Final recommendations
Federal Elections
Primary for House of Representatives, District 11: Saikat Charkabarti
California State Elections
Governor: Tom Steyer
Lieutenant Governor: Michael Tubbs
Secretary of State: Shirley Weber
Controller: Malia Cohen
Treasurer: Eleni Kounalakis
Attorney General: Rob Bonta
Insurance Commissioner: Jane Kim
Board of Equalization Member, District 2: John Pimentel
State Assembly, District 17: No recommendation.
Judge of the Superior Court, Seat 16: Alexandra Pray
State Superintendent of Public Instruction: No recommendation, no vote.
City Elections and Measures
Board of Education: No recommendation, voting Brandee Marckmann.
Prop A: Bonds for Earthquake Safety: Yes
Prop B: Term Limit Changes for City Officials: No
Prop C: Decreases to Business Taxes: No
Prop D: Increases to Overpaid Executive Taxes: Yes
San Francisco City/County Ballot Measures
Proposition A: Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response Bonds.
Vote: Yes
535 million in bonds over 30 year, with a property tax increase of around 7.45 dollars per 100k. Unanimous support by the board of supervisors. Easy vote.
Proposition B: Lifetime Term Limits for Mayor and Board of Supervisors
Vote: No
Currently, there’s a 2 term consecutive limit on mayor and board of supervisors. This would change it to a lifetime term limit.
This has only happened one time. It’s super weird that everyone suddenly cares?
Honestly, I’m only voting no because of just how many local progressive orgs are saying to vote no. For the most part, I feel I made the correct decision to step away from local activism in order to focus on my career. This is one of those times where I wish I hadn’t; I have a strong suspicion that given the way that every conservative supervisor is for this and every progressive supervisor and local progressive democratic org is against it, this is targeted at someone specific. I’m trusting the Harvey Milk Club here.
Proposition C: Decreases to Business Taxes
Vote: No.
This measure would increase the threshold to be considered a “small business” from under 5m annual to 7.5 million annual in San Francisco gross revenue, thus excepting those businesses from being subject to gross receipt taxes and overpaid executive gross receipt taxes. This would reduce annual income by around 30 to 40 million.
This is a notable decrease, but the real reason this measure is here is because it contains language that would nullify prop D if it passes; it’s a play to hedge against a tax increase, and for that alone I oppose it.
It’s very interesting how even the moderates are against this.
Proposition D: Increases to the “Overpaid Executive Tax”
Vote: Yes
Currently, businesses where top executives make more than 100 times more than their San Francisco median employee and have more than 5m in SF gross income are subject to increases taxes on SF gross receipts and payroll. This proposal would change that definition to apply to businesses where the execs make more than 100 times their whole company’s median employee, not just the SF people. It would also increase the taxes on such businesses, with minor tax increases on SF gross receipts and substantial increases on payroll taxes, amounting to an estimated 250-300m in additional taxes.
This is an endorsement I find a little more difficult to make. It’s extremely easy to avoid this particular tax increase by scaling executive pay in a more equitable fashion. That’s probably why so many billionaires have taken out huge ad campaigns to try to defeat it. Here, Daniel Lurie shows his billionaire roots, having taken out extensive YouTube buys to try to defeat it, and here we see why I was pretty cool on electing him in the last election cycle.
However, it’s worth noting that this tax is in San Francisco; it does not spread to the state, it does not spread to the country. And because San Francisco is ultimately not able to control policies enacted by neighboring cities, it’s also fairly easy for businesses to avoid the tax by relocating or reducing business in SF specifically.
All in all, net benefits are hard to judge. The controller just put out a report suggesting this tax could cost around 900 jobs in SF over the next 20 years, increase tax revenue by 300m a year, but decrease SF GDP by 200m. These are difficult effects to predict; similar forecasts on past SF weath taxes have not had substantial impacts.
