How pro-development groups are building a coalition of moderates
They hope a "lighter blue" San Francisco will be a place where more homes get built
For years, the “subtle threat of repercussions” kept San Francisco commercial real estate investor and developer K. Cyrus Sanandaji from fighting back openly against the far-left “fringe groups” that he said have been leading the city down a disastrous path.
But when the Presidio Bay Ventures founder became the victim of theft as he was leaving the city for his own Covid-delayed wedding ceremony in Europe with his toddler and pregnant wife in the summer of 2022, he decided he needed to raise his voice.
“Enough is enough,” he said of elected officials’ “complete enablement mindset when it comes to drugs and homelessness, mental health, and public safety just deteriorating what are an acceptable level of standards, laws and rules that we need to be enforcing.”
What happened on that day to change his mind was brazen.
As he was loading an Uber to go to the airport, Sanandaji realized someone had stolen his briefcase from just inside the front door of his home in the Marina neighborhood. It held the family’s passports and thousands in euros to pay the wedding vendors. Since his AirPods were also in the case, Sanandaji was able to use the Find My Phone app to track down the missing bag and wrest it back from the crook, who got away during the scuffle with Sanandaji’s iPad and cash.
The passports were still inside, and the family just made their flight thanks to a police escort.
“It was one thing to run a business [and stay quiet] for fear of specific projects being targeted or approvals being compromised,” he said. “It’s another to have your own personal and family safety compromised as a result of these failures of leadership and bad policies. I chose to step up, and it’s not just me.”
Sanandaji is one of the business leaders and development advocates advancing a more growth-friendly political agenda this election cycle, which begins in March. Given the city’s troubles, local politicians are showing a willingness to reduce development fees and affordable housing requirements for the first time in years. But pro-housing moderates see the opportunity to push the city even further in favor of development, starting with several local ballot measures and the race for Democratic County Central Committee on the March ballot.
“Enough is enough.”
Better known as the D-Triple-C, the obscure but influential body governs the local party and makes political endorsements that sway tight elections in the city.
“The next decade of San Francisco political leadership is on the line,” said Chris Larsen, who, as co-founder of crypto payment software company Ripple, represents the push for change coming from tech, the major tenant in the city’s struggling downtown.
He is one of the lead sponsors, along with the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, of Democrats for Change, a new moderate political group running a slate of 24 candidates to fill all the available seats across the two assembly districts in the D-Triple-C.
This group, along with several others that have sprung up or expanded since the pandemic, sees a direct line from the D-Triple-C election to the election of a more moderate Board of Supervisors in November. This, they believe, will not just address safety issues on the street but also begin to chip away at the highly discretionary system that has made San Francisco the city with the slowest housing entitlement and permitting process in the state.
A one-party town
If you want to have any kind of influence over local politics in San Francisco, you need to be a Democrat, says Jane Natoli of SF YIMBY Action, the political arm of the pro-development group.
Voters listen to the D-Triple-C: Candidates endorsed by the committee can get up to a 15 percent bump over an unendorsed candidate, especially in low-name-recognition races like the D-Triple-C, according to YIMBY estimates. D-Triple-C endorsements could also have made the difference in some recent supervisor races where the progressive candidate narrowly beat out the moderate by about 1 percent of the vote, Natoli said.
“The D-Triple-C is the most obscure, important election you’ve never heard of,” she said.
Democrats for Change and their moderate brethren like GrowSF and TogetherSF didn’t exist during the last D-Triple-C election four years ago; nor did the educational efforts around “the different flavors of the Democratic Party,” she said. Natoli ran for D-Triple-C that year and lost, along with most of her moderate slate.
Since then, San Franciscans have grown fed up with their political leaders, Natoli said, pointing to the victory of pro-housing, moderate Supervisor Joel Engardio over the more progressive incumbent in 2022 as an indication.
Moderate policies go beyond housing, and shared interests could let centrists build out a powerful coalition.
Take a March ballot measure Engardio is sponsoring to support teaching algebra to eighth-grade public school students. He expects it to pass, and its popularity could “drive up the numbers of voters moderates need to win the more obscure DCCC election,” he said. That would ricochet: A more moderate D-Triple-C elected in March could recommend candidates in November for half of the supervisor seats and the mayor’s race, candidates who would then be more likely to quickly approve housing projects and lower development fees.
