SF candidate wants rival’s $500,000 crypto donation steered to the community

A candidate vying to represent San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point is calling on a rival to redirect a billionaire’s $500,000 donation to local churches and community groups. Shawn Richard, 58, one of four candidates running to replace termed-out Supervisor Shamann Walton in District 10, held a news conference on the steps of City Hall Sunday urging a political committee supporting opponent Theo Ellington, 37, to steer a half-million-dollar donation from crypto billionaire Chris Larsen — the single biggest outside contribution ever made to support a candidate for San Francisco supervisor — away from the campaign and toward the neighborhood. “Half a million dollars invested directly in families struggling with the high cost of food and basic necessities could have an immediate and tangible impact,” Richard said in a prepared statement, calling on the committee to put the money “directly into the hands of trusted Bayview churches” to buy groceries and other necessities for congregants and neighbors. In an interview after the news conference, Richard said the money shouldn’t go only to religious groups. “It’s not just the churches that we’re saying give all the money to,” he said, naming Cornerstone Baptist Church, Providence Church and Calvary Hill among congregations he’s spoken with. He said he’d also want the money to go to organizations doing “excellent work” on mental health and addiction services, and toward maintaining small-business corridors he said the city has neglected. City filings show the political action committee has raised $500,000 — all of it from Larsen, who co-founded Ripple — and has yet to report spending any of it. Individual donors are capped at $500 in direct contributions to a candidate, but no such limit applies to independent expenditure committees, which can raise and spend unlimited sums as long as they don’t coordinate with a campaign. It’s not unusual for PACs to give money to charity. They just don’t have to. Because the PAC isn’t a candidate-controlled committee, San Francisco’s surplus-funds laws don’t apply. Rather, it falls under the California Political Reform Act’s general rules for campaign funds. Under California Government Code, Section 89515, campaign funds may be donated to “bona fide charitable, educational, civic, religious, or similar tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations.” That means a Bayview church could qualify, as long as no committee insider personally benefits and the gift “bears a reasonable relation to a political, legislative, or governmental purpose” of the PAC. Both J.R. Eppler and D.J. Brookter, Ellington’s other opponents, criticized the Larsen contribution when it was first reported last week. Eppler said District 10 "deserves a supervisor who represents the hardworking people who live here” and argued billionaires “make investments and expect returns.” Brookter said it raises the question of “whose interests will actually be represented in office.” Richard’s demand took that criticism a step further.. The candidates’ own fundraising numbers, pulled from city Ethics Commission filings, show why the demand lands differently coming from Richard than it might from the others. Ellington’s campaign committee has raised roughly $480,000, compared with Eppler’s $151,000 and Brookter’s $129,000. Richard’s committee,“Elect Shawn M. Richard for District 10 Supervisor 2026,” has reported no financial activity at all this cycle. Asked whether the demand looks like sour grapes from a candidate who hasn’t raised as much money, Richard rejected the framing. He pointed to more than three decades of running the nonprofit Brothers Against Guns, which he founded in 1995 after losing two younger brothers to gun violence, as a source of recognition that doesn’t depend on outside money. “I don’t owe anybody anything,” he said. This is Richard’s second run for the seat; he also ran in 2014 and lost to incumbent Malia Cohen. District 10, the city’s poorest district, includes 80,000 residents and spans Visitacion Valley and Sunnydale — some of the last neighborhoods in the city to get new housing or basic public investment. The $500,000 check from Larsen, added to the $480,000 Ellington raised, puts just about $1 million behind just one candidate running for one of 11 seats on a city board. Aaron Peskin, a former supervisor and longtime critic of big spending in local elections, said it’s the kind of money “people spend to put someone in the U.S. Congress.” Richard argued the scale of Larsen’s interest in an underserved district race isn’t hard to explain. He pointed to undeveloped parcels in District 10 that could be built up to 10 to 15 stories, and to plans for AI-related data centers in the district. “The community needs to have say-so,” Richard said, arguing that whoever wins the seat will effectively help decide how much of that development goes forward. Two data centers are planned at the Bayview-Visitacion Valley border. One, run by NOVVA Data Centers, is already operating: a 36-megawatt facility on a 7.5-acre campus. The donation also complicates the “hometown, not the machine” image Ellington has built his campaign around, Richard said. Richard, in the interview, pushed back on the idea that Ellington bears no responsibility just because the money moved through an independent committee rather than his own campaign account. “Do you own your name, or do they own your name?” he asked, arguing Ellington could have spoken out publicly against the PAC. Richard said his opinion of Ellington personally hasn’t changed, but said the decision to accept the donation has hurt how the community sees him. “It doesn’t help his credibility ... as a man of the community that he says he is.” Ellington asserted his campaign’s independence from the PAC. “Outside organizations make their own decisions about how they participate in elections,” he told The Standard. “They do not speak for me or our campaign.” He pointed instead to his own record — growing up in the district and raising his family there, and “fighting for affordable housing, good jobs, environmental justice, safer neighborhoods, and opportunities for all working families.” If elected, he added, “that’s who I’ll answer to as supervisor: the people of District 10.”

