Item — HN Reader

The tech hostility issue was surrounding tech workers moving to the Mission District (a formerly working class Latino neighborhood that had a bunch of white bohemian alternative types).

In city politics, a handful of major tech moguls have always been active. Ron Conway and Mark Benioff have both historically been massive players in SF politics and have been supporting more moderate Mayoral candidates for some time, but the SF Board of Supervisors tends to filled only with NIMBY activists and real estate owners (Dean Preston, Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen).

Now that someone who is Seacliff adjacent is dead, they'll finally do something. I used to live in a Tenderloin adjacent neighborhood and my street literally reverted to mob justice after the riots because it was filled with working class undocumented immigrants+asylum seekers who were targeted and Tenderloin PD's hiring basically collapsed (on that note - if you're trying to stick up someone, don't stick up someone who fought in the Yemen Civil War and the Afghan Civil War. A couple people learnt their lesson in that neighborhood from what I heard at the local mosque).

While those riots went on, the police were guarding Seacliff, Russian Hill, and PacHeights. And it's those same people who's kids end up in SF progressive politics and setting up organizations that push these kinds of policies.

Btw, if anyone downvotes me thinking I'm some GOP nut - I'm not. My politics lean moderate Dem and I have worked in the moderate Dem space for years. That said, the SF Dems are entirely out of touch. It's a level of machine politics that makes Chicago look competent (and they've had actual Supes get arrested for arms trafficking, but then again so did we in 2012).

1 comments

> In city politics, a handful of major tech moguls have always been active. Ron Conway and Mark Benioff have both historically been massive players in SF politics and have been supporting more moderate Mayoral candidates for some time, but the SF Board of Supervisors tends to filled only with NIMBY activists and real estate owners (Dean Preston, Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen). Now that someone who is Seacliff adjacent is dead, they'll finally do something.

OK. So let me see if I understand what you're saying here. Tech was always a force in SF politics, but it hasn't been powerful enough on its own because it was in conflict with middle class progressives. But now that people are getting stabbed to death in those middle class neighborhoods, the middle class progressives are going to take it seriously instead of butting heads with the tech moguls.

> I used to live in a Tenderloin adjacent neighborhood and my street literally reverted to mob justice after the riots because it was filled with working class undocumented immigrants+asylum seekers who were targeted and Tenderloin PD's hiring basically collapsed

Yikes.

> (on that note - if you're trying to stick up someone, don't stick up someone who fought in the Yemen Civil War and the Afghan Civil War. A couple people learnt their lesson in that neighborhood from what I heard at the local mosque).

Makes sense!

> Btw, if anyone downvotes me thinking I'm some GOP nut - I'm not. My politics lean moderate Dem and I have worked in the moderate Dem space for years. That said, the SF Dems are entirely out of touch. It's a level of machine politics that makes Chicago look competent (and they've had actual Supes get arrested for arms trafficking, but then again so did we in 2012).

Yeah, I think any single party system is going to end up pretty bad eventually. I definitely agree that there's room for moderate Dems to criticize SF politics. I lived in Seattle for almost a decade and the main political conflict seemed to be between moderate Dems and avowed Socialists.

> OK. So let me see if I understand what you're saying here. Tech was always a force in SF politics, but it hasn't been powerful enough on its own because it was in conflict with middle class progressives.

It's not that it's weak. It's more so that most of the big political donors who are from a tech background in SF (eg. David Sacks) don't touch local politics. They'll only really fundraise and hobnob with State and Congressional level politicians and maybe the Mayor on occasion (eg. Sacks has hosted fundraisers for both Ro Khanna and DeSantis within a week of each other).

SF local politics is extremely complex and time consuming, and most of the large donors aren't natives and are insulated from a number of the issues surrounding the city. That's why SF native billionaires like Conway and Benioff have been the only prominent techies in the SF local politics space (Though Manny Yekutiel is increasingly prominent too, but his family is also extremely prominent in LA politics). What ends up happening is local SF elections get taken over by local old money/real estate families, NGOs, and unions (including the police union) because those are the only groups and people that actually know who's who in SF politics and are impacted at a personal level. This is unlike other major cities in the US like Dallas, NYC, Chicago, oe even San Jose where prominent national level business leaders also enter the fray.

Now that one of them has actually been impacted, stuff will change - especially since this happened in Rincon Hill.

Is it more that new money can't just roll into SF local politics and make anything happen, or is it a question of not doing the work?

> eg. Sacks has hosted fundraisers for both Ro Khanna and DeSantis within a week of each other

That's an interesting contrast. But if Sacks' Overton window is roughly the area between Khanna and RDS, even though that's a pretty wide spread on the national level, I have the feeling that puts him well to the right of SF, to the point that he might have trouble finding anyone to support in local politics. It certainly would work out that way in Seattle, at least.