In the end, I’m voting yes on ideological grounds. Income inequality in the US is a plague, and SF has one of the worst in the country.
https://missionlocal.org/2026/05/sf-ceo-tax-prop-d-jobs-controller-report/
State of California Primaries
Primary for California Governor:
Vote: Tom Steyer
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think the billionaire in the field might be the most realistic, most leftist candidate we currently have. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m not saying this as a compromise; I think Steyer is the right guy for the job, and the only other candidate I’d consider supporting is Katie Porter.
Steyer is basically my ideal candidate. He’s openly called for abolishing ICE. He’s explicitly pro-density and wants to make it easier to build denser housing. He’s specifically focused on housing density around transit. He correctly identifies homelessness as a housing issue. He correctly states that mental health is ultimately a distraction from housing. On a stage full of candidates arguing that we should increase gas production in California, Steyer has said that we should not. (To Porter’s credit, she also rejected this proposal).
Steyer has also stood above the crowd by explicitly saying his priority when it comes to fire insurance companies is to focus on holding companies accountable, not keeping insurance companies in California. This is actually where Steyer stands above Porter; he’s been a relentless green energy advocate for basically his entire political career, and his focus on the fires is to make sure that the energy companies responsible for these situations cover the costs, and he’s not focused on the health of the insurance industry in California.
Steyer, amusingly, is also the only candidate on stage in favor of a wealth tax for billionaires. This, again, is a position where he outflanks Porter. While I have concerns about a wealth tax as a policy, Steyer has all but said that any billionaire complaining about a proposed wealth tax is basically complaining about nothing, and it’s fascinating to see him argue this to his peers. The guy’s a class traitor. It’s sick.
Steyer is openly for single payer health care. His solution for keeping businesses in California is to break up energy monopolies and to reduce health care costs for workers. He’s keeping his campaign focused on housing.
Honestly, the only reservation I have is that he’s been resistant to calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. That’s disappointing, but even here, it’s not like he’s pro Israel; he’s been pretty vocal about how they are committing war crimes, and for governor of California, that’s good enough.
If Porter was leading, I’d say vote for her. But Steyer’s in third, and is a much stronger candidate than the current Democratic frontrunner, Xavier Becerra.
Xavier Becerra’s solutions to housing problems are on the finance side, primarily focused on increasing assistance for down payments. This is not a realistic solution; a lot of the problem with housing construction in California has to do with a lack of supply, and increasing demand is not going to help that problem. He correctly identifies that a serious problem is one where people are paying mortgage level costs for rental properties, but seems to suggest we can just buy our way out of that problem.
Xavier Becerra is calling for a freeze on insurance rate and increases. This is an insane solution that pretty much everyone agrees is fundamentally an unrealistic solution to the problems facing the insurance industry in California, which are rooted in regulations that require them to ignore climate data and ignore our needs for denser housing.
Becerra’s focus when it comes to businesses is keeping Hollywood here; he said it’s his single biggest priority. That’s insane, and I can’t believe he’s the frontrunner.
Primary for Lieutenant Governor
Vote: Michael Tubbs
Lieutenant governor is first in line if something happens to the governor. Bluntly, this position doesn’t matter. It’s ceremonial. But Michael Tubbs is part of the Working Families Party, an organization attempting to push national politics further to the left via progressive action and benchbuilding. He was the youngest and first black mayor of Stockton at 26. There’s no better use for the position than to push progressives forward.
Primary for California Secretary of State
Vote: Shirley Weber
Shirley Weber is the incumbent and the only realistic current candidate.
Primary for Controller
Vote: Malia Cohen
Cohen is the only realistic candidate and current incumbent.
Primary for Treasurer
Vote: Eleni Kounalakis
The former lieutenant governor and former gubernatorial candidate dropped out of the governor’s race after Trump won specifically so she wouldn’t have to deal with playing politics. She said she wants the job because she wants to do public service without having to do as much of the showboating. She’s qualified as treasurer.
Good for her. What a wonk.
Primary for Attorney General
Vote: Rob Bonta
He’s fine. He’s incumbent. Nobody else is serious.
Primary for Insurance Commissioner
Vote: Jane Kim
Former director of the Working Families Party in California, a consumer rights advocate, and a person who has said she wants to establish a single payer home insurance system in California. It’s a novel solution that many consider dead on arrival, but it’s one I think we should support.
