Bass and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, who have thrown their support behind Richardson and remain popular in Los Angeles.

AD-14 (Berkeley and Richmond)

Buffy Wicks (i) vs. Margot Smith

Round 1: Wicks 73.6%, Smith 16.7%

Buffy Wicks may not have been the first YIMBY politician in California, but her 2018 victory was the first sign that the Housing Wars had moved beyond San Francisco and were going to be a regular fixture of Bay Area politics for the foreseeable future. The Housing Wars may still be raging, but Wicks has won as far as her own future goes. There’s no other way to interpret her only opposition this year being a 92-year-old activist, who, to be fair, seems cool when she’s not talking about apartments being too tall and not having enough parking.

It’s a question of whether Buffy Wicks can break 80%. This one’s boring.

AD-19 (Western San Francisco)

David Lee vs. Catherine Stefani

Round 1: Stefani 57.0%, Lee 29.0%

This might have been a heated battle for Phil Ting’s Assembly seat–might have been, until the March primary, when moderate San Francisco Supervisor Catherine Stefani stomped Lee’s chosen successor David Lee by nearly thirty points and won a comfortable majority. In all likelihood, November’s election is just going to make it official for Stefani.

(Correction: In the initial version of this issue we switched Lee and Stefani’s vote shares in the first round. Stefani, not Lee, won the first round comfortably.)

AD-23 (Silicon Valley)

Marc Berman vs. Lydia Kou

Round 1: Berman 57.4%, Kou 21.0%

Assemb. Marc Berman is a pretty standard Democratic backbencher, but Palo Alto Mayor (and realtor) Lydia Kou is running quite explicitly on her opposition to her rich enclave ever having to build housing for a single poor person. Her signature issue as a city councilor has been trying to find ways to disobey state laws mandating affordable housing development.

That March result was the ballgame. A single-issue candidate who got a meager 21% isn’t going anywhere, especially not when their opponent got 57% in the same primary.

AD-26 (Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino)

Patrick Ahrens vs. Tara Sreekrishnan

Round 1: Ahrens 34.4%, Sreekrishnan 26.9%

Three Democrats are facing off in a heavily Democratic district, and only two will make the runoff. Who will be left behind? Will it be longtime staffer to outgoing Assemb. Evan Low, Patrick Ahrens? Sure, Low has endorsed Ahrens, but his campaign is coasting on being the safe choice and letting Uber run ads for him. In a young, quirky district, it can pay to stand out, and Ahrens would rather try his hand at being acceptable to everyone. Will the unlucky Democrat left behind be Sunnyvale City Councilmember Omar Din? That’s the popular opinion—he trails in fundraising and was the only Democrat left out of the labor endorsement in this race. Or, finally, will it be Santa Clara County Board of Education member Tara Sreekrishnan? As the most progressive candidate, she’s putting herself at risk in Silicon Valley, and her position was only an appointment, not the result of facing voters before.

Progressives knew that this election was going to be tough from the get-go. Incumbent Evan Low is clearly a moderate, and he never faced any trouble from his left. Progressives are sticking their necks out trying to grab a wealthy South Bay district, and they’ve even managed to get their candidate to nearly even funding with PG&E pointman Patrick Ahrens in terms of actual campaign contributions. But the utility giant has dropped millions on an independent expenditure campaign against her. The last week of this campaign has been dominated by a video of her egging a family friend’s car three years ago, for some reason.

AD-50 (San Bernardino area)

Robert Garcia vs. Adam Perez

Round 1: Garcia 42.4%, Perez 29.3%

Progressives have split in this district, which is fine because Republicans failed to field a candidate before the filing deadline (though they do have an official write-in candidate, technically.) Outgoing Assemb. Eloise Gómez Reyes, the California Legislative Progressive Caucus, the California Democratic Party, and teachers’ unions are backing school administrator Robert Garcia, while the Working Families Party and the bulk of organized labor are backing nurse and union activist DeJonaé Shaw. Shaw has far more money in her campaign account to work with, plus an independent expenditure campaign on her behalf, so she should make the runoff before Garcia does, and probably before the race’s lone moderate, Fontana Unified School District Board member Adam Perez, as well. But, I mean, good Lord are corporate PACs spending a lot to elect Perez. And of course Blanca Rubio is supporting him, too.