Manny Yekutiel has a moonshot idea. Actually, make that two

The Power Play team will be off for the Labor Day weekend. We’ll be back in your inbox Sept. 9. Call him Moonshot Manny. Supervisor candidate Manny Yekutiel wants to represent District 8, which includes the Castro, Noe Valley, and other neighborhoods. To get there, he’s promising some whoppers: This week, he said he’ll build a subway network across San Francisco , on top of his pledge to build a crane-straining 10,000 units of housing in his district . “Building a citywide underground subway system will not be an easy undertaking, but it’s a necessary step for our city to take if we are to build capacity for the next generation of San Franciscans,” Yekutiel said in a statement. “This preliminary proposed plan outlines estimated costs, funding steps, and proposed efficiencies that demonstrate how an upgraded subway system is not only possible, but feasible.” It’s an urbanist’s wildest dream. And transit experts say it’s far-fetched. Cheryl Brinkman served on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors for 11 years. When Power Play told her about the map of a proposed subway, which shows trains running along Geary Boulevard, down 19th Avenue and Divisadero, and through Fort Mason, she was highly skeptical. “I wish it were that easy,” she said. While Brinkman said she’s glad people are thinking “that big,” it’s the worst possible timing to sell the public on a grand subway vision. President Donald Trump is clawing back federal dollars from transit projects. And with Rep. Nancy Pelosi leaving office, the city will lose a powerful advocate who nearly single-handedly wrangled billions of dollars for projects from the Central Subway to the Salesforce Transit Center. Instead, Brinkman suggested, even small reroutes to Muni lines can bring big ridership boosts, and that can involve modest financial investments. Rick Laubscher, a historian and mainstay of the Market Street Railway nonprofit, is a Yekutiel supporter who said he wants to bring a nuanced historical perspective to the subway proposal. When San Francisco built its railway system, including the Twin Peaks Tunnel and beyond, it spurred housing development, something neighbors may be skeptical of — and those neighbors can stall transit projects. Notably, state law allows denser housing to be built along transit lines. “I cheer any visionary who says, ‘Why don’t we do this?’” Laubscher said, “but I cheer louder when someone says OK, then asks, ‘Who is it for? Who benefits? And what impacts will it have on the city that people may not be thinking about?’” Yekutiel’s proposal mirrors San Francisco’s existing long-term transit plan, including a subway down Geary Boulevard, 19th Avenue, and Fisherman’s Wharf, among other routes. Because of the many stakeholders and approvals involved, similar projects take at least 15 to 20 years from inception to finally running, according to the SF County Transportation Authority. As for Yekutiel’s housing proposal: Well, San Francisco built about 400 units of housing in the first half of 2026 — you can do the math on 10,000 units in District 8 alone. — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez Got tips? Send them to us at powerplay@sfstandard.com . MAIL-IN EXPLAINER : Ballots are set to land in your mailbox by early October. But recent actions by the White House are causing concern among voters. We answer your most pressing questions. What’s sparking the worry? Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday published a report in which a whistleblower — a U.S. Postal Service official — raised “grave concerns” that the Trump administration has hidden the likelihood that the new verification processes will result in major disruptions in mail ballots getting delivered to voters. What has this got to do with California? California is more dependent on voting by mail than most states. More than 89% of voters cast mail ballots in the June primary. And California’s November elections have a national dimension, as several competitive congressional races in the state could help determine control of the House. What does this mean for San Francisco? It would not be good. San Francisco mails ballots to every registered voter. If those ballots can no longer be delivered through the Postal Service, the city would have to accommodate far more people voting in person. That could mean more voting centers and ballot pickup and drop-off locations. It would also require a major effort to tell voters that a system they have used for years had suddenly changed. And there is very little time before the Nov. 3 election. — John Mulholland THOUSANDS OF HOUSING UNITS : Back in February, Supervisor Danny Sauter asked the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office to identify underutilized properties owned by public agencies, including San Francisco Unified and City College of San Francisco. After months of work, the office identified 44 properties collecting dust that could instead be used for affordable housing or other purposes. “We’re clearly sitting on a tremendous resource that we need to use better,” Sauter said during Tuesday’s board meeting. While the report hasn’t been released yet, Sauter said the dozens of properties could translate to thousands of housing units and he plans to hold a hearing about it. — Omar Rashad SACRAMENTO WATCH: California lawmakers wrapped up their 2026 session late Monday night, sending hundreds of bills to Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign or veto by the end of the month. Here are five we’re tracking for San Franciscans. AB 1556: This is Assemblymember Matt Haney’s second attempt at state legislation that would codify that addiction recovery-based housing programs can receive state funding. Newsom vetoed a narrower version of this bill last year, calling it “duplicative and costly” — a move Mayor Daniel Lurie , who backed the bill, publicly slammed. AB 2074: Aimed at revitalizing downtown development, this would require San Francisco to designate at least one transit-hub district near BART or Muni, where high-rise housing projects could be eligible for streamlined approval. AB 2308: This would protect a funding stream at risk of expiring for The Portal, the long-planned extension of Caltrain’s tracks underground into San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal — a route that could eventually serve high-speed rail, if that ever pans out. SB 1119: AI chatbot makers would be required to verify kids’ ages, undergo independent audits, and limit young users’ exposure to content promoting self-harm or sexual material. Families and prosecutors would be able to sue the companies over alleged harms. SB 886 and AB2383: These are two of a handful of bills addressing data center concerns, designed to prevent them from quietly passing their exorbitant utility costs to taxpayers. Plenty of other bills, including big swings on climate policy and immigration enforcement, are also awaiting the governor’s signature. Did we miss your favorite? Let us know. — Maggie Angst REPUBLICAN TANGO: Coalitions. All politicians want ’em. Winning politicians got ’em. Coalitions can make or break tight races. In the congressional contest between state Sen. Scott Wiener and Supervisor Connie Chan , two small groups of voters are viewed as needed to win: Republicans and the 18% of voters who backed Saikat Chakrabarti in the primary. A new poll from Working Families for San Francisco, the labor-run PAC supporting Chan, has found Republicans in a dead heat, with 35% backing Chan and 37% for Wiener. Among voters who backed Chakrabarti, 61% are swinging to Chan and 29% to Wiener. The Republican numbers may give Wiener reason to sweat, as red-heavy precincts were a small but real part of his state Senate win in 2016. The Chakrabarti numbers, on the other hand, while strong for Chan, show a surprising measure of support for the senator. Notably, it’s less than the 80% of Chakrabarti voters who told his SF Solidarity PAC that they’d back Chan. Joe Arellano , Wiener’s campaign spokesperson, said: “Connie’s best precincts in the primary were also Trump’s strongest SF precincts. Why? Because Connie Chan’s record opposing housing, transit, car-free spaces, and live music is 100% NIMBY and conservative.” As always, take the poll with a big pinch of salt. Such surveys are a snapshot in time of voters’ feelings — not predictive of results. — J. F. R.

City moves ahead with OpenGov software extension worth up to $38.9M

A Board of Supervisors committee on Wednesday unanimously approved extending a contract worth up to $38.9 million for OpenGov, a controversial software that Mayor Daniel Lurie has championed as part of his efforts to overhaul the city’s clunky permitting system. The 3-0 vote by the Budget and Finance Committee cleared one of the final hurdles for the city to lock in OpenGov as its permitting software for the next five years. The vote was approved by the committee without a recommendation, which occurs when there is disagreement among the voting members, and dissent came mostly from Supervisor Chyanne Chen. The contract extension is being handled by Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, and the full Board of Supervisors is expected to make a final decision in the coming weeks. Sherrill said a last-minute change to the contract allows the city more flexibility if it wants to pull out of the software deal. Before the vote, supervisors asked hard questions about why the mayor’s office chose OpenGov. The Standard reported last year that OpenGov’s founders had connections to Lurie’s nonprofit and that city staffers had preferred a cheaper software. Following the report, Supervisor Jackie Fielder promised to hold a hearing on OpenGov’s procurement . She also asked the budget and legislative analyst to investigate how OpenGov was chosen. Sherrill defended the selection process. “The procurement was different. The contract is different. The speed of procurement and implementation is different, and by different, I mean faster. Different is hard, but sometimes different is necessary. Change is necessary. Have we had a permitting system that is good and facilitates the construction of housing? No.” Fielder said her goal was to determine whether the city was getting the best bang for its buck with OpenGov, which signed a $5.9 million no-bid contract with the city last year. Former OpenGov staffers told The Standard the deal was the largest and most complex the company had ever undertaken, and the software lacked key features at the time. The 2025 contract ends Sept. 30. “I want to make one thing clear: I am not questioning whether San Francisco should have an integrated and best-in-class permitting system,” said Fielder. “Improving the public’s experience with city permitting is absolutely valuable. I am, however, questioning whether we got the best deal for this contract.” A spokesperson for the mayor did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s vote. Former OpenGov employees and current city workers told The Standard in May that the shift to the software has had significant delays and that the company was unprepared to take on such a large project. Lurie’s initiative — dubbed “PermitSF” — currently allows a small set of permits to be acquired through the OpenGov system. On Wednesday, one of OpenGov’s project leads said there have been problems with the time it takes to issue some permits under the new system. Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee, chalked up issues with implementation to “growing pains.” “The original implementation was months behind schedule, and as has been acknowledged, for some permit types, in fact, processing times are actually longer today than they were even under legacy systems,” he said. “I think we can accept that.” Dorsey said the flexibility of allowing the city to exit the contract was critical in his support for proceeding with the extension. Both Dorsey and Sherrill — allies of the mayor — were involved in pushing for the last-minute changes with Lurie’s office, Sherrill said. Lurie’s vision is to create a centralized permitting system. Today, those seeking permits that aren’t under OpenGov’s new system have to deal with multiple city departments using outdated software. Critics say the permitting infrastructure encourages corruption and delays construction projects. While there is no official count of the permit types available in the city, the estimate is 570. Lurie has denied that favoritism was involved in the selection of OpenGov. In February 2025, he set an aggressive benchmark for the city to stand up a new permitting infrastructure within one year, a timeline the mayor’s office said was part of its decision to rapidly select a vendor. “Had we done a [competitive bid], it would have likely added upward of six months to a year of additional process, delaying modernization and progress that our small businesses, homeowners, and home builders deserve,” said Liz Watty, a Planning Department official and a lead on the OpenGov project. Watty said OpenGov was “solidly under the average” price point, according to a Gartner Consulting Group report commissioned by the city in 2023. Watty acknowledged that the procurement of OpenGov could have been handled differently. She said the city should have had a standardized rubric for grading vendors. She also said that when the mayor’s office was seeking vendors last year, it used language suggesting that the city was not ready to make an immediate decision but quickly signed a contract with OpenGov within a matter of months. Watty said the mayor’s office will not use this type of language when procuring vendors going forward. Fielder said Ned Segal, a mayoral office policy chief who helped oversee the OpenGov project, was invited to testify at her hearing but did not appear. Watty said she helped make the final decision on OpenGov with Segal. Fielder asked whether Segal had contacted executives at other vendors before the city formally notified companies of its permitting needs, as he had with OpenGov’s CEO. Watty said she did not know because she joined the PermitSF project in June 2025, after those conversations took place. During Wednesday’s hearing, the budget and legislative analyst presented the findings of its inquiry. The office found that the original OpenGov contract was eight times the price of other no-bid software contracts and said Lurie should have issued a competitive bid for the software. “The best practices state that IT procurement must balance transparency and fairness in the procurement process with flexibility, and it’s the transparency and fairness aspects that we found lacking in this process,” said Fred Brousseau, director of policy analysis at the budget and legislative analyst’s office.

