Bring Back Citywide Voting for Supes

The Ides of March is behind us (March 15), plus the 15th day of May, July and October, await under the ancient Roman calendar, so we can relax, think about the Giants’ opening day on April 5 at Oracle Park and Earth Day and Passover on April 22.

The March 5 California primary yielded two surprises. Former Major League baseball player Steve Garvey, a Republican, and Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of Glendale, were the top two finishers – under California’s election law arising several years ago from my friend, then-Congressman Tom Campbell – to compete on Nov. 5 in the national general election for the U.S. Senate. Schiff demonstrated his wiliness by concentrating on making Garvey his opponent rather than either of the Democratic congresswomen, Barbara Lee and Katie Porter, who could have competed strongly against him. Trump supporter Garvey is a well-spoken political newcomer who will be trounced by Schiff.

The Democratic and Republican county central committees both contain new and moderate members who prevailed over left-wing and right-wing aspirants, respectively. The mayoral election broadened with the entry of former Supervisor Mark Farrell, who had a cup of coffee as mayor before deciding not to run against then-Supervisor London Breed and instead become a high-tech millionaire. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, at this writing, plays cat-and-mouse with the media and political class over his potential candidacy to the point of “who cares?” He is running and will be formidable.

Perhaps of more importance is the effort to qualify for the November ballot a Charter Amendment restoring at-large voting for supervisors from 11 districts in odd-numbered years starting in 2025. With former SF Mayor Frank Jordon, Robert Guichard and me as co-chairmen, we say, “End the 24-year experiment with district elections.” It has been divisive and disastrous. Now, you can vote only for one member of the Board’s 11 members every four years. The other 10 supervisors care not about your thinking and there’s nothing you can do about it. Before 1995’s adoption of the “New City Charter” (as proponents dubbed it), you had the right to elect all 11 Board members and hold them responsible. Instead, district supervisors are elected with few votes. One was elected, for example, in 2022 with only 8,237 votes, constituting 1.6% of registered voters! That’s not representative government. City Hall stagnation has given us a drug epidemic, rampant homelessness, more than 175 boards and commissions, deficit spending, limitless regulations, fees, taxes, loss of population and business closures.

It is past time for a change. Campaign headquarters is 45 West Portal Ave. You can go to SaveSF.org to request petitions or contribute to a charter Amendment which allows all S.F. votars to elect all 11 supervisors while assuring every district has a representative on the board. We need 49,819 valid signatures of registered voters by July 8 to qualify for the Nov. 5 election.

Another city’s taxpayers have been charged for the building of a downtown arena for a professional basketball arena expected to cost at least $900 million! Oklahoma City voters approved last month a six-year 1% sales tax for the benefit of the National Basketball League’s Thunder whose owners will only contribute $50 million but collect 100% of the net revenue.

Last January, Assemblyman Corey Jackson, a legislative beauty from Riverside County, introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment seven (ACA-7) to divide Californians, as William McGurn of The Wall Street Journal phrases it, by race. Jackson lists his legislative interests in Capitol Enquiry as including “Business … diversity, equity and inclusion.” In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited colleges from treating people as racial group members instead of as individuals, just as California voters did in 1996 with Proposition 209, a campaign State Senator Tom Campbell, Gov. Pete Wilson and I co-chaired. In 2020, California voters rejected a proposal to undo Prop. 209 and approve racial preferences in government education, employment and contracting. Voters defeated such effort 57.2% to 42.8%. Jackson’s bill adds a provision allowing the governor to create “exceptions.” McGurn opines that doing so “effectively would gut the bans.”

The bill was passed by the Assembly and awaits state Senate action. It’s discriminatory.

I conclude with a corollary to the election of Board of Supervisors members. Threatened by a lawsuit based on the 2002 California Voting Rights Act, our Board of Education acted to change its membership elections from at-large to district-based. Professor John Trasviña of Diamond Heights wrote a stinging op-ed in the Chronicle identifying the faults of such action from his experience as a graduate of our public schools, past president and general counsel of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and past dean of the University of San Francisco Law School (and, like me, a graduate of Harvard Law School). John opines that such change isn’t to protect minorities, but, rather, to avoid lawyers suing the school district and making money. I’ve commented before that then-Supervisor John Barbagelata and I made a mistake in November, 1971, with a ballot measure amending our Charter to remove the mayoral appointment of Board of Education members in favor of electing them. Based on the decline (with good reason) of public-school enrollment in S.F. and John Trasviña’s observations, I’d like to restore the mayor’s authority.

As high school seniors await action on their college applications, I’m reminded of Elbert Hubbard’s conclusion: “You can lead a boy to college, but you can’t make him think.” Amidst the arguments about increased housing in the Richmond, Sunset, Telegraph Hill, Marina and other neighborhoods, remember Mark Twain’s advice: “Buy land. They’ve stopped making it.”

Quentin Kopp is a former San Francisco supervisor, state senator, SF Ethics Commission member, president of the California High Speed Rail Authority governing board and retired Superior Court judge.