Ah, well, nevertheless. We’re not going to take a Garcia victory for granted, but Garcia has the entire Democratic party behind him, and Perez hasn’t had the good sense to not basically admit that he’s running as a Republican.

AD-52 (East Los Angeles, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock)

Jessica Caloza vs. Francisco Carrillo Jr.

Round 1: Caloza 29.8%, Carrillo 26.2%

[…] That leaves us with two more palatable options: Jessica Caloza, deputy chief of staff to AG Rob Bonta, who even has some noteworthy progressive endorsements like Assembs. Alex Lee, Isaac Bryan, and Tina McKinnor; and Franky Carrillo, who became a criminal justice reform advocate after his 2011 exoneration and release from prison, twenty years after his wrongful conviction for a murder he did not commit. The local DSA city councilmember, Eunisses Hernandez, is backing Carrillo; so is Exonerated Five member and New York City Council Member Yusef Salaam, who, like Carrillo, spent years in prison for a crime he did not commit before turning his eye to politics. Meanwhile, business PACs backed by Uber, Google, and Chevron are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for Caloza. Carrillo it is!

Not long after the primary, Carrillo’s star began to lose its luster. His wife filed for divorce and alleged worrying behavior from him, including leaving loaded guns around his children, kicking the family dog, and sexist attitudes towards her. He also had to dump nearly $1 million of oil and tobacco stocks mid-campaign after activists noticed he still owned them despite divestment commitments. It hasn’t been enough to shake the faith of his progressive endorsers—sometimes politics is more about who you throw in with than anything else. Regardless, we’ll feel less bad if Caloza takes this one than we could have.

AD-54 (Downtown LA, Montebello)

Mark Gonzalez vs. John Yi

Round 1: Gonzalez 45.2%, Yi 34.5%

Los Angeles County Democratic Party Chair Mark Gonzalez probably should’ve gotten a stronger primary result than he did, considering his near-unanimous backing from the Democratic establishment and organized labor, and that’s why there’s a tiny sliver of hope for progressive John Yi. Yi is badly outmatched financially and in terms of endorsements, but he’s backed by the network of progressive organizations and politicians who have pulled off impressive underdog wins again and again in LA over the last few years. Combine that with an open district in young, left-leaning downtown LA, and you’ve got a race to watch.

AD-57 (Downtown LA, Florence-Graham)

Efren Martinez vs. Sade Elhawary

Round 1: Martinez 32.7%, Elhawary 31.1%

One runoff spot is likely reserved for Efren Martinez, a conservative Democrat who outpaced outgoing Assemb. Reggie Jones-Sawyer in the 2020 March primary and lost to him by a respectable 15-point margin that November. Three candidates could realistically snag the other runoff spot. First, there’s YIMBY Dulce Vasquez, who could never quite decide whether she was a progressive or a centrist in her 2022 run against LA City Councilman Curren Price, and who suffers from the same problem this time around. Longtime civil rights activist Greg Akili and community organizer Sade Elhawary are vying for dominance in the progressive lane, and Elhawary, simply put, has won that fight, well outpacing Akili in fundraising and endorsements and winning over the large segment of the LA establishment that just doesn’t like Martinez. She is Martinez’s likeliest opponent.

Despite Martinez’s poor relationship with the LA establishment, the usual suspects have swooped in to save him: Walmart, the police union, the oil industry. A total of $5 million in independent expenditures have been logged in support of Martinez and in opposition to Elhawary. Organized labor has shown up for Elhawary, meanwhile, and helped put up $1.3 million in independent expenditures supporting her. Race looms large in this runoff; historically the center of Black political power in Los Angeles, this area is now heavily Latino. Both candidates are Latino, but only Martinez has a Spanish name; Elhawary, the daughter of a Guatemalan mother and an Egyptian father, is very consciously trying to straddle the racial divide.

AD-79 (southeastern San Diego, La Mesa, El Cajon)

Colin Parent vs. LaShae Sharp-Collins

Round 1: Parent 39.65%, Sharp-Collins 30.3%

With no Republicans in the race and a runoff even if one candidate clears 50%, this primary doesn’t matter much. It would if Lemon Grove Mayor Racquel Vasquez was raising money or collecting endorsements, but she’s doing neither, while La Mesa City Councilor Colin Parent and professor LaShae Sharp-Collins are. (Parent appears to be the more moderate of the two; the California Democratic Party and the left wing of organized labor are backing Sharp-Collins, while building trades, police unions, and a lot of local politicians are with Parent.) Parent and Sharp-Collins should advance to November, and the margin should tell us something about which of the two is favored in November.