A Flock employee helped block the SF Democratic Party’s anti-Flock vote

The San Francisco Democratic Party just blocked a resolution calling for more transparency and accountability for Flock surveillance cameras. Maybe it never had a chance — the board member who stopped the vote from taking place is employed by Flock. Democrats need to scuttle Flock’s license plate surveillance if it can’t guarantee data safeguards, the resolution by Gordon Mar says. It comes after the San Francisco Police Department revealed that out-of-state and federal agencies accessed San Francisco’s 400 cameras’ worth of Flock data hundreds of times, in violation of California law , and amid worries that the data could endanger immigrants as ICE enforcement increases. The Sunrise Movement and Jobs with Justice are leading local protests, as vigilantes Spider-Man their way up utility poles to spray-paint the cameras. The local Democrats’ Flock showdown took place at Wednesday’s meeting, before higher-profile votes on an endorsement in the District 8 supervisor race and on a vote against the billionaire tax. In an open meeting, Mar called out party chair Nancy Tung for failing to bring the Flock resolution before the party board. The argument got testy. Tung argued that there were “factual issues” with the resolution, but Mar pushed back, claiming that no one had communicated that to him or given him a chance to revise it. “My question is, who made the decision to not include my resolution?” Mar asked. It was the Issues and Resolution Committee, Tung said. Democratic Party documents show the committee’s chair is Lily Ho, who was, at least as recently as this month, public affairs manager for the Western U.S. for Flock. She said so at an Aug. 25 meeting at a Summit Board of County Commissioners’ meeting, according to an article from the Summit Daily . You can also watch her on video trying to convince the Saratoga City Council they should “shape a safer future, together” via a Flock slideshow presentation. Ho did not respond to Power Play’s inquiries — but she did try to put the kibosh on others informing this newsletter about her connection to the company. “All - Joe Fitz is reaching out re [automated license plate reader] reso and asking to confirm my role at Flock,” Ho wrote to party members in a group chat on Friday, according to a copy of the message obtained by Power Play. “I ask you all to not respond. Thanks.” Tung said it may appear at a future meeting, but Mar has yet to hear back. It’s worth mentioning that Democratic Party resolutions are simple statements that lack teeth. But corralling Democrats against Flock could pressure Mayor Daniel Lurie and City Hall writ large to reconsider renewing Flock’s contract in February . If the Democrats ever vote on it, that is. — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez and Gabriel Greschler Got tips? Send them to us at powerplay@sfstandard.com . YIMBY SLACK POPS OFF : This week it was announced that SF YIMBY would give District 8 supervisor candidate Gary McCoy its No. 1 endorsement, with Manny Yekutiel as its second choice. Behind the scenes on a YIMBY Slack channel with hundreds of participants, there was intense back-and-forth between McCoy and Yekutiel supporters over how SF YIMBY should approach the endorsement in light of the sexual assault allegation against Yekutiel , which he has denied. Barak Gila , a YIMBY advocate, opened the conversation by saying he hoped the organization would give Yekutiel its No. 1 endorsement, which spurred a thread of 35 replies. Anthony Moor said he agreed and that Yekutiel had been a standout in several candidate forums. Audrey Liu jumped in: “Housing policy aside. I’m concerned about SF YIMBY endorsing someone who has been accused of sexual assault. I think it’s worth taking those allegations seriously and waiting for the investigations by DCCC to conclude.” (In a letter this week, the local Democratic Party said it doesn’t have jurisdiction over the allegations.) Dane R. Willette wrote that he was split: “I think our organization risks credibility by endorsing someone accused of sexual misconduct, but I also think that Manny has the public charisma and policies to put himself as the most YIMBY.” Martin M . wrote, “Gary McCoy is a perfectly fine YIMBY candidate without the baggage. If the allegations [against Yekutiel] are proven to be true, well it looks terrible. If it’s nothing (this usually isn’t the case, but whatever) I still genuinely don’t see a path where he wins. There’s no upside.” In a message to Power Play, Gila wrote that he stands by his choice. “[M]y position hasn’t changed. With respect to the YIMBY endorsement, I believe it should go to the most pro-housing candidate and that’s 100% Manny.” — G.G. NEWSOM’S DEAD DEAL: Gov. Gavin Newsom ’s last-minute push to give a lifeline to California Forever — the group behind a plan to build a new city and shipyard on rural Solano County farmland — is officially dead for the session. Newsom’s office spent the summer quietly brokering a deal to make it easier to build a massive shipyard in the county. However, after Solano County supervisors voted 3-2 to oppose the plan, the governor and state lawmakers declined to override local opposition. California requires bills to be in print 72 hours before a final vote — making Friday the cutoff ahead of the Aug. 31 end of session. The day came and went without a filing. It’s the second consecutive year that an 11th-hour push at the state level has fizzled, leaving California Forever’s industrial pivot in limbo. Newsom leaves office in about four months, and it’s unclear whether his successor will push for the project with the same vigor. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton has publicly voiced support for the project, but Democrat Xavier Becerra hasn’t said much, and his campaign didn’t return a request for comment Friday. Jim Wunderman , head of public affairs for California Forever, told county leaders Tuesday, “This is a long-term thing, and you know it’s important we have that partnership (with county officials.)” — Maggie Angst AIN’T NO SUNSHINE : An end to the saga over San Francisco’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force isn’t in sight — and it won’t be resolved this week. That’s because the Board of Supervisors’ Rules Committee, which makes appointments to the task force, canceled its Monday meeting . The reason isn’t entirely clear. The office of Supervisor Shamann Walton , who chairs the committee, had no comment. The committee’s vice chair, Supervisor Stephen Sherrill , told Power Play that the meeting was canceled due to logistics but didn’t elaborate. The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force — which has gone close to three months with nine of 11 seats empty — is a watchdog that ensures city departments and elected leaders in San Francisco comply with public records laws. It’s summer! But still no sun in San Francisco. — Omar Rashad MONEY FLOW: A group opposing Proposition I, the progressive-backed measure to direct $120 million in transfer tax revenue toward affordable housing, got its first donation, according to a campaign filing Friday. Electrical Industry Service Bureau, the joint labor-management committee of IBEW Local 6 and San Francisco Electrical Contractors Association, gave $50,000 to “No on I, SF for Accountability in Housing.” In a statement, IBEW Local 6’s John Dohery said Prop. I isn’t fiscally responsible. “ It doesn’t guarantee the production of affordable housing, but does guarantee a funding stream for a select group of non-profits,” he said in a text. — G.G.