Jane Kim is probably the most progressive person in the election. I am all-in on the Working Families Party as a way forward for progressives. This is a chance to build the bench, and Jane Kim has done incredible work in recent years organizing San Francisco’s left-leaning organizations.
Board of Equalization Member, District 2
Vote: John Pimentel
This position is responsible for some very narrow tax collection and oversight responsibilities. It’s super weird that it’s elected. It’s super weird that it still exists given how many responsibilities got stripped from it after corruption scandals in 2017.
John Pimentel would support dismantling it and getting it merged into other tax organizations that exist in California.
Super weird election.
District 17 State Assembly
Vote: No Recommendation.
Pretty rare that the incumbent has literally zero challengers. Vote Haney if you want, it doesn’t matter.
Federal Office Primary
Primary for House of Representatives, District 11
Vote: Saikat Chakrabarti
This is the recommendation that I feel the worst about and it’s by a wide margin.
Because this is a primary election in California, the calculus that ultimately matters is that the top two will move onto the general election. Given current polling data, Scott Wiener, current SF state senator and fairly moderate/establishment Democrat (and, in my opinion, the worst of the three major candidates), is going to cruise to a first place finish; his current polling sits at around 40%, with Connie Chen, current supervisor in SF, and Saikat Chakrabarti, ex Stripe developer-turned multi-millionaire and former campaign manager for AOC, both sitting at around 18% each.
This means that any decision among progressives this time around should be between Saikat Chakrabarti and Connie Chen, and should be judged on who likely has the best chance to beat Scott Wiener.
I’m going to be blunt. I do not trust Saikat Chakrabarti. I do not think he is a candidate that has proven a commitment to San Francisco and to progressive politics in the city, and the progressives in the city largely do not trust him either. Saikat Chakrabarti is an ex-Stripe early employee that leveraged that position into hundreds of millions of dollars. Supposedly, this experience and the recognition that he basically got lucky is what radicalized him towards progressive politics. He was a previous chief of staff for AOC and puts that campaign forward as an example of his leadership; during debate and campaign events, he’s quick to point out his role in pushing forward the Green New Deal.
I’ll start with the good stuff. Saikat says a lot of the right things, and in my opinion, he’s focusing his rhetoric in a way that I think is mandatory for progressives to make motions in this city. Saikat shares my belief on the role of Nancy Pelosi’s former seat; her seat is a legacy seat inherited from probably the single safest Democratic seat in the country and any person who is elected to it will inevitably represent San Francisco values on a national level. To me, it’s a sign of vision that Saikat keeps his focus on national issues. He’s openly and aggressively said that he’s for Medicare for all, tying it to any number of social issues and being quick to pivot to the winning topic whenever he can. He’s explicitly said that the Democratic party cannot abandon trans people in its fight to try to gain mass appeal, and that sacrificing values and positions are how we keep losing. He’s quick to say that establishment Democrats are too complicit, too unwilling to rock the boat, too unwilling to fight against Republicans. This position doesn’t actually set him apart from the other two candidates, but his aggressiveness and williness to keep the race focus on the national speaks to his priority here.
Saikat’s also been more willing to put forward policies that work towards more explicitly socialized public services. When asked about housing costs in San Francisco and California, Saikat’s quick to mention how the role of this representative should be to abolish the Faircloth Amendment, an artificial cap to how many public housing units can be created. He’s quick to tout a plan to recreate a federal lender to help solve financial and regulatory challenges to new construction. He’s openly for the wealth tax in an uncompromised way that sets him apart from the other two candidates, both of whom support the idea of the wealth tax but have serious reservations about it being one time.
To me, Saikat represents a pragmatism towards housing policy that is too rarely combined with the willingness to utilize aggressive rhetoric that wins.
It’s telling, then, that despite this supposedly national level profile, his former boss, AOC, has not endorsed him. It’s also telling that none of the progressives in the city trust him. Nancy Pelosi, the Harvey Milk Club, the Working Families Party, the teacher’s union, all of them have thrown their progressive weight behind Connie Chan.