This contest has remained amiable since the primary, and a vote would even be forgiven for thinking they’d govern similarly, but one key issue separates the two: criminal justice, specifically Proposition 36. As expected, Parent favors it, while Sharp-Collins is opposed, and progressive groups unsurprisingly back her over him.

Los Angeles County DA

George Gascón (i) vs. Nathan Hochman

Round 1: Gascón 25.2%, Hochman 15.9%

George Gascón was elected as a progressive reformer who promised to crack down on police brutality and chip away at mass incarceration. He’s governed as he said he would, and eleven candidates—ten of them former or current prosecutors or judges—are running against him, hoping that LA voters have moved away from the reform-oriented politics that led them to choose Gascón over incumbent DA Jackie Lacey in 2020. [T]he best-funded opponent by far is Nathan Hochman, who ran for California Attorney General in 2022 as a Republican. DA races are nonpartisan, but Hochman would test the limits of nonpartisan elections.

Polling on this race has consistently shown Gascon down by 20%-30%. The less said about this one, the better.

Long Beach City Council District 4 (Eastern Long Beach)

Daryl Supernaw (i) vs. Herlinda Chico

Round 1: Supernaw 48.45%, Chico 25.5%

Long Beach City College Trustee Herlinda Chico forced Long Beach City Councilor Daryl Supernaw into a runoff, and since then she’s consolidated labor and the Democratic Party in her corner. Chico has also been endorsed by third-place finisher Gerrie Schipske, a former city councilor. Supernaw’s backers include the local Chamber of Commerce and the local police union. The candidates also split on Prop 36: Supernaw supports it, while Chico avoids taking a position.

Los Angeles

City Council District 2 (North Hollywood, Van Nuys)

Jillian Burgos vs. Adrin Nazarian

Round 1: Nazarian 37.2%, Burgos 22.4%

Former Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian has also done multiple stints as a staffer for outgoing Council President Paul Krekorian, and he’ll be more of the same—which, in Krekorian’s case, means a member of the city council’s moderate bloc who occasionally makes vaguely progressive noises when convenient. You know the type; you probably have a bunch of these on your city council, too. Nazarian is the frontrunner and the only candidate who we could see clearing 50%, though with such a crowded field we think that’s unlikely.

[…]

The choice progressives can feel comfortable with is NoHo Neighborhood Councilor Jillian Burgos, an entertainment industry professional and entrepreneur who’s running with the backing of the California Nurses Association, City Controller Kenneth Mejia, and, as she’s happy to note on her website, pretty much every one of the various progressive and leftist voter guides that tend to move a lot of late-deciding voters in LA. She has less money than the other three candidates with a shot, but she’s not broke, and she’s the only one doing a convincing job of seeming progressive in a district that generally leans that way.

After Burgos’s surprise second place in the March top-two, the race developed largely as you’d expect a race between an establishment-friendly former assemblyman and a left-leaning activist to develop. Progressive groups that sat on the sidelines in the primary, like DSA-LA and the Working Families Party, have since backed Burgos. Meanwhile, Nazarian is painting Burgos as a dangerous radical who would defund the police, making an absurd comparison between more frugal police budgeting and his childhood in totalitarian Iran in an answer to a question for the LA Times’s voter guide. (Burgos, who describes herself as an abolitionist and is skeptical of police funding as a response to social crises, does not hide the fact that she would add to the council’s fledgling hard-left bloc.) Nazarian finished well ahead of Burgos in Round 1 and should have an easier time making it to 50%, considering his broad establishment support and financial advantage—in addition to his advantages in total raised, total spent, and cash on hand, he’s been the beneficiary of a million dollars in independent expenditures. But as we said in March, this is not particularly hostile territory for the left, and Burgos is not broke. She’s even won over one of her runoff opponents, Manny Gonez, the husband of LAUSD Board Member Kelly Gonez. (Gonez placed fourth with 12.2%.)