Boom meets backlash: How data center politics in Silicon Valley have changed

Since bursting onto the political spotlight in 2022 with his surprise victory in the San Jose mayor’s race, Matt Mahan has staked a large part of his city’s future on the development of data centers. One of the first initiatives Mahan supported was a proposal in the city’s hollowed-out downtown core, where Westbank pitched data centers that would power nearby apartment buildings with their excess heat . To spur similar projects, the city last year ended its pursuit of a public power utility and announced a " historic” agreement with PG&E to deliver, via upgrades, more than 2,000 megawatts of energy to make San Jose the “West Coast’s premier destination for data center development.” As recently as June, a week after he pulled the plug on his long-shot gubernatorial campaign , Mahan stood alongside smiling executives to break ground on a Microsoft data center in Alviso, the city’s waterfront neighborhood — also where Prologis is approved to build a 400-megawatt facility. At the ceremony, he described data centers as “critical infrastructure.” Since Mahan took office, San Jose has approved more than 1 million square feet in data center development and formed a cross-departmental Data Center Development Team to oversee the sector’s growth. With 34 projects under review, the city could double that footprint in the coming years. “This is a win-win,” Mahan said of the PG&E partnership on Bloomberg Tech , as he announced the PG&E power coming to San Jose, “the only city in California” to get that much added capacity. “Frankly, California has been, in my view, not friendly enough to growth and investment in recent decades, and that’s something we’re trying to change in San Jose,” he said during that time at a Politico event in Sacramento. But popular sentiment is turning against data centers, and politicians have taken notice. In recent weeks, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro , a Democrat, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican , halted development in their states. There has been a shift in tone from Mahan as well. “We’re regulating data centers and we need your help,” he said in a vertical video posted to his followers on Aug. 14. “San Jose leaders demand data centers deliver community benefits and meet stronger design standards,” the mayor’s office said in an official statement. “We need to do what California does best: lead the nation forward with a blueprint for responsible development.” San Jose spent years building up its data center pipeline with PG&E, real estate developers, and tech companies in the name of economic growth and funding critical infrastructure upgrades. Facing little to no opposition, city leadership took the public’s muted response as tacit approval of their efforts. But the upcoming midterm elections, and the growing anxieties around the AI boom in general, have combined to turn data centers into a politically toxic issue. Facing mounting opposition from constituents who have felt that data centers are being approved without public input, Mahan and Deputy City Manager Manuel Pineda hosted a “community listening session” last week at City Hall as part of an initiative to codify standards for future development. The topic struck a nerve. So many people showed up that staffers were forced to hastily set up an overflow space and livestream. The majority of commenters raised concerns about potential environmental impacts of data centers and called for a moratorium on new and existing developments. To the dismay of many, the data centers that were already planned in some neighborhoods were not up for consideration. “We see what’s happening in other communities,” Mahan told the audience, “where elected officials are signing NDAs and rushing into projects, not putting in place the right level of regulation and allowing communities to be harmed. That is not how we do business in San Jose.” Much of the audience, judging by their repeated hisses and interruptions throughout the night, were skeptical that his actions lived up to those words. Backlash against AI These days, any mention of a data center, no matter the size, generates pushback. Colin Behring, who has been trying to revitalize 19th Street in downtown Oakland by buying up distressed real estate and assembling a mixed-use campus , announced this month that he intends to transform a vacant four-story building at 415 20th St. into a “specialized data center to serve artificial intelligence companies.” The mention of AI and data centers drew immediate opposition from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, among others. The group has started a “No data centers in Oakland” campaign and has been passing out flyers at Pride and other events. “The people who have to live with the consequences weren’t asked whether we want a data center in our community,” the group said in an Instagram video last week that’s been viewed nearly 150,000 times. “Tech billionaires are building these everywhere they can because they want to profit off the infrastructure that powers AI, regardless of the amount of energy or water these facilities consume or the pollution they spew into our communities.” The negative comments got the attention of Councilmember Carroll Fife, who made a public appearance with the developer the day the reel was posted to clarify that the project would not involve new construction. “Nothing has changed, and our proposal at this point is to use the same building doing what it used to do the same way,” Fife said at an Aug. 14 press conference outside the site. “While it might be big headlines to talk about data centers, this project is very much different.” The 20th Street property is the former supercomputing complex for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory . Neither Behring nor a tech company plans to erect a mega data center that would blot out Chinatown or draw from Lake Merritt, as some opponents proclaimed. The proposed project, which doesn’t have a tenant yet, is only 20,000 square feet, smaller than a lot of commodity office space around it. The disparity between the public’s understanding of data centers and a project like Behring’s illustrates just how wide a spectrum the term covers, particularly after megaprojects like Elon Musk’s data center in Tennessee and Oracle’s Central Park-sized facility in Texas drew negative headlines. But data centers are not new. They have long formed part of the infrastructure underpinning the internet: Every email, bank transfer, or streamed television show passes through a building full of servers. While the commercial data center industry was born in the South Bay, the largest single operating facilities in the U.S. are in Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, and Georgia, according to market intelligence company Cleanview . Loudoun County in Virginia hosts more than 250 data centers, making it one of the largest hubs in the world . Largely because of land and power constraints, the Bay Area has been left out of the buildout it helped invent. The majority of local data centers are clustered in Santa Clara, which has its own utility company and is near the homes of old industry titans like Intel and newer ones like Nvidia and Google. Opponents say that although mega data centers are not planned in the Bay Area, they are energy sponges that will add to the strain on aging power grids, possibly causing more outages and raising electricity bills for consumers. There is also fear that the facilities consume too much water to cool their servers, in an area prone to droughts. Delivery of the needed energy to data centers is likely to be dirty too. Some leases include “uptime guarantees,” promises that servers will never lose power, leading operators to install rows of backup diesel generators behind the buildings. AI has inflated the demand for data centers. The types of facilities required to train large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude require more servers than the traditional colocation data center, and thus consume more energy to run and cool. In remote areas that are not connected to an existing grid, tech companies and developers are building their own power sources. In Santa Clara, where Nvidia is headquartered, there are two data centers that are sitting empty and waiting for the local utility to be able to provide power. Other sites, including the Cow Palace in San Francisco and at least eight county fairgrounds across the Bay Area, are being targeted by a single developer for data center development. Crisis or opportunity? Gilroy, best known for its garlic-growing heritage, is the Bay Area poster child for the backlash against data centers. Some residents say they didn’t learn about a 438,500-square-foot data center being built by Amazon Web Services on the outskirts of town until approval for construction was granted last year. The project was approved last summer without any public meetings, planning commission or council review, but AWS applied to build it in 2020. A third-party environmental review was conducted and the city negotiated for community benefits and privately funded infrastructure upgrades. The proposal was approved ministerially because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development. Other projects, including a food distribution center of similar size, have been greenlit without uproar. “[The AWS project] was not a surprise to us who are elected or the people who are more engaged in the community,” said Gilroy Mayor Greg Bozzo. “But to many members of the community, it was. It’s not unusual for people to be unaware of industrial development in their own cities.” Despite the perception that the AWS deal was conducted in secret, Bozzo insists that it was negotiated in good faith. The tech giant promised to build a multimillion dollar pipeline to bring recycled water to cool the data center. The company only needs 10% of that capacity, which leaves the remainder for the city to use for future needs. AWS also handed out grants to local nonprofits, paid for a new fire truck, and sponsored the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival. But, Bozzo said, “knowing what we know now, a lot more engagement could have been done.” “We have to do a better job of informing the public of all the nuances connected to setting policy,” he added. “You can never do too much.” Earlier this month, the Gilroy City Council voted to grant itself ultimate approval authority on future projects, automatically trigger community engagement for any new commercial and industrial projects of 15,000 square feet or larger, and require any future project that goes under environmental impact review to go to the planning commission and council. Every residence within 1,000 feet of a proposed project will also receive mailers. What happened in Gilroy illustrates how the data center debate across the country is not just about environmental concerns but about distrust in governance and corporations , and politicians’ ability to negotiate tax incentives, subsidies, or adequate benefits and protections if there are construction delays or the center closes. “If there is a lack of project clarity or a project is not well understood, people are less likely to be supportive,” said Raul Saavedra, who was a portfolio manager with Digital Realty and now leads Colliers’ data center practice in the Americas. “Constituents are being vocal. They’re asking for more transparency and communication. The industry should look at this as an opportunity communicate the benefits early before people jump to conclusions.” In Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, and other states, politicians are responding to the backlash by passing moratoriums, or pauses, on data center development . There are 211 data center moratoriums in effect across the U.S., according to a tracker maintained by Interconnected Capital . There were fewer than 30 at the end of last year. Microsoft this year pledged to end its practice of having local officials sign NDAs . Despite the numerous concerns expressed by his constituents, Mahan told The Standard that he does not support a data center moratorium in San Jose. The mayor said he views this moment as an opportunity to disseminate accurate information and consider improvements to what he says are some of “the most rigorous development standards in the country.” “[A moratorium] doesn’t solve anything,” he said. “It takes the existing pipeline of investments in our city and shifts them out of state. It doesn’t do any of the hard work of engaging or educating the community. It just makes it someone else’s problem.” Mahan said that since San Jose is mostly residential, one of the keys to growing the city’s limited tax base is responsibly attracting development, including data centers. “I thought the meeting was great,” he said of the contentious listening session. “My greatest frustration is when we have important issues that we can’t get folks engaged on.” San Jose resident Ellina Yin, whose social media videos aim to demystify some of the city’s most hotly contested land-use issues, built the website I Love San Jose to track the development of data centers and streamline civic engagement. Yin views Mahan’s latest overture as a reaction to community organizing, rather than genuine intent. The PG&E deal wouldn’t have been done, she said, if local communities had been fully aware of the issues, as they are now. “I’m not optimistic about these projects stopping, but I’m not pessimistic either,” Yin said. “We’ve seen big things end before. Look at [Google’s] Downtown West. They usually go down because of a bunch of outside factors adding up as a whole.”