It's a LOT of work. There are 11 Board of Supervisor members, 7 SFUSD Board Members, and numerous additional local elected supervisory positions. On top of that, elections being elections, you need to make alliances with Interest Groups that will rally voters to your candidate. All this takes a lot of time and money which has little impact outside of this 49 square mile rock on the Pacific Coast. You could better use that time (the most expensive part) and money to have an actual impact at the State or Federal level, which can have an actual lasting impact. Also, people forget how insular and parochial SF is because it's a smaller city by US and California standards: within California, Los Angeles City is 3.8mil, San Diego City is 1.3mil, and San Jose is 1mil - while San Francisco is barely 800k, roughly comparble to the City of Seattle or City of Charlotte, NC. You almost never hear about Seattle or Charlotte city politics despite both being equally as dysfunctional and sharing similar issues.

> he might have trouble finding anyone to support in local politics

Money speaks.

Why else would Bernie Sander's protege and Donald Trump's former protege turned rival kiss the ring of the exact same billionare.

For example, all SF Progressive politicians de facto HAVE to stump at an (imo extremely overpriced) cafe called Manny's (they have OK hummus, but Oasis Grill across the street is way better and a fraction of the cost), owned by an ex-FB lobbyist and personal friend of Zuck named Manny Yekutiel. And SF city politicians are fine taking money from Marc Benioff even though Salesforce has massive contracts with ICE and the DoD. If the other local business tycoons who live in SF actually cared enough about SF, they'd be playing a role in the local politics as well.

But, as they don't due to time constraints, what ends up happening is Old Money Real Estate families in SF are able to have an oversized impact on electoral politics in the city.

> You almost never hear about Seattle or Charlotte city politics

I hear about Seattle politics (particularly policing) all the time, and its not something I live near or actively seek out.

Heck, outside of HN, which has kind of an obsessive focus on SF, I see that more than SF politics (HN seems to blend tech indusry focus which concnetrates on SF with the right-wing ideologic obsession with SF [0].)

[0] Not saying HN is universally, or predominantly, right-wing, just has a sizable enough vocal group that it enhances the focus that comes from HN’s industry focus.

> I hear about Seattle politics (particularly policing) all the time, and its not something I live near or actively seek out.

It might be a regional bias.

For example, I've had friends living in NYC and Boston who are nowhere near politics chat to me about SF local politics, but similar conversations don't occur about Seattle or Charlotte or Cincinnati local politics at the national level. A lot of this is probably also age+class dependent - a lot of the major players in SF city politics are in their 30s-40s and went to the same handful of elite high schools and universities as VCs, IBs, and top SWEs.

> sizable enough vocal group that it enhances the focus that comes from HN’s industry focus

I feel a lot of that is due to the lack of diversity on HN. Like I've seen A LOT of racially biased conversations on this board (and that has turned off other people in my age demographic from perusing HN).

The most interesting story in Seattle was probably CHAZ/CHOP, and that ended almost 3 years ago now, so there isn't really anything left to discuss. The mayor ended her career in disgrace, but then again, every Seattle mayor ends their career in disgrace. Meanwhile the most interesting story in SF politics was probably Chesa Boudin, and he only got recalled a year ago. So that's a much more recent and much more interesting controversy for people to talk about. Also, there's a direct New York connection because of his father's clemency case there.

> Why else would Bernie Sander's protege and Donald Trump's former protege turned rival kiss the ring of the exact same billionare.

Bernie had a pretty big tent back in the day though. Like, if you look at the people who supported Bernie in 2016, there's the AOC wing that's basically far left and have almost zero overlap with Trump supporters, but there's also a Tulsi Gabbard/Joe Rogan wing whom RDS could probably win over pretty easily. And a big part of the overlap here is the appeal of new ideas and new personalities overthrowing the political establishment, which sort of fits the Silicon Valley "disruption" mindset.

Thanks for the detailed explanations! It's very interesting and informative.

Ro was Sander's National Campaign Co-Chair, and is being positioned by the Sanders campaign for a presidential run either in 2024 or 2028 [0][1]. A lot of the messaging is being lifted out of the 2020 campaign [2].

The "AOC Wing" which you're talking about was the ex-Stripe founding engineer Saikat Chakrabarti's SuperPAC - the Justice Democrats. He was pushed out from the Hill after a very nasty fight with Lacy Clay, Ro, and Pelosi in 2019 that almost veered kinda racial. He's still doing some activism but he's mostly a has been now that his largest protege AOC made the wise career move to align closer with the mainstream CPC and Biden's campaign co-opted the Green New Deal

> Thanks for the detailed explanations! It's very interesting and informative.

No prob. I got bored spilling the dirt only with Politicos, and I feel like HN has a horrid understanding of how shit actually works on the Hill. It's way less conspiracies and more like normal office politics.

[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/17/sanders-khanna-pres...

[1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-centrist-challenge-possib...

[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-03/ro-khanna...