City Council District 10 (Baldwin Hills, Mid City, Koreatown)

Heather Hutt (i) vs. Grace Yoo 

Round 1: Hutt 37.8%, Yoo 23.1%

Heather Hutt was appointed by Nury Martinez in late August 2022 (a little over a month before Martinez’s early October fall from grace) to permanently fill the vacancy left behind by a different disgraced LA politician, Mark Ridley-Thomas, after his conviction on federal corruption charges. You understand why Hutt has kept her head down and tried to avoid making anyone angry—she only has the weakest vestige of incumbency, and she’d rather not remind voters how she got it, even though her appointment was uncontroversial at the time (she had previously served as a temporary caretaker in the seat.) Hutt is supported by her colleagues and some other LA politicians, but nobody seems to feel too strongly about keeping her in the seat. 

[…]

Grace Yoo, the field’s top fundraiser, is an anti-homeless shelter NIMBY activist, and she’s also the only Asian candidate in a district that includes Koreatown.

Heather Hutt and Grace Yoo aren’t that far apart on policy, but they’re far apart in outlook. Yoo has made her campaign all about street homelessness, crime, and how the cops need to crack down harder on both. Hutt…basically wishes Yoo would chill, calling her a “law-and-order person that believes in arresting everyone, and I don’t believe in that.” Combined with the fact that Hutt is friendlier than many of her colleagues with that hard-left bloc, it’s plenty for us to prefer her.

City Council District 14 (Downtown, Eagle Rock, Boyle Heights)

Kevin de León (i) vs. Ysabel Jurado

Round 1: Jurado 24.5%, de León 23.4%

Kevin de León has the unmitigated gall to be running for reelection after the release of tapes in which he, then-Council President Nury Martinez, and then-Councilor Gil Cedillo, along with the president of the Los Angeles Labor Federation, Ron Herrera, used incredibly racist language regarding a colleague’s young Black child, Black people in general, Indigenous people, and a variety of other groups. Cedillo, who had already lost reelection but still had a few weeks left in office when the tapes came out, quietly exited politics on schedule, and both Martinez and Herrera resigned from their jobs under massive public pressure. de León refused, and candidates piled in to challenge him. Three have risen to the top: Assemb. Miguel Santiago [...]; Assemb. Wendy Carrillo [...]; and DSA-LA’s Ysabel Jurado, who promises to add a fourth vote to the socialist bloc on the city council and counts a constellation of grassroots leftist organizations among her supporters (as well as some more mainstream labor unions and Democratic clubs.)

Kevin de León, ever the survivor, is going down fighting. He somehow got a tracker to goad Jurado into saying “fuck the police” on tape and he’s desperately hitched himself to progressive ballot measures with glossy and expensive campaign messaging. Outside PACs have chipped in with even more help, both in anti-Jurado attack ads and pro-de León messaging. It probably still won’t be enough. There’s only so much you can do to recover from the racism tapes. Jurado has closed strong, holding together her primary coalition of progressives and gathering more mainstream endorsements like the LA Times. In our view, KDL will need a lot more than the “fuck the police” clip to convince enough of his skeptics to give him yet another chance, and the clip is all he’s got.

Oakland

City Attorney

Brenda Harbin-Forte vs. Ryan Richardson

Brenda Harbin-Forte is staking her campaign for City Attorney on voter dissatisfaction with Mayor Sheng Thao, who faces a recall campaign and an FBI investigation. Harbin-Forte proudly touts that she led the Thao recall effort’s ballot access campaign. She has endorsements from some of Thao’s foes, like her onetime mayoral opponent Loren Taylor, but most of the Oakland political class is backing Ryan Richardson, the current Chief Assistant City Attorney. Unlike Harbin-Forte, Richardson doesn’t seem likely to step on anyone’s toes, but at least he isn’t aligned with the right wing of Oakland politics. (Merits of the Thao recall aside, that’s who pushed it.)

City Council At-Large

LeRonne Armstrong vs. Rowena Brown vs. Shawn Danino vs. Kanitha Matoury vs. Mindy Pechenuk vs. Fabian Robinson vs. Nancy Sidebotham vs. Selika Thomas vs. Cristina Tostado vs. Charlene Wan

Even if you remove the LaRouchite (Mindy Pechenuk), the perennial candidate (Nancy Sidebotham), and candidate with no media presence to speak of (Fabian Robinson), there are still seven candidates to speak of in this race, which is nuts.