Lurie rejects core reforms of homelessness oversight audit

Mayor Daniel Lurie rejected several key recommendations from a highly critical San Francisco civil grand jury report on the city’s oversight of homelessness services, including proposals to publicly track deaths and overdoses by individual housing sites and subject nonprofit contracts to greater scrutiny. The June report found serious gaps in how the city oversees the nearly $500 million it spends annually on nonprofit homelessness contracts. The grand jury found that, despite collecting reports on hundreds of deaths, overdoses, and other serious incidents, city leaders have failed to systematically analyze related internal data to identify troubled housing sites or service providers. The investigation also questioned whether the 3-year-old Homelessness Oversight Commission is doing right by its name, finding that it had largely stopped reviewing contract renewals and extensions and had not fully used its authority to hold the Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department and its outside contractors accountable. The grand jury recommended that the oversight commission request audits of permanent supportive housing sites following spikes in overdoses and deaths at the facilities. Lurie wasn’t on board with that. In a detailed response to the grand jury released Monday, the mayor’s office acknowledged that the oversight commission has the authority to conduct performance audits of the city’s homelessness department, as well as systemic factors behind overdoses and deaths. However, the mayor’s office said the commission has limited analytical capacity and staffing. And Lurie hasn’t indicated a desire to change that. His office added that the homelessness department “is already partnering with departments to strategically address issues of overdoses in [permanent supportive housing].” The grand jury also recommended that the homelessness department regularly bring contracts to the Homelessness Oversight Commission for review and approval — an idea also rejected by Lurie. His office declared that contract renewals and extensions are administrative matters handled by the homelessness department’s director and aren’t under the purview of the oversight commission, based on the San Francisco’s city charter . “Returning all renewals and extensions to the consent calendar would add administrative burden without a corresponding increase in oversight value,” the mayor’s office wrote. Why the mayor responded Lurie’s responses Monday offer a view into whether the oversight commission — formed after voters approved Proposition C in November 2022 — has proven effective. His office had 60 days to respond to the grand jury. In a letter Monday , Lurie and Mike Levine, the homelessness department’s executive director, thanked the Civil Grand Jury for its work. “We commend the Jury’s desire to strengthen transparency and data-driven oversight across the City’s homelessness response system,” the letter said. “Further, we thank the Jury for raising the importance of client safety in HSH-funded programs and for the time its members devoted to examining how data can improve services and outcomes.” Every year, the San Francisco Superior Court staffs the jury with 19 members selected from a pool of applicants to serve a one-year term. They choose a few issues to investigate and issue reports by the end of June every year. While the mayor’s office disagreed fully or partially with all but one of the grand jury’s findings, it did indicate it will implement a few of the report’s recommendations. That includes evaluating nonprofit operators of housing sites using resident safety outcomes and developing automated alerts for when housing sites deserve greater scrutiny. Should internal data be made public? A quarter of all overdose deaths in San Francisco occur at permanent supportive housing sites, according to 2024 data cited in the grand jury report. When a death, overdose or other serious incident occurs at a housing site, nonprofit operators are required to submit a critical incident report to the homelessness department within 24 hours. Hundreds of those reports are filed to the city over the course of a year, and the grand jury found that city leaders aren’t using data from them to identify housing sites with troubling safety trends, such as a spike in overdoses or deaths. The finding isn’t new: The controller’s office flagged that issue in a report two years ago. On that point, Lurie agrees. The mayor’s office acknowledged that the city’s homelessness department could be using data from critical incident reports from nonprofit service providers to “more systematically identify safety trends.” One of the grand jury’s key recommendations calls for data from critical incident reports to be aggregated and anonymized into quarterly reports to the Homelessness Oversight Commission. The grand jury also recommended publishing the data on a public dashboard. Lurie rejected both recommendations. “The City will not implement this recommendation,” his office wrote in its response. “HSH already reports relevant public-safety data monthly for neighborhoods with high concentrations of HSH-funded sites and shares CIR information with the Department of Public Health and other operational partners as needed to support oversight and safety planning.” Lurie’s office added that some data could be made available to those who file public records requests. The grand jury report emphasized that outcomes for unhoused people at permanent supportive housing sites must be among the main benchmarks city leaders use when reviewing the work of contracted service providers — typically nonprofit organizations — running those sites. The report also noted that the 2024 statistic — that 26% of overdose deaths took place at permanent supportive housing sites — was an increase from prior years .

