For the last five months, we’ve been hammered by political ads, mailers, and door-knocking volunteers telling us the same thing: This primary election is a weighty one. Voting for a new congressional representative for the first time in decades will do that. So, too, will a proposed tax rife with “eat the rich” vibes.
Today’s vote could shift the city’s political culture and set the stage for some nasty battles in the back half of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s first term. Here’s what you should know.
Prop D and the Supervisors
Daniel Lurie isn’t explicitly on the ballot, but he’s definitely on the ballot.
He’s been the face of opposition to Prop D, appearing in wall-to-wall ads to proclaim the “Overpaid CEO tax” is going to sabotage the city’s economic recovery (because we’re so back!) by pushing businesses out and hurting our tax revenue base. His take is backed by the local San Francisco Democratic Party committee and the centrist political lobbying group GrowSF, another ally of Lurie’s.
As expected, San Francisco’s progressive wing, including a coalition of unions that represent city workers, has balked at the notion that the city has to bend over backwards for Big Biz in order to thrive. Lurie’s budget fight was already a point of tension with labor in the city, but if Prop D passes, it’ll be a major rebuke of the mayor.
The same is true if District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong, a Lurie appointee, and District 2’s Stephen Sherill, a moderate ally to the mayor, lose out. Wong is particularly under duress; challenger Natalie Gee, who is more progressive, has led a strong campaign, especially with her pushback against the Family Zoning plan (a Lurie project supported by Wong), which could bring denser development to the Sunset. No surprise that pro-Lurie groups like GrowSF see Wong’s seat as an existential issue.
Voting patterns on Prop D and in these supervisor races will basically come down to whether you like Lurie or not. He’s got strong approval ratings generally, but the outcomes could end up opening new wounds.
Scott Wiener vs. the World
Despite Connie Chan trailing Saikat Chakrabarti heavily in polling earlier this year, she has surged into contention for the second-place primary spot behind Scott Wiener.
Who would Wiener prefer to battle in the general election? Political observers I spoke to suggested that Wiener viewed Chan as the weaker potential opponent, at least until Nancy Pelosi emerged from the shadows to crown Chan as her preferred successor. Nobody knows what role Pelosi will play if Chan makes it past the primary, but it stands to be influential, especially given Pelosi’s recent spicy comments about Wiener in an interview with KQED’s Scott Shafer. Pelosi basically laughed at Shafer’s characterization of Wiener as a “master legislator” and mocked the San Francisco Chronicle’s endorsement of Wiener as “totally irrelevant.”
Chakrabarti, meanwhile, would prove a much different opponent. Even the progressives who today call him a carpetbagger will hold their nose and vote for him over Wiener in November.
There’s speculation floating among the political commentariat that Chakrabarti’s team dug up the news last week connecting Chan to a series of progressive PACs that use pro-Israel money. It feels like a last-minute attempt to tilt the election a few percentage points toward Chakrabarti. While the claim stirred up drama, there’s no evidence Chan has coordinated with, or used funding from, those PACs, as she detailed in a statement. It might have been too late a play to have an impact.
The school board referendum
Phil Kim’s rep is in the eye of the beholder. Is he the competent incumbent president of SFUSD’s Board of Education and a principled advocate for student outcomes? Or is he a charter-school ghoul leveraged by anti-progressive activists and parents? Whatever the election outcome, both views won’t change.
Kim was appointed to the board in 2024, right in the thick of outrage over potential school closures, a budget crisis, and mounting concerns about the quality of education. Kim was then voted president by the board in January 2025 and again this January, a noteworthy show of confidence during turbulent times.
He helped navigate a $100 million budget deficit and an historic teachers’ strike, and generally gives off the calm air of a nuts-and-bolts administrator. But Kim’s got some reactionary streaks that many voters aren’t aware of, especially his views on the 2022 school board recall and his emphasis on “student outcomes.”
Kim spent more than a decade working for the charter-school org KIPP, which critics claim affects his views on how to keep public schools public and how to measure student progress. Kim also explicitly supported the 2022 recall, which cost taxpayers about $8 million and turned into an ugly mess of racial discourse and broad accusations. This year, Kim got a key endorsement from SF Parents Action, a leader in the recall, as well as Lurie, the DCCC, and GrowSF.
If Kim wins, he’ll be subject to all manner of suspicions about his influence and approach, far more than his opponents Brandee Marckmann (a parent who organized against the recall) and Virginia Cheung (a nonprofit executive).
I’m also going to go out on a limb and suggest Kim swept up a lot of Asian American votes, especially from older generations that see competitive, merit-based education as a stepping stone to future success. Meanwhile, pretty much everyone and everything even vaguely progressive in San Francisco has rejected Kim in favor of Marckmann and Cheung. We’re talking former mayors Willie Brown and Art Agnos all the way to unions and even the Green Party.
This election isn’t merely about who can finagle SFUSD out of economic harm. It’s about the ideology of public-school leadership in the city.