LeRonne Armstrong is the former Chief of Police for the city, and the most overtly conservative candidate. Rowena Brown, who is Asm. Mia Bonta’s legislative director, is supported by many progressives, including outgoing at-large council incumbent Rebecca Kaplan and likely future member of Congress Lateefah Simon. Shawn Danino, a higher-up in San Jose’s Housing Department, is the YIMBY candidate, and environmental groups are likewise warm to him. Restaurant owner and Real Estate Syndicator Kanitha Matoury is trying a dual good government liberal and “run government like a business” message, which is tough to sell, but she has many in the moderate faction of city politics buying in. Selika Thomas is running a very low-budget “clean up the city” campaign, where she means that both in the sense of trash and crime.  Oakland Library Commission member Cristina Tostado wants to do two things: cut the budget and hire way more cops, and she will not be interrogated as to how you do both those things at the same time. Finally, civil rights advisor to the EPA Charlene Wan is running as a soft progressive with a lot of the same policies as mayor Sheng Thao, and light YIMBY touch—she’d be the second choice of most Brown backers.

City Council District 1

Edward Frank vs. Len Raphael vs. Zac Unger 

The entirety of Oakland politics is acting as one to elect firefighter and paramedic Zac Unger. He honestly seems kind of boring—but fucking everyone has lent their name to this guy’s campaign, because we guess everybody likes the president of the local firefighters’ union. Also running are conservative Pamela Price recall organizer Len Raphael and Edward Frank, who gives off intense New Age hippy vibes.

City Council District 3

Carroll Fife (i) vs. Baba Afolabi vs. Michelle Hailey vs. Shan Hirsch vs. Warren Logan vs. Meron Semedar

Don’t be intimidated by the crowded field of challengers to incumbent Carroll Fife. This is functionally a one-on-one race between Fife, a member of the council’s progressive majority, and Warren Logan, a staffer in the mayor’s office. Logan is running as a YIMBY urbanist and his endorsements mostly reflect that, but he’ll also serve as a vessel for discontent with the progressive Oakland council (albeit a very imperfect one, because he’s not really running as a right-winger.) Logan has outspent Fife in the home stretch, but Fife has more backing from local politicians, organized labor, and progressive groups. This one could be close.

City Council District 5

Noel Gallo (i) vs. Erin Armstrong vs. Dominic Prado 

Noel Gallo will be the most senior member of the Oakland City Council if he wins reelection, but he has to get past local government adviser Erin Armstrong and taco seller Dominic Prado first. Armstrong works for Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, generally a moderate within the context of Oakland politics (but she is endorsed by Lateefah Simon), and her pitch is mostly non-ideological, focusing on competence, quality city services, and hyper-local issues like illegal dumping. If elected, she would be the first trans member of the Oakland City Council. Prado is more concerned with crime, but lacks the political connections of Armstrong and Gallo and will likely place third.

City Council District 7

Merika Goolsby vs. Marcie Hodge vs. Ken Houston vs. Iris Merriouns

Incumbent Treva Reid surprised the Oakland political world when she opted out of reelection at the last minute. The field to succeed her is a bit muddled. Perennial candidate Marcie Hodge is the most conservative candidate in the running. She is also, thankfully, barely running a campaign. Running even less of a campaign is progressive tenant advocate Merika Goolsby, who has reported raising and spending $0. That leaves two candidates with a shot: perennial candidate and nonprofit leader Ken Houston and city council staffer Iris Merriouns. Houston has outspent Merriouns, the chief of staff to progressive District 4 councilor Janani Ramachandran, in the home stretch, but Merriouns has the edge in organizational support. Not only is she backed by her boss, she’s supported by the Alameda County Democratic Party, the Alameda County Building Trades Council, other labor unions, and two more members of the Oakland City Council. Houston isn’t without support from some unions, and he does have the aforementioned financial advantage; this race could go either way.

Recall Elections

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County DA Pamela Price both face recall elections, efforts that are technically separate but are joined at the hip by similar millionaire backers and volunteers floating between both. They also just generally target the same reactionary impulses on crime for voters in the East Bay. The Thao recall is a little more understandable (her house was raided by the FBI after all) than the Price recall, which is purely a repeat of the Chesa Boudin recall effort in Alameda County and an attempt to fix crime by killing any criminal justice reform efforts in the crib by forcing reformers to run against no one at all rather than an actual opponent who would have to actually say what they’re going to do in office. A recent poll found Thao’s recall support at 64% in Oakland, which is just brutal.