The barely watched SF race bringing in eye-watering amounts of money

Advocacy group GrowSF is about to spend more backing its endorsed candidates for the Board of Education than any outside group before. Teacher’s pet! The group has committed to spending a chalkboard-screeching six figures to back incumbent Phil Kim, Autumn Brown Garibay , and Tim Tung. (All are moderate Democrats, of course — GrowSF’s usual persuasion.) The group declined to share an exact figure, citing a desire not to fully tip off political opponents. But the previous levels of spending they said they’d exceed would buy a lot of school raffle tickets already: In June, candidate Brandee Marckmann spent $136,000 of her own money, according to the San Francisco Ethics Commission. GrowSF spent $220,000 on Kim in June. GrowSF directors Steven Buss Bacio and Sachin Agarwal told Power Play they want to invest in candidates who are focused on schools, not on higher office. In their minds, progressives have long used the Board of Education as a springboard; case in point, Assemblymember Matt Haney and insurance commissioner candidate Jane Kim. “We need Board of Education members focused on improving student outcomes and restoring fiscal responsibility — not advancing their political careers,” Bacio said. “We’re launching our largest school board campaign ever to elect candidates who will deliver results for students, families, and San Francisco’s future.” Kim is aligned with GrowSF’s policy goals for the San Francisco Unified School District, such as bringing back algebra for eighth graders and promoting strict fiscal discipline. Brown Garibay is a former PTA president who promises to add accountability measures to SFUSD’s reading and math goals. Tung spent five years financing infrastructure for San Jose, 12 at S&P Global Ratings as lead analyst for California local governments, and now works in municipal finance at Allspring Global Investments. He’s betting his résumé will carry him through: In June, commissioners approved a balanced $1.36 billion budget on a fractious 4-3 vote, with five of seven voicing frustration at the lack of clear strategy. Reina Tello , a progressive Democratic school board candidate, wasn’t exactly happy to hear that an outside group would drop a mountain of money into the race. The organizer from Latino group PODER raised about $10,000 from working-class families, she said. “That kind of money really corrupts the whole race,” she said. “It makes it hard for grassroots candidates that care about the issues, care about the schools, care about the students, to be able to keep up.” — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez and Ezra Wallach SOUTH BAY HELP : Supervisor Connie Chan will be joining forces with a progressive standard-bearer Monday, in a move likely aimed at capturing Democrats outside her usual voting bloc. Chan will speak at a town hall in San Francisco with Rep. Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley, in collaboration with the California Working Families Party, Power Play has learned. It’s a curious pairing: Khanna has played a key role in pushing insurgent progressive candidates across the country, such as ousted Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner ; Abdul El-Sayed , who won Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary two weeks ago; and Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh . Chan, however, is not using an insurgent playbook; instead, she’s running a more old-school progressive campaign, grounded in labor and anti-corporate politics rather than the outsider energy that has powered El-Sayed and other candidates. But Khanna’s imprimatur on her campaign could help in crucial ways: The congressman, who endorsed Chan in July, is associated with techie “abundance” types — the same San Franciscans who are likely to consider Chan’s foe in the race, state Sen. Scott Wiener . It may also help pick up votes from the world of Saikat Chakrabarti , the unsuccessful progressive insurgent candidate in the June primary, whose positions align much more closely with Khanna’s. In an interview with NPR this week, Khanna — reputedly eyeing a 2028 presidential run — used language almost identical to that of Chakrabarti during his campaign: “I believe we need a next New Deal for America, an industrial investment bank, 1,000 trade schools, tech centers, a care economy, childcare, elder care.” Khanna isn’t the only elected official coming from out of town to give Chan some juice. Rep. Jared Huffman of the North Coast is set to endorse the supervisor Monday. The two filmed a video Friday at Fort Point that focuses on environmental protections and offshore drilling. — Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler TUNG-TIED : If you ask Nancy Tung , the chair of the Democratic County Central Committee, about her brother Tim, who, as noted, is running for a seat on the Board of Education, she’ll tell you he might be the best thing since sliced bread. “I’ve known him his whole life,” she said with a laugh, “so I have a pretty good idea of who he is. Even if he were not my brother, I would be so excited to have a candidate like this in the race. He’s incredible.” But SF Parents, the influential moderate group, isn’t quite as smitten. It hasn’t endorsed Tung for the November election, but an Aug. 8 email from its executive director, Meredith Dodson , suggested the group might have backed him had he filed as a candidate in time. The email also hinted at pressure from other moderate groups that are considering supporting him — pressure Nancy didn’t deny. “We’ve still never met Tim,” Dodson told Power Play, “but I’m sure he’s a great guy.” By Dodson’s account, SF Parents told Tung about its endorsement timeline in March and never heard back. Tung filed in late July, weeks after the group’s process had closed. In the email, Dodson described him as “a late, politically connected entrant” — a nod to his sister — and worried that his connections put the group’s top pick, first-time candidate Brown Garibay, “at greatest risk.” Tung, for his part, says he took his time to enter a race with three open seats because he was weighing what the job would cost his family. He’s aware of the tension between SF Parents and other moderate groups but is unbothered. “It is what it is,” he told Power Play over coffee on Friday. Voters, he said, want a candidate “with my expertise.” “How can we not have this gem of a public education system,” Tung added, “when we have so many natural advantages?” The DCCC votes Aug. 26 on its endorsements for the November ballot — a must-watch, considering the position of Tung’s sister. — E.W. PROP I OPPO : Some big money may soon start flowing toward killing a progressive-led housing measure. Proposition I, sponsored by public-sector unions, promises to direct roughly $120 million annually in transfer-tax revenue toward affordable housing. On Thursday, Mayor Daniel Lurie came out against the plan alongside law enforcement allies , claiming it would divert money from public safety. On Friday, moderate forces upped the ante, with the building trades and SF chamber of commerce forming the “No on I, SF for Accountability in Housing” committee. “Prop. I is a deceptively written measure that’s claiming to be about affordable housing but doesn’t require a single new unit of housing to be built in San Francisco. But it does create a $120 million nonprofit slush fund that blows a hole in our city’s budget,” said Larry Mazzola Jr., president of the San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council. Expect some hefty checks to be written toward the effort. — G.G.

