One of the best things about covering local politics in a city like San Francisco is there’s never a shortage of hilarious villainy. Case-in-point: on Sunday, Julie Pitta — president of a new “grassroots coalition” seeking to expose how “tech and real estate billionaires” are staging an anti-democratic “hostile takeover” of city politics — was spotted at a café in Richmond tearing down campaign posters for Marjan Philhour, a moderate running to unseat Supervisor Chan in D1. After CCTV footage of Pitta pulling posters off café windows made the rounds on X, she posted a statement on Facebook claiming she had returned to the café, apologized to the owner, and offered to put up another Philhour poster — to which the owner (per Pitta) responded: “these are not my signs” and “I don’t want any more signs.”

But shortly after she posted this, yet another a CCTV clip emerged on X showing the owner had actually said nothing to this effect, and had instead contradicted Pitta’s claim that she’d asked staff members before removing the posters.

The debacle puts Pitta in the rarified company of other notorious SF campaign material thieves like Jason Kruta (a staffer for Supervisor Preston who was caught on camera stealing school board recall petitions from a parent volunteer back in 2021, and was later forced to publicly apologize and pay the volunteer $1 as part of a civil settlement), and Karen Fleshman (who had herself filmed taking down a banner calling for ex-DA Chesa Boudin’s recall). Kruta's crime — attempting to substantially interfere with efforts to put a recall initiative on the ballot — was serious and warranted significant punishment. Pitta and Fleshman's antics, on the other hand, are merely clownish.

More important, though, is the fact that people like Pitta, Kruta, and Fleshman are at the forefront of a political coalition (the so-called “progressives”) that currently controls a majority of seats on the Board of Supervisors, and thus has the power to shape the city’s legislative agenda. These are people who sincerely believe the biggest threat to San Francisco are “far-right” tech billionaire bogeymen donating to support moderate candidates and not the bevy of dysfunctional policies (like Housing First, de-facto decriminalization of drug use/possession/sale, and near-nonexistent prosecution of theft and “quality of life” crimes) pushed for decades by progressives. Anyway, as the saying goes, you can’t reason with crazy. But you can sit back every now and then and laugh.

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City Hall

policy, power struggles, and more

• A poll conducted by Daniel Lurie’s campaign suggests Mayor Breed — though still the first choice of a plurality of voters (26 percent) — may fall behind in second choice votes, which could cost her the election. (For those unfamiliar, SF uses a ranked-choice voting system — here’s a brief explainer of how it works.)

• Complicating matters for both Breed and Lurie, Mark Farrell — who served as interim mayor for six months after Ed Lee died and previously as D2 Supervisor for seven years — is reportedly planning to join the race in the next two weeks.

• Elsewhere, voter guides from across the city’s political spectrum dropped. An ideologically representative sample: Take Action SF, GrowSF, the Chronicle, and the League of Pissed Off Voters. (FYI: though our politics are fairly transparent here at Dolores Park, we don’t make official election endorsements.)

• Mayor Breed announced the city will extend the temporary ban on street vending along Mission Street for another six months, citing data showing theft and assault fell sharply after the initial ban went into effect.

• DA Jenkins announced her office would launch a criminal investigation into SF SAFE, the nonprofit recently found to have wrongfully spent almost $80,000 in SFPD funds.

• Controller Ben Rosenfield and Treasurer José Cisneros, released a set of recommendations to simplify the city’s business tax structure. Recommendations include: merging the homelessness gross receipts tax (the disastrous gift of Prop C) into the preexisting gross receipts tax; reducing the rate of the “overpaid executive tax” (yes, a real thing, and exactly what it sounds like) by 90%; and reducing the rate of the commercial rents tax by 25%.

• Finally, in long-delayed development news: the Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve a Whole Foods for a storefront previously occupied by Best Buy in Anza Vista. The site has sat empty since 2017, mainly due to delays from an environmental review and labor union appeal.

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Memo Sacramento

an essential spotlight on the state of california

• In a scathing press release that itemizes the state’s previous public safety investments in the East Bay, Governor Newsom announced he would send 120 CHP officers to Oakland to combat the city’s massive spike in crime under a new state law enforcement campaign.

• State lawmakers from CA’s Legislative Black Caucus introduced a slate of “reparations bills” last week which include measures pushing to change California’s Constitution to allow programs providing state funding specifically on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation. (In other words, they want to make racial discrimination legal again.)

• Elsewhere, Newsom took to MSNBC to criticize “right-wing conspiracy theories” about Taylor Swift. “How sad and pathetic the Republican Party have become that Taylor Swift literally is a threat to them for one reason: She wants folks to turn out and vote.” (Go off, I guess?)

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Rose Alert

notes from the bay area's beloved class of local activists

• By now you’ve probably read the Chronicle’s explosive investigation into “Woke Kindergarten,” the for-profit organization given $250,000 in federal funds by a Hayward elementary school to boost student achievement by “confronting white supremacy” and “disrupting racism and oppression” (spoiler alert: math and English scores fell to new lows), but have you seen the org’s “sensory guide to protest for kids”?

• The DSA / “progressive” left, still melting down over Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan’s drunk tweet, is now asking people to sign a petition calling for Tan’s removal from GrowSF’s board, and for various politicians to return campaign donations they’ve received from him. No word yet on whether they’ll speak out against the “SFProgressive” Twitter account’s recent incitement to violence against Pirate Wires CEO Mike Solana though:

• Almost 2% of undergrads across the UC system identify as non-binary or trans, up over three times from four years ago, according to new released demographic data. This increase appears to be almost entirely driven by students identifying as non-binary. (4% of undergrads at UC Santa Cruz now consider themselves nonbinary.)

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Man with Machete

crime and intrigue around the city

• A recent article in the Chronicle underscores three crucial points about car break-ins across the city: first, they’re trending downward; second, this appears to have a lot to do with DA Jenkins’ “targeted approach” to aggressively prosecuting repeat offenders; and third, efforts to get a handle on crime remain complicated by people like Judge Patrick Thompson (up for re-election in November), who insist on releasing criminals almost immediately.

• Case-in-point: this crime timeline, put together by the Standard, which describes how Charvel Maurice Augustine, a “serial bipper,” was repeatedly arrested, released by lenient judges, and re-arrested on car burglary charges.

• No, it's not satire: The police station in the Fillmore was apparently burglarized last week.

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Around Town

stories from the neighborhood you should know about

• An almost 200-page report drafted by a third-party law firm (but made public by Cruise) details the internal missteps that led to the company’s remarkable collapse last fall, which saw it lose its license to operate autonomous vehicles in the city.

• Asia SF, a famed SoMa restaurant and drag queen cabaret, announced it will close at the end of March after 26 years due to irregular revenue post-pandemic.

• The 26th annual SF Independent Film Festival kicks off tomorrow at the Roxie and 4 Star Theaters.

• The Stonestown Galleria mall is suing a now-shuttered Korean restaurant, Gangnam BBQ, for $1.4 million in allegedly unpaid rent and other fees (mainly accrued during the pandemic indoor dining shut-down).

• Muni ridership jumped 25% in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to new data from SFMTA. Ridership numbers are now approaching pre-pandemic levels. Nice.

— Sanjana Friedman