Sacramento Mayor

Flojaune “Flo” Cofer vs. Kevin McCarty

Round 1: Cofer 29.1%, McCarty 21.6%

Assemb. Kevin McCarty (not to be confused with unemployed Central Valley resident Kevin McCarthy) is about as good as you can normally ask for from a big city mayor. He began his career in the city council, where he was known for opposing public financing of the Sacramento Kings stadium. In the Assembly, he compiled a solid voting record, and now, running for mayor, he’s close with organized labor and wants to invest in non-police emergency responses (even if he doesn’t want to pare the police back at all) and safe camping sites while the city works on reducing the homeless population (even if he still supports encampment sweeps.)

Epidemiologist Flo Cofer is underfunded, sure, but far from penniless—raising a little more than half of what the other major candidates have is enough to compete, and that’s good news, because she’s the only candidate we’re really excited about. Backed by the DSA, WFP, Our Revolution, and teachers unions, Cofer has major plans for the city, most exciting among them is establishing a public land bank to develop tens of thousands of affordable properties. In a major bout of good fortune, she was endorsed by the Sacramento Bee, unusual for a progressive candidate.

The Sacramento mayoral contest is a rare local election in California that doesn’t make us wondering why the state is collectively losing its mind. In fact, not only are both the candidates pretty solid on the issues, Cofer, the progressive, has at least even odds of winning. McCarty sounds worried, using the debate to go on offense against Cofer by dusting off the “Defund the Police radical” playbook from 2020/2022.

San Diego

City Attorney

Heather Ferbert vs. Brian Maienschein

Round 1: Ferbert 53.15%, Maienschein 46.85%

In a mostly non-ideological race, ex-Republican Assemb. Brian Maienschein, who became a Democrat in 2019, is the endorsement leader, backed by Planned Parenthood’s political arm, Mayor Todd Gloria, the San Diego police union, and Republican DA Summer Stephan. Chief Deputy City Attorney Heather Ferbert is running with the support of outgoing incumbent Mara Elliott, the city employees’ union, gun control groups, and the San Diego Union-Tribune, which leans conservative but likes Ferbert’s message of competence and continuity. Ferbert, a first-time candidate, upset Maienschein in Round 1, and she has to be considered at least a modest favorite after that.

City Council District 3 (Downtown)

Stephen Whitburn (i) vs. Coleen Cusack

Round 1: Whitburn 52.5%, Cusack 20.9%

Stephen Whitburn got a runoff with attorney and homeless advocate Coleen Cusack instead of the expected runoff with single-issue NIMBY Kate Callen, which has led to this race’s reframing around a new issue: a camping ban. San Diego banned camping after a push spearheaded by Whitburn, and the law functions to criminalize sleeping on the street—in other words, criminalizing homelessness, a tried-and-tested failed approach to combating homelessness. Cusack calls the policy a cruel waste of money. We’d expect Whitburn to absorb most of the Callen votes, because NIMBY voters tend to also like homeless crackdowns, and he already achieved a majority in March; it’s very hard to see the incumbent losing.

San Diego City Council District 9 (Mid-City)

Sean Elo-Rivera (i) vs. Terry Hoskins

Round 1: Elo-Rivera 51.8%, Hoskins 30.2%

Sean Elo-Rivera is the city council president elected by a narrow majority of progressives [...] His main challenger is police union-endorsed police officer Terry Hoskins, who wants to hand control back to the moderates and reestablish “respect” on the city council.

In the general election, which is clearly Elo-Rivera’s to lose, the two candidates have defined their positions more. Elo-Rivera supports a new sales tax to raise revenue for the city and opposes the camping ban, while Hoskins opposes the sales tax and wants encampment sweeps.