Thanks, Daniel Lurie. Now every SF official thinks they’re an influencer

Few San Franciscans are as Insta-famous as Mayor Daniel Lurie . Now all the other politicos want in — no matter how obscure their office. Cue Joaqu í n Torres, the city’s assessor-recorder. “I’m the role you never heard about,” he tells the camera as he walks Clement Street in an Instagram post from last week after he filed his reelection paperwork. A jazzy drum number plays as he explains that his office handles assessments of taxable property. The campaign video has been making the rounds among City Hall’s chattering class for its slick production values, nearly 500 likes, and resemblance to Lurie’s walk-and-talk videos. Former Aaron Peskin campaign finance director Jack Shelley called the video a “banger” in the comments, and even local impresario Broke-Ass Stuart commented that it was “great.” That got Power Play pondering: Which SF politico has best replicated the mayor’s Insta style? One way to measure that is raw influence. Lurie has 259,000 souls following his Instagram. No member of the Board of Supervisors comes remotely close; most have fewer than 10,000 followers — though Supervisor Jackie Fielder , with 32,000, stands out. That hasn’t stopped them from trying. Supervisor Stephen Sherrill — representing the Marina, Cow Hollow, and Pacific Heights, among other neighborhoods — posted this Lurie-style update on a marathon late-July board meeting that covered everything from issuing liquor licenses to appointing new members to the Planning Commission. We give it a B+ — clean delivery, relatable governmental griping, but scattershot, topic-wise. Supervisor Bilal Mahmood ’s Aug. 4 post explaining the whys and wherefores of the Waymo Fourth of July traffic car-mageddon is a classic Lurie walk-and-talk, but Mahmood is playing a losing game by explaining how government actually works. In the comments, citizens saw the post as trying to deflect criticism of Waymo. That’s a solid C, supervisor, because you forgot something important. Lurie floods the zone with positivity, the social media equivalent of plugging your ears while saying “Nah, nah, nah!” Supervisor Danny Sauter has a handle on how Lurie addresses things that piss people off (which does happen, occasionally). Take Sauter’s Aug. 5 video on illegal dumping — he leads with, “We’re taking action,” trying to communicate to voters that the problem is being addressed, even though the jury may be out on the results. Natalie Gee, a District 10 legislative aide and onetime supervisor candidate, has found success spilling the SF political tea, like in her July post about the fight over naming rights to the “Friends of Sunset Boulevard” ( first reported in The Standard). The comments, from “BAM!” to “don’t be a shitty neighbor,” show that her hot takes spark engagement. We’ll note that her videos pre-date Lurie’s Insta-stardom by about a year. Sometimes the best way to win the game is to avoid playing entirely. To wit, Supervisor Myrna Melgar ’s post Sunday about her vacation to Central America’s Gulf of Fonseca. (The board is on August recess.) Melgar reports back about the “pristine” nature and charmingly counts the iguanas she can see from her room, which is surrounded by palm trees and an easy breeze you can hear over the microphone. “Check this out, this is the wall next to our hotel room,” she says. “That is one iguana. That is two iguanas. Three iguanas. Four iguanas. Five iguanas. Six iguanas. Just resting on the wall.” — Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez Chime in, Power Players: What’s your favorite SF politico or government account? Who just absolutely misses? Write us: powerplay@sfstandard.com . THE GARRY GANG : Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra is hoping to tap the deep pockets of the Silicon Valley world. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan is hosting a fireside chat fundraiser for the Democrat on Thursday, according to an invite obtained by Power Play, with general admission at $50, seated entry at $250, and a private reception at $10,000. The event is being thrown by Garry’s List, the techie’s policy nonprofit that launched this year. “Garry Tan and Garry‘s List are very excited to have the future governor appear before its members,” spokesperson Sam Singer said in a statement. “Garry believes Becerra is going to be a great governor and keep our state in a leadership position as the center of our nation’s innovation economy.” Becerra’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. — Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler BOARD DRAMA : Mahmood is at it again, shaking up the usually tranquil Board of Supervisors (with the nerve to do it on recess!), claiming that a historic preservation bill from Lurie and Supervisor Rafael Mandelman is NIMBY in disguise and offering amendments. The legislation would streamline the historic designation process for certain buildings, raising the number of such sites from 2,500 to 5,000. Mahmood, who has recently been ruffling feathers with Lurie , is pushing to study how much housing can be built on sites deemed historic and whether zoning tweaks could offset any loss of housing capacity resulting from the designations. It’s not sitting well with Mandelman. “It’s a pretty hostile amendment, and it does weirdly borrow from the worst version of NIMBYism, which is to drown something you don’t like in process,” he told Power Play, referring to what he perceives as Mahmood adding steps to everything. Lurie feels the city can do two things at once. “We can build more housing that fits in our neighborhoods, and we can protect the gems that define what our city is,” he said in a statement. “San Francisco doesn’t have to choose between growth and preservation.” Why the tumult? As Power Play has covered, this is the latest public display of disagreement between Mahmood and moderate City Hall forces as the supervisor tries to carve out a lane: hard-line YIMBY while socially progressive. His diagnosis of the conflict is that the board got along just fine in year one of Lurie’s term as public safety, which many of the members align on, was the topic du jour. But affordability is now the problem, and Mahmood thinks it has scrambled the alliances. “A majority has a consistent voice on public safety, but a majority of the board and the mayor have a very fragmented view on affordability and housing. That lack of cohesion — that is the truest test of collaboration,” he told Power Play. — G.G. COMMENTATOR TO CANDIDATE: Speaking of Instagram, progressive influencer Bunny McFadden has won the hearts and minds of San Franciscans through our phone screens . She has gathered 36,000 followers with her scathing political commentary, perhaps because she’s one of the most prominent online voices lampooning “Denim Dan,” her oft-used nickname for the mayor. Now she’s hoping those likes translate to votes. McFadden filed paperwork Wednesday to run for the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees, along with a progressive slate of candidates: former SF Democratic Party board member Leah LaCroix and Rose Pak Asian American Club President Jeremy Lee . Her priority, McFadden said, is “protecting our students and holding true to Free City,” the resident subsidy for City College — especially at a pivotal time for the college as enrollment continues to slip, imperiling its financial standing. And worth mentioning, her socials aren’t her only bona fides; she’s also got a doctorate in education and previously taught at the community college level. At the Department of Elections in City Hall’s basement, Evangela Brewster , a member of the Associated Students Executive Council, greeted McFadden warmly — even though they had never met. “You don’t know me,” the student said as she hugged McFadden, smiling wide, “but I know you from your content. Congratulations!” — J. F. R.

California still allows child marriage. This survivor wants it banned

Christina Sutton was at a grocery store parking lot in Napa County on the night her life changed. It was 1993, and the 16-year-old and her friends were hoping to find someone old enough to buy them beer. Along came a 21-year-old guy in the Coast Guard, whom one of her friends knew. After a quick discussion among the teens, Sutton got the assignment to approach him. “I was the one that was deemed the cutest looking that day and got pushed over to say, ‘Hi, m. My friend recognized you and wondered if you would buy us beer,’” she said. He happily obliged. Sutton and her friends wound up drinking with him and his roommates at his house that night. The rest, as they say, is history. But it’s the kind of history that Sutton is trying to rewrite for girls in her position. Less than a year after that encounter, Sutton married the man from the parking lot. She’d dropped out of high school too. A year after her wedding, she gave birth to a daughter. At 20, she had a second daughter. She briefly worked in retail but had no prospects outside of raising the kids. “The storyline is that I had a boyfriend and wanted to get married, and my parents said OK — that’s one version of my storyline,” Sutton said. “The other is that soon after I turned 16, a man started pursuing me. … I don’t describe it as a relationship. I describe it as a pursuit.” Sutton, who divorced after five years and is now a real estate agent in San Francisco, is pushing for legislation that would prohibit marriage in California for anyone under 18. The state Senate is expected to vote soon, possibly this week, on the bill. It has already cleared the Assembly. Critics of child marriages say the consequences can be severe. Educational and job opportunities shrink. It also creates a gray area in terms of sexual violence, as statutory rape laws generally do not apply if the underage victim is married to the abuser. The odds of a lasting marriage are small. The California Coalition to End Child Marriage says 70% to 80% of underage marriages end in divorce. Sutton said her husband was psychologically abusive and unsupportive. The mismatch was encapsulated by a conversation they had when Sutton broached the idea of enrolling in community college classes while her first daughter was a baby. “He said, ‘Go ahead, as long as it doesn’t cost me any money or affect raising the baby,’” Sutton recalled. “In that marriage, I felt so objectified. I was something he showed off. We went places so he could have people meet me. I was so out of my depth in an adult world. It was like playing house. I was going through all the motions.” California, New Mexico, and Mississippi are the only states that do not have a minimum age requirement for marriage. Thirty other states allow marriage for 15- to 17-year-olds with parental consent or court approval, according to reports . Attitudes toward marriage have evolved, but many of the laws reflect views from generations ago. “Child marriage is fundamentally a child protection issue. This is something we have to do to protect kids,” said Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz County), who authored the bill to institute 18 as the minimum age for marriage. “Everything we are hearing is that when young girls end up in a marriage, they face lifelong consequences. Even if the numbers are small, every child deserves protection.” There’s another piece of legislation designed to deal with a related issue — coercive marriage. Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) has drafted a law that empowers people facing marriage against their will to get restraining orders against someone trying to force them to marry. That bill has passed the Assembly and is awaiting action by the state Senate. To be married before turning 18 in California requires jumping through some hoops. The minor and at least one parent must be interviewed by an official from Family Court Services, which must submit a report about any findings of coercion. A judge must also interview the would-be spouses to determine if pressure is being applied to the underage person. These safeguards are not strong enough, according to Sutton. She said that her upbringing had involved “really challenging life experiences” and that her parents did not have her best interests at heart. Though it wasn’t required by law then, a judge interviewed Sutton about the marriage. She was persuasive that she was ready to wed, she said. “I looked in the judge’s face and said, ‘I’m very mature for my age,’” Sutton said. Child marriage is more common across the U.S. than many people realize. Unchained At Last , an organization advocating for an end to the practice, said nearly 315,000 children were legally entered into marriage across the U.S. between 2000 and 2021. “The vast majority were girls wed to adult men,” the group claims. A well-known example involved actor Doug Hutchinson, known for roles in “The Green Mile” and “Lost,” marrying 16-year-old model Courtney Stodden in Las Vegas in 2011. They divorced in 2020. Stodden is advocating for the ban in California. “i [sic] don’t want to be remembered only as the child the world watched. i want to be remembered as the woman who made the world look again,” she wrote in a July Instagram post after lobbying for the law in Sacramento. “i cannot rewrite my childhood, but i can spend the rest of my life helping rewrite the future for children who deserve more freedom, more protection, and more choices than i had.” The push to end underage marriage has been gaining momentum. New Jersey and Delaware were the first states to prohibit it for anyone under 18 in 2018. The issue has taken on a higher profile with Chelsea Clinton advocating for bans. The issue is also a focus of the current best-selling memoir “All That’s Unseen,” by Emilee Hackney, about her coming-of-age in Appalachia. She writes about becoming engaged at 16 to an older man, and later broke it off after her fiancé was jailed on charges related to child pornography. In California, there are a handful of child marriages each year, according to state records. In 2025, there were 10 weddings that involved a person younger than 18 out of 227,300 marriage licenses issued, according to the California Department of Public Health. That number has stayed basically constant since 2019, when a new state law required an annual tally of underage marriages. That year had the highest number of child marriages — 17 out of 217,796. The Public Health Department records show that child marriages are distributed across the state’s 58 counties. Many counties, including San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin, have not recorded any marriages involving a minor since 2019. San Diego County had four in 2019, the most of any county. However, the accuracy of the state numbers is under scrutiny. While the Public Health Department said Los Angeles had four marriages involving a minor from 2019 to -2025, county data obtained by TV station CBS8 (KFMB) in San Diego showed 12 such marriages during the same time span. Unchained At Last claimed it’s far more common. There were nearly 8,800 15- to 17-year-olds in California in 2021 who’d reported getting married in the previous year, according to the group’s analysis of U.S. Census data. Unchained told CalMatters that the jarring discrepancy stemmed from county registrars who don’t track child marriages. Opposition to California’s proposed ban comes from ACLU California Action. The civil liberties organization says “prohibiting minors from marrying in every case is a departure from California’s longstanding commitment to honoring minors’ ability to make important personal decisions for themselves,” comparing it to the a minor’s ability to have an abortion or carry a pregnancy to term, according to a June letter to Pellerin from the organization. “Eliminating it entirely removes the option of marriage as a potential pathway even in those circumstances where a minor, in consultation with parents or legal guardians and subject to the discretion of a judicial body, seeks out the critical benefits and legal protections that marriage can provide.” ACLU California Action declined to comment further about its position. Planned Parenthood has opposed earlier efforts to pass the legislation in California but has not taken a stand on the current push. Pellerin hopes that without that group standing in the way, her bill will get passed. Planned Parenthood did not respond to The Standard’s inquiries. For Sutton, it can’t happen soon enough. It took years for her to rebuild her life. She got a GED and worked in retail for years before getting her real estate license, which has given her greater financial stability. Therapy has helped with the psychological effects. “I had this tiny glimmer of self-preservation,” she said. “One day I just knew I had to get out.”

