San Francisco’s Redistricting Mess – Past Chron

Map 4B cuts D5 at Divisadero

Decisive Vote Saturday After Shameful Process

A near final draft map must be approved by the Redistricting Task Force on Saturday, April 9. The city attorney informed the Task Force that after April 9 only tinkering around the edges is allowed.

The Elections Commission has set an emergency meeting for Friday at 1:30 pm. Many believe it may remove its three appointed members to the Task Force. This prospect has altered its own controversy.

Replacing three members on the eve of a final vote risks creating a public perception that certain political forces have hijacked the process. While backers of the plan feel it’s fair to change a process that they see as rigged against them, the public will not see it that way. Nor are courts likely to look favorably on a last minute change to the Task Force (it’s hard for me to believe the Election Commission can legally change their appointees this late in the process).

Do San Francisco Democrats really want national stories about how Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco fired three members of the redistricting task force on the eve of casting final votes? That’s what media coverage will look like if the Election Commission proceeds..

Opponents of the flawed redistricting process have occupied the high ground. This late attack on the Task Force members undermines this perception.

Mayor Breed and State Senator Wiener issued press releases opposing the potential Elections Commission move. Supervisors Stefani and Safai sent a letter and Matt Haney tweeted similar sentiments. Now we have an astroturf campaign urging people to “Stand with Chasel, Ditka, and Raynell” (the three Task Force members appointed by the Elections Commission). It claims “Fair Representation and Due Process Matter” even though both have often been missing from the Task Force’s operation.

Has this challenge to their service made the three Task Force members more or less likely to side with their opponents’ redistricting arguments? I leave it to readers to decide.

While we await the final map, a final verdict on the redistricting process can already be rendered: it has been a complete embarrassment for San Francisco. After two decades without controversy, San Francisco’s redistricting process was driven by the type of political paybacks that Democrats justifiably criticize Republicans for doing across red states.

How could this happen?

30,000 Extra Residents in D6

The door to political machinations around redistricting was opened by the need to shift 30, 000 D6 residents to another district. That’s because most new housing units since the 2010 census were built in D6.

This unequal distribution of new housing requires an unprecedented population shift. From October to late March, there were two rival plans.

I describe the plan backed by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic (which I head), many SRO tenants, Supervisor Aaron Peskin and Chinatown activists in a March 22 story laying out the case (“SF Redistricting: Why the Tenderloin Must Join D3”). We saw the shift as unifying the two neighborhoods with the most SRO tenants. It would produce a more progressive D3 and leave SOMA unified.

The rival plan kept the tenderloin in D6 and addressed D6’s overpopulation by shifting parts of entire SOMA neighborhoods to other districts. My article backed SOMA neighborhood groups in opposing this division.

I wrote my story after groups were working on the redistricting process for over five months. My March 22 article never mentioned the Tenderloin moving to D5 because that idea was not on the table.

I had heard about the Tenderloin to D5 plan but there was insufficient basis in fact for me to even include it in the story. I asked D5 Supervisor Dean Preston about these rumors and he had the same take as mine: they shouldn’t be taken seriously. After all, D5 had no population change and there was no reason to add 30,000 Tenderloin residents to the district. Further, for all the talk about prioritizing “communities of interest,” there are barely any SRO hotels in D5. The Tenderloin’s diverse, low-income population is more connected to Chinatown—CCCD owns multiple buildings in the Tenderloin—than to D5.

But on March 25 everything changed. This was the first vote to shift the Tenderloin to D5. This is when the decimation of the longstanding boundaries of D5 began.

Chair Townsend’s move

The rumblings I heard about D5 stemmed from comments made by Task Force Chair Reverend Arnold Townsend. Townsend wanted to redesign the D5 into a “black seat.” He subsequently stated such sentiments at the Task Force and to the media.

I’ve known the Reverend Townsend for a long time. We had a long talk about redistricting. I disputed that adding the Tenderloin to D5 would create a “black seat.” I noted that London Breed won election with the current boundaries.

London Breed also joined Willie Brown in being the only black mayors ever elected in the nation with such a small percentage of black voters in the city. The idea of ​​needing to carve out a certain percentage of black voters to elect black candidates has not applied in San Francisco (until Ed Lee, Brown was the most popular mayor among Asian-American voters in city history).

Our team began getting reports from Task Force members that the “ship had sailed” regarding moving the Tenderloin and Central SOMA to D3. The March 25 map instead put the Tenderloin in D5 for the first time. The Task Force subsequently voted 8-1 to reverse their vote, but at their next meeting returned to the map that ends D5 at Divisadero.

In other words, the entire Haight-Ashbury would no longer be in D5. Nor would the Inner Sunset or NOPA, A massive political gerrymandering to reduce tenant power was being carried out in pro-tenant, tenant-majority San Francisco.

Political agendas

San Francisco politics is divided by those identifying either as “moderates” or “progressives.” Moderately gained control of the Task Force because progressives weren’t focused on getting their allies appointed. Battle-tested veterans of San Francisco’s political wars did not apply. Progressives routinely outnumber moderates at redistricting hearings but it’s the composition of the Task Force that most counts.

The nine member Task Force had only two members, Chair Townsend and José María (Chema) Hernandez Gil, who were well known in the political community. One member only recently moved to San Francisco. Others had little familiarity with the city’s political history. The Task Force lacked the skills and experience required to make the best decisions in a highly charged political environment (this was further shown last night when one task force member proposed out of nowhere that the Tenderloin be split between D5 and D6. Nobody with knowledge of the district elections history for the tenderloin would ever consider such a move).

Why target Preston? He is the supervisor most publicly critical of Mayor Breed. He ran against Breed for supervisor. He unseated her supervisor appointee, Vallie Brown, and then defeated her again. I don’t think there are two elected officials in the city with a worst relationship than Preston and Breed.

Preston also consistently sponsors legislation to help tenants. And he gets legislation passed. This has made him landlords number one target.

The gerrymandering to weaken the board’s tenant power is a replay of the August 1980 special election to overturn district elections. A major reason landlord and downtown interests pushed the recall was to prevent a pro-tenant district board from passing vacancy control. These interests didn’t care that it was completely undemocratic to hold a summer special election; landlord interests don’t care what the optics look like so long as they can weaken tenant power and unseat Dean Preston.

Why Everyone Should Care

This D5 massacre goes far beyond Dean Preston. In fact, I believe Preston will win re-election in 2024 under the new district lines.

The real victims here are the residents of D5 who are being suddenly moved to another district. I would bet at least 75% of those impacted have no idea this is happening. How would they know? The last big media coverage was after the vote rejecting the splitting up of D5. With meetings going into the early morning even hard core activists can’t stay up long enough to know how the Task Force has voted.

How is it that a process that has gone on for months, that as of March 22 has had no public testimony supporting the splitting of D5, could suddenly change course? The answer is that this late switch gave opponents less time to mobilize opposition.

I wish the late Planning Commissioner and Supervisor Sue Bierman were alive to publicly denounce what is being done to her beloved Haight-Ashbury. Bierman did not stop a freeway from going through Golden Gate Park to see her community radically split up.

For all of its increased wealth, the Haight-Ashbury remains pro-tenant. And that is unacceptable to those redrawing district lines.

Today’s meeting starts at 3pm and has no finish time. Tomorrow’s meeting starts at 10am. I’ll update this story after the Saturday vote.

Randy Shaw

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco

more posts

Filed under: San Francisco News