San Francisco

Mayor

London Breed (i) vs. Aaron Peskin vs. Mark Farrell vs. Daniel Lurie vs. Ahsha Safaí

San Francisco’s mayoral election is, in a word, bleak. London Breed has governed as a fairly right-wing Democrat, embracing harsh policing, cozying up to business, and resisting progressive budget ideas—and she’s probably going to lose for not being conservative enough. The mayor has been unpopular since the pandemic, as voters across the Bay Area seem to have soured on progressives and voters in San Francisco have turned on incumbent politicians. The one candidate running to her left, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, is deeply flawed, with one of the worst records on housing of anyone we’ve ever covered, but he’s been able to unite progressives regardless because the alternatives are so bad (and San Francisco progressives are often NIMBYs.) And there are not one, not two, but three serious candidates running on the message that Breed’s policing crackdown hasn’t been harsh enough and she hasn’t catered to business interests enough. Progressives have already been hedging their bets with dual or second-choice endorsements for Breed, expecting that they’ll have to rank the mayor to stop one of her worse opponents.

One of those candidates, District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, trails consistently in the polls and will be eliminated from RCV before any of the other candidates we’re going to discuss, so we won’t spend much time talking about him.

Former District 2 Supervisor and interim Mayor Mark Farrell is the most dangerous candidate for mayor. He’s running the most right-wing campaign of anyone in the field, leaning hard into tough-on-crime rhetoric and big promises to increase the scale of policing in San Francisco. To top things off, he’s iffy on housing and just got hit with one of the largest ethics fines in San Francisco history for illegally funding his campaign through a ballot proposition committee to skirt donation limits.

Philanthropist Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, would be the worst candidate without Mark Farrell in the race. He’s running on a generally similar platform, just toned down (and with the ethics violations traded for the general ickiness of a corporate heir trying to buy public office with his family’s money.) He’s fallen behind Farrell in endorsements—Farrell is an established and seasoned politician, Lurie is not—but has the money to stay competitive, and may benefit from Farrell’s poorly-timed bad headlines.

District Attorney

Brooke Jenkins (i) vs. Ryan Khojasteh

Brooke Jenkins rode the pandemic-era tough-on-crime backlash wave into office after the recall of Chesa Boudin. Now she’s fighting for a full term, counting on the fact that while that wave may have receded nationally, the tough-on-crime backlash to criminal justice reform appears to be going strong in the Bay Area. Running against her is Ryan Khojasteh, one of the Boudin-era prosecutors she fired upon taking office. Khojasteh takes a reformist tack as you’d expect, but you can tell how hard San Francisco has lurched to the right by observing how muted and moderate his rhetoric is; he frames his pitch as being the more effective candidate at responding to crime, hardly a Krasneresque reform-for-reform’s-sake progressive. 

City Attorney

David Chiu (i) vs. Richard Woon

Right-winger Richard Woon is running against City Attorney David Chiu for Chiu’s crime of being a standard liberal who upheld COVID-era restrictions on unnecessary gatherings. Not only is such a campaign badly out of date by now, San Francisco is the wrong place for it.

Sheriff

Paul Miyamoto (i) vs. Michael Juan

Paul Miyamoto has had a rocky tenure as San Francisco’s sheriff, overseeing a crisis of violence in the city’s jails so severe that it led the deputies’ union to preemptively declare the sheriff ineligible for their endorsement. However, UCSF police officer Michael Juan, Miyamoto’s lone opponent, is an extremely heavy underdog as his campaign has never really gotten off the ground.

Board of Supervisors District 1 (Richmond)

Connie Chan (i) vs. Jeremiah Boehner vs. Sherman D'Silva vs. Jen Nossokoff vs. Marjan Philhour

San Francisco is in the middle of a reactionary turn, partly because the rich are squeezing the last of the working class out of the city and changing the electorate of what was already the richest city in the country a few years ago, and partly because various reactionary tech millionaires like Garry Tan are funneling millions through PACs like his Grow SF PAC to make a right-wing San Francisco a reality. Connie Chan is one of the “worthless hard left bureaucrats” that Tan wants to oust, and, accordingly, she has now been massively outspent by former congressional staffer and proud “moderate Democrat” Marjan Philhour, Tan’s choice this election. The other candidates have barely been running campaigns.

Board of Supervisors District 3 (Chinatown, Financial District, and North Beach)

Wendy Ha Chau vs. Moe Jamil vs. Sharon Lai vs. Eduard Navarro vs. Danny Sauter vs. Matthew Susk

District 3 has historically been a moderate stronghold, and you can tell from the candidates this year. Matt Susk, Danny Sauter, and Moe Jamil are all trying to claim the mantle of cop candidate, touting different police union and police chief endorsements to try and convince voters it is them the police love the most. The only candidate even close to progressive in the mix is Sharon Lai, an urban planner and nonprofit leader who is trying to avoid getting tied up with either faction, and she is unfortunately a bit of a NIMBY. 