SF plans to close schools — but Mission Bay just got a new one

There are roughly 14,000 empty seats across San Francisco Unified’s 125 campuses, and the district’s own projections show enrollment falling by another 4,600 students by 2032. So why is SFUSD opening its first new school in a decade? The answer, supporters say, has less to do with the district’s shrinking enrollment than with a promise made decades ago to one of San Francisco’s fastest-growing neighborhoods. Over the past 30 years, Mission Bay has been the fastest-growing neighborhood in the city, home to a UCSF campus, the Chase Center arena, and the headquarters of tech and finance companies like OpenAI and Visa. Across the area, thousands of new homes have been built, yet the neighborhood never received the public elementary school it was promised. “The answer is equity,” Bruce Agid — who led the Mission Bay School Steering Committee — a group formed in 2015 to organize everything from safer streets around the school to its afterschool provider — told The Standard under a cloudless sky at Thursday’s ribbon cutting. Agid said Mission Bay has added thousands of homes over the past three decades without the public elementary school envisioned when the neighborhood was planned. Opening Mission Bay School, he said, is about finally delivering on that promise. The school itself predates today’s enrollment crisis. In November 1998, the Board of Supervisors adopted a redevelopment plan for the area, envisioning a sprawling neighborhood in what was then largely a collection of railyards, landfill, and warehouses. The elementary school was part of that original vision. The school is funded by SFUSD’s 2016 bond program , which set aside $115 million that could be spent only on construction , not teacher salaries or day-to-day operations. For District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, the school at 1415 Owens St. marks the final stage in showing the country “what 21st-century urbanism looks like.” “I have had the privilege of attending many grand openings,” Dorsey told the crowd during the ceremony that also featured Mayor Daniel Lurie and Superintendent Maria Su. “But I can tell you this without hesitation: this is the one I have been waiting for.” More than 100 elected officials, schoolchildren, community members — and even Lou Seal, the Giants mascot — attended Thursday’s ribbon cutting. Before the ceremony, parents and community members were invited to tour the school, which stacks classrooms across four floors, each grade welcomed at its own vibrantly colored entry “portal.” The approximately 80,000-square-foot campus was built under a $95.4 million construction contract. It will initially serve only pre-K through kindergarten during the 2026-27 school year before expanding one grade at a time, eventually enrolling more than 400 students. The fourth floor is also home to the Mission Bay Hub , a program drawing students from six high schools across the city into STEM career pathways. Inside, the most striking part of the design is what Chris McGiff-Brown, the school’s architect, calls “Universal Design for Learning”: wide and movable glass doors that can combine classrooms and workspaces. His vision, he said, was a joyful community space built to bring “excitement” and “color” to students and the neighborhood. The result is a model that Anna Klafter, principal of Independent High School and president of the United Administrators of San Francisco, hopes could be replicated citywide. Klafter said she wishes SF “could get all our schools looking like this, because that’s what our students deserve.” For Liz and Kien Lam, the school’s location next to UCSF’s hospital — where their kindergartener could easily get treatment — is as much a draw as its place on the east side of the city, where they reside. At first, the couple was excited simply to be founding members of the school community. After they saw the building, Liz said, they realized it was almost “private-like.” For San Francisco parents who champion public schools but also send their kids to private ones, that’s a crucial point. George Schick lives just a few blocks away near the Caltrain station and told The Standard he considered private school before his son was accepted into kindergarten at Mission Bay School — his first choice in the lottery. There was a lot of talk at Thursday’s ribbon cutting about Mission Bay School being a “neighborhood school.” Living near the school, though, doesn’t mean any guarantees. SFUSD assigns students through a citywide lottery rather than by neighborhood, so proximity is only one factor among many. The concept of a neighborhood school holds less weight in a district that uses a complicated choice-based system — whose overhaul has been stalled until the end of the decade — to determine where students go. Schick’s family, in other words, drew a lucky number. Bettina Cohen, a Steering Committee member, laments that the lottery has gotten in the way of the true vision of the school. She said she knows a couple from the neighborhood with a four-year-old and a one-year-old whose oldest couldn’t get into TK at Mission Bay and was instead assigned to a school in the Bayview. “But that’s a different story,” Agid interjected, steering the conversation elsewhere. “You can’t put the four-year-old on Muni,” Cohen later added, “or have the one-year-old take care of itself.”

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