Inside the Far Left Billionaires' Push to Maintain Control of San Francisco
A string of new reporting suggests that big money only flows to moderates in San Francisco. A closer look exposes the deep pockets of the far left.
The far left partisans who dominate San Francisco politics may be throwing stones in a glass house.
Over the last week, as early voting began for the March 5th primary, with hot button issues on the ballot, the New Republic, the Guardian, and Mission Local published nearly identical follow-the-money-style news articles depicting a right-wing power grab. The reporting tracks, in the words of one of the reporters, the "network of interlocking non-profits, dark money groups and political action committees” pushing to "undo" San Francisco's "progressive policies."
Supervisor Dean Preston, who has used his perch on the city council to push for abolishing prisons and police, seized upon the news to claim that it confirms a “right wing takeover” of San Francisco. Preston, who is facing reelection, promised to “fight back” against “dystopian conservatives.”
Yet the groups and individuals named as conservative donors, like Michael Moritz and Garry Tan, are virtually all Democratic moderates with a history of donating to liberal causes. The issues these donors have zeroed in on are traditionally associated with political moderates, like restoring algebra to public middle school – the classes were removed by city leftists for racial equity reasons – hiring more police officers in the midst of a crime wave and street addiction crisis, and encouraging new construction to bring down the price of housing.
What’s more, beyond the absurdity of painting these mainstream goals as some type of fascist plot, the subtext of the trio of news articles is the false assumption that big money only flows to the moderates. In reality, the city’s hard left wildly benefits from millions of dollars from its own faction of wealthy donors – many of whom are slum lords and heirs of family wealth who have radically transformed San Francisco with years of advocacy and electioneering.
The Guardian, New Republic, and Mission Local dug into campaign finance records to show the influence of the moderates and centrist liberals in San Francisco. What about the far left? While reporters are eager to vilify the donors behind the campaign to bring back algebra for all students, the same questions are not being asked about the far left donors pushing for DEI-style government programs that make benefits contingent on skin color or race and to slash the number of police officers who can respond to incidents of violent crime.
Take the Center for Empowered Politics. Since 2009, CEP has operated a web of advocacy and campaign groups in San Francisco and Oakland to mobilize voters for far left causes.
The New Republic makes much of Garry Tan contributing $100,000 to the effort to oust "decarceral" San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. But San Francisco Rising, a project of the CEP, was the largest donor to Boudin’s 2019 campaign for the DA’s office. The group formed a special independent expenditure committee and poured $288,825, more than any moderate or tech-backed group active in the election, to help carry Boudin into office.
SF Rising, which coordinates volunteer training and voter outreach among Chinese, Filipino, Black and Latin American community groups, was similarly active in recent city council races. It played a key role in working to elect Supervisors Preston, Gordon Mar, Connie Chan, Shamann Walton, and other members that make up the far left flank of San Francisco politics in recent years. Eight of SF Rising’s affiliate community groups, which are already pushing to influence the March 8th vote, are listed at the end of its annual report.
In 2022, SF Rising organized an effort to overturn the city’s redistricting maps, which they perceived as unfriendly to allied progressive leaders. The group flooded the hearing room to demand the removal of the nonpartisan task force and the use of a different, gerrymandered map that would have benefited candidates like Preston.
SF Rising/CEP receives financial support from a small clique of wealthy liberal interests:
– The James Irvine Foundation, funded by the inherited fortunes of the Irvine Company, the real estate interest that planned and built much of the early development in Orange County, has donated $600,000 to SF Rising/CEP and over $4.5 million to the Chinese Progressive Association, SF Rising’s Chinese outreach affiliate, over the last six years.
– SF Rising's "Youth and Families Taking Power" PAC was funded largely by middle-aged wealthy donors. Kaitlyn and Michel Krieger, the couple that co-founded Instagram, gave $42,500; billionaire Susan Pritzker gave $15,000; and Elizabeth Simons, the daughter of a billionaire hedge fund trader, gave $25,000. Simons’ charitable foundation has additionally donated at least $160,000 to CEP over the last three years.
– The Open Society Policy Center, funded by billionaire George Soros, has donated multiple grants to SF Rising/CEP totaling $1,350,000 since 2020, according to tax returns.
– Other major donors to SF Rising/CEP include Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who gave $100,000 through his foundation, and the Zellerbach family, the heirs of a timber and paper fortune now owned by Koch Industries, who have given $50,000. The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund of the billionaire Levi Strauss family fortune has donated $594,000 to SF Rising/CEP.