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The election that you picked lacked any credible candidates outside of London Breed: the rest had spent their shot during the special election after Ed Lee's de
by Talanes 5y ago
The election that you picked lacked any credible candidates outside of London Breed: the rest had spent their shot during the special election after Ed Lee's death.
In the previous election, she controversially was given the role of acting mayor and held it through the election, giving her a huge boost of energy from people who were willing to just let her stay since she was already there.
> Persuade 20,000 and you're a council member.
Well, it's slightly trickier than that. Supervisor elections are district-based, so you need to capture a specific subset of San Francisco's voters. (And we call them Supervisors rather than council members as they serve as both city and county representatives for the combined city/county structure of San Francisco.)
- iso1210 5y agoSure, the point is that if you aren't standing and your view isn't represented closely enough, you can't really complain there's no choice. I'm sure there are plenty of YIMBY software engineers who could find someone charismatic enough to get into local politics and push for those policies - certainly in the UK it's not exactly hard or expensive to run for local council, print some flyers, run some facbook ads, etc. But it's easier to just say "they're all useless", or maybe there just isn't an appetite for change
- Talanes 5y agoAgain, you're really undercutting yourself by trying to make San Francisco your example. The average Supervisor campaign spend is in the high five digits, and in some races over $100,000. The races are contentious, because SF Supervisor is often a stepping stone to a larger state office. But San Francisco is a very unique system, so if you live literally anywhere else the barrier to credibly run is much lower.