Board of Supervisors District 5 (Haight-Ashbury, Tenderloin, and Japantown)

Dean Preston (i) vs. Scotty Jacobs vs. Allen Jones vs. Autumn Looijen vs. Bilal Mahmood

Dean Preston, perpetual boogeyman of the San Francisco right—Elon Musk literally wants the man to be imprisoned for his legislation—is up for reelection at a time where the electoral fortunes of the San Francisco right have never been higher, and they think that this might be the year they can finally get rid of him. Because San Francisco has ranked choice voting, the right doesn’t strictly have to choose between school board recall founder Autumn Looijen and  San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee member Bilal Mahmood, but in practice they overwhelmingly are behind Mahmood in this race, while what remains of the San Francisco left is supporting Preston.

Allen Jones is a Republican, though in true San Francisco fashion he is really annoying about it, and Scotty Jacobs is trying to run the Mahmood campaign, just without any of the big-name supporters like state Sen. Scott Wiener and London Breed.

Board of Supervisors District 7 (West Side and San Francisco State)

Myrna Melgar (i) vs. Matthew Boschetto vs. Stephen Martin-Pinto vs. Edward Yee

Myrna Melgar is a member of the Board of Supervisors’ nominally progressive majority, and she’s being targeted by San Francisco’s moderates, who are feeling ambitious after gaining ground in the last election cycle. Their candidate is business owner Matt Boschetto, who tries to strike a middle ground between YIMBY and NIMBY but is firmly on the police crackdown side of the debate about public safety in San Francisco. Boschetto and Melgar are roughly even in spending. Rounding out the field are Stephen Martin-Pinto, a firefighter and military veteran running on “COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF THE OPEN AIR DRUG MARKETS,” and Edward Yee, a retired surgeon who isn’t really running a campaign.

Board of Supervisors District 9 (Mission District, Bernal Heights, Portola)

Julian Bermudez vs. H. Brown vs. Trevor Chandler vs. Jackie Fielder vs. Jaime Gutierrez vs. Roberto Hernandez vs. Stephen Torres 

District 9 is potentially the last progressive district in San Francisco if Tan, Musk, and the rest of the San Francisco right get their way against Chan and Preston. The left, including DSA, progressive councilmember Aaron Peskin (who is not up this year), and the SF Tenants Union are putting their trust in Jackie Fielder, who ran for state senate against Scott Wiener in 2020. Grow SF and Scott Wiener are, meanwhile, backing teacher Trevor Chandler. Though San Francisco rarely elects anyone who isn’t backed by the left or the right, nonprofit executive Roberto Hernandez could be an exception, trying to steer clear of the most touchy issues and relying on labor unions rather than political clubs as his base. He was also endorsed by the San Francisco Chronicle. Gay journalist and recent Castro LGBTQ Cultural District executive Stephen Torres is more or less the #2 choice of the left, which sounds like a great way to get squeezed out in a ranked choice contest, but he does seem like he’d be good in office if he makes it.

District 11 (South-central)

Chyanne Chen vs. Adlah Chisti vs. Oscar Flores vs. Ernest Jones vs. Michael Lai vs. Roger Marenco vs. Jose Morales

Grow SF and the San Francisco moderates are all in for education nonprofit leader Michael Lai, whose main focus is public safety (and by public safety, he means a police crackdown.) Lai also has endorsements from building trades unions and a ton of Twitter bluechecks proudly displayed on his website. (No, seriously, his website literally just has screenshots of random tech people endorsing him on Twitter, scroll down.) Have we mentioned that San Francisco gives us agita?

Three serious candidates are running to his left. The least viable is Adlah Chisti, a political staffer with a varied biography; she has noticeably fewer endorsements and a lot less money than the other two progressive options. Progressives’ first choice seems to be community organizer Chyanne Chen, with nonprofit leader Ernest “EJ” Jones a close second. Jones may be able to make up for that with his modest financial advantage over Chen (both are operating at a moderate financial disadvantage vs. Lai.) Jones also has some crossover support from YIMBYs. If Lai is to win, we think he’ll likely get 50% or come close to it on the first ballot; it seems like voters for Chen, Jones, and Chisti would be likely to rank the other progressives before Lai.