Many voters “will only see Democrats and not consider which type of Democrat — which shade of blue — they are voting for,” he said.
“This goes both ways, depending on whether progressives or moderates control the local party,” he said. “That’s why the insiders are putting so much effort into the DCCC race.”
Even within the moderate voting bloc, there are divisions, he added. Just because a candidate is less to the left on matters like education and public safety, that doesn’t necessarily mean they support building denser housing, he said.
“Candidates in 2024 will need to navigate that split among moderate voters, especially as they try to win seats against incumbent progressives where there are multiple moderate candidates that embrace different views of urbanism,” he said.
Natoli said that SF YIMBY has endorsed most, but not all, of the D-Triple-C candidates on the Democrats for Change slate.
“We didn’t play the game well in 2016 and 2020. This year is a lot different.”
Castro resident Joe Sangirardi makes it on both lists. For the last five years he’s worked at the Campaign Workshop, training staff members at progressive organizations how to fundraise. He’s also in charge of fundraising for California YIMBY.
Sangirardi said that just because someone is on the very far left doesn’t necessarily make them a NIMBY, just as someone who is more moderate isn’t necessarily pro-development. But “there are a lot of far-left NIMBYs in the San Francisco Democratic Party right now,” he said.
The NIMBYs were successful in the past because they ran a lot of high-name-recognition candidates in the down-ballot races, and people just voted for the names they knew, Sangirardi said. He believes that strategy will be less effective this time, in part because progressives have fewer big names and in part because moderate groups are canvassing together using cards that have the pictures and names of their 24 candidates listed in the order they will be on the ballot. That will “make it really as easy as possible for voters to pick it up and check this name, check this name, all the way down,” he said.
“The process is awful and politics should not operate this way, but it does and we are operating within the game, the way that it’s been set for us,” Sangirardi said. “We didn’t play the game well in 2016 and 2020. This year is a lot different.”
Too little, too late?
Engardio said that the tech community has stepped up in both vocal and financial support of more moderate candidates. Larsen, the tech founder behind Democrats for Change, agreed that “the business community and practical-minded San Franciscans are engaging with public leadership in unprecedented numbers, but unfortunately in silos.”
Like-minded moderates need to band together and grow loud in voicing their opinions, he said.
“History has shown that far too often the more moderate or business-friendly voices in this town hang back to wait and see what peers will do, but we don’t have time to be overcautious, and no cavalry is coming — we have to make the difference,” he said.
In addition to the D-triple-C race, Larsen has his eye on a March measure sponsored by Mayor London Breed to eliminate transfer taxes on downtown office-to-residential conversions. He is also tracking a proposed rule that would allow police to install security cameras on public property and use drones to monitor certain crimes. The measures’ fate will be a litmus test of where the city is leaning on public safety and tax reform, big issues going into the November election.
For Sanandaji, even these measures seem like a case of “too little, too late.” The transfer tax measure in particular feels “performative” and may do more harm than good if it doesn’t create the new housing voters are hoping for because there are still too many impediments.
“You’ve now undermined your entire argument to the detriment of the broader housing production goals of the city,” he said. “We need to stop taxing housing, full stop.”
If moderate Democrats take control of the D-Triple-C and the Board of Supervisors, pro-development groups expect these new elected leaders to lower the ultra-high barriers to development that have brought the housing pipeline to a halt. They also hope to make the entire process less opaque, giving developers more certainty that proposed projects will be approved.
Moderates may also advance and endorse more developer-friendly ballot measures in November and beyond.
For example, a measure similar to the YIMBY-sponsored Proposition D could make a return. In 2022, the proposition sought to speed up approval of certain affordable housing projects and remove the requirement for the Board of Supervisors to bless affordable housing projects that use city property or city financing. It lost by only a few thousand votes.
If it had D-Triple-C support, it likely would have won, Natoli said.
Despite his frustrations with the city, Sanandaji remains long on San Francisco, and its political scene. He recently bought an empty downtown office tower for $41 million and hopes to buy four or five more similarly distressed opportunities in the city in the next 12 to 18 months.
It took “many, many, many years to cement the hard-left control over the D-Triple C,” he reflected, more than can be undone in one election. But just as he refused to sit back and be a victim when he was robbed, he said he wants to “double down” on the city to “help rewrite the story.”
“There’s value to be had here but it’s not just, make an investment and sit and watch it,” he said. “You have to be proactive in bringing our city back.”