To me, this speaks to his ability, or rather, lack thereof, to broker compromise and work with people on his side of the aisle. Saikat was very publicly willing to attempt a primary challenge to Nancy Pelosi before she actually announced her retirement and did relatively little to build in-roads to local progressives before doing so. Many in progressive circles found it difficult to get in touch with him outside of his terms; he’s divebombed more than a few events with his own people, then vanished shortly thereafter.
By contrast, Connie Chan is a local. She’s been here since she moved here at 13. She’s been a supervisor in SF for a very long time and has made many enemies among moderates for positions people would generally call NIMBY. She’s come up through the DSA, with multiple SF socialists more than willing to throw their weight behind her, a rare feat in a city where leftists are infighting more than most other cities.
It’s precisely that local connection that ultimately has me concerned. Connie has focused her campaign locally. While she’s more than willing to say the right things about how terrible Trump is, her accomplishments are always framed in what she can do for San Francisco, what services she can fight to secure for locals, what businesses and social changes she can do for the city. Her closing message has been about how connected she is to the Chinese immigrant community in SF. Her positions on queer issues ultimately reflect a desire to try to communicate intersectionality to immigrant constituencies.
To me, this makes her a worthy supervisor (even if I hate her housing policy). To me, this also makes her wrong for the national stage.
And, it unfortunately bears mentioning. I am of the opinion that her charisma is substantially lacking, and she is substantially less comfortable in pulpit positions than Saikat is. Chan is a public servant dedicated to her community that feels out of place in her own firebrand rhetoric. Saikat sells it so well that I am inherently suspicious. I don’t think Chan’s got the juice to beat Wiener.
Why not Wiener? I mean, he’s insanely pro Israel, for one. His opinions on AI regulation are the incoherent ramblings of someone trying to sneak the fact that he’s not going to regulate these industries past you. Multiple tech industry billionaires have donated huge amounts to try to stop Saikat, who sees him as the main rival to a moderate figurehead. He’s insanely popular in the abundance crowd. He’s the worst of all worlds; too centrist for a national position from SF, too locally focused to keep thing focused nationally, too unpopular among local progressives to indicate an ability to hold his coalition together.
tl;dr
Saikat’s got juice that Chan does not. Saikat’s a snake, but Saikat’s laser focused on national issues and sees SF’s legislative seat for what it is; a chance for Democrats to make their national case. Saikat’s putting forward positions that makes my wonk side happier.
I don’t feel good about this endorsement, but he’s got the best chance against Wiener.
California Non-Partisan Positions
Judge of the Superior Court, Seat 16
Vote: Alexandria Pray
The cops like Maffei. The progressives like Pray. Maffei was a DA, Pray was the public defender. Public defenders should probably be the judges.
Sometimes, voting is pretty simple.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Vote: No recommendation.
I do not comment on education policy.
San Francisco Non-Partisan Positions
Board of Education
Vote: No recommendation, voting Brandee Marckmann.
I do not comment on education policy, so I defer to the work of the Milk Club. https://www.milkclub.org/endorsements
Final recommendations
Federal Elections
Primary for House of Representatives, District 11: Saikat Charkabarti
California State Elections
Governor: Tom Steyer
Lieutenant Governor: Michael Tubbs
Secretary of State: Shirley Weber
Controller: Malia Cohen
Treasurer: Eleni Kounalakis
Attorney General: Rob Bonta
Insurance Commissioner: Jane Kim
Board of Equalization Member, District 2: John Pimentel
State Assembly, District 17: No recommendation.
Judge of the Superior Court, Seat 16: Alexandra Pray
State Superintendent of Public Instruction: No recommendation, no vote.
City Elections and Measures
Board of Education: No recommendation, voting Brandee Marckmann.
Prop A: Bonds for Earthquake Safety: Yes
Prop B: Term Limit Changes for City Officials: No
Prop C: Decreases to Business Taxes: No
Prop D: Increases to Overpaid Executive Taxes: Yes