The final vote count is yet to be released, but the vibe shift is in: San Francisco appears to have mostly chosen moderate candidates and policies in the March primary election. Voters approved propositions to expand SFPD surveillance technology, drug test recipients of welfare, and encourage SFUSD to put algebra back on the middle school math curriculum. Elsewhere, though we’re still waiting for final reporting to come in, they seem to have heavily favored moderate candidates on the Democratic County Central Committee and Republican County Central Committee slates, both of which will determine crucial official party endorsements for mayor and open supervisor seats in the upcoming November general election. (If you think it’s strange that we’re three days post-election and over 90,000 ballots remain to be counted — it is; our guess is the delay has a lot to do with the post-covid surge in mail-in ballots, though it also reflects dysfunction at the city's Department of Elections.)

The results weren’t an across-the-board win for moderates — crucially, the two incumbent Superior Court judges notorious for handing down light sentences for fentanyl dealing and theft both appear to have won re-election — but this hasn't stopped the press from despairing of San Francisco’s purported “rightward shift.” In the Chronicle, Joe Garofoli and Aldo Toledo declared “San Francisco can no longer be called a progressive city,” in the Standard, Josh Koehn wondered whether the results “rais[e] the question of whether San Francisco’s vaunted reputation as a liberal bastion…is being hollowed out like an Ozempic patient,” and in 48 Hills, Tim Redmond declared simply: “the attack on poor people and pro-police agenda is working.”

On X, reaction from some progressives struck an even more hysterical tone: