SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Mayor London Breed secured a major political victory this week as San Francisco voters approved two controversial ballot proposals that will increase police power and require welfare recipients to be screened for drugs to keep their benefits.
Backed by around 63% of voters, Proposition F would require San Franciscans who receive cash welfare benefits from the local County Adult Assistance Program to undergo drug testing if the city believes they’re addicted to illegal drugs.
If the person tests positive, they would be required to enroll in a free treatment program to keep their benefits. It does not affect state or federal welfare benefits. Breed says the measure will pay for itself with money saved by people disenrolling from the program.
Prop E, which also passed with around 60% support, is a kitchen sink of proposals. It seeks to reduce oversight of the San Francisco Police Department by making it easier for police to adopt and deploy surveillance technologies, reducing use-of-force reporting requirements, lowering the standards to engage in car chases and transferring oversight power from the independent police commission to the police department itself.
Breed declared victory in a press release and in posts on X (formerly Twitter) late on Tuesday night.
"This will help us build on our work to make San Francisco a safer city for all," she said of Prop E. "We are giving our SFPD officers more tools to do their jobs and getting them out on the street to take care of our community."
As the results poured in, opponents of the measures slammed the outcome. Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, described Proposition F as a “misleading and performative” ballot issue that she said “demonizes welfare recipients rather than helps them.”
“San Francisco deserves better,” she added. “Those suffering from addiction deserve actual solutions and real opportunities for treatment, not false promises and election year politics.”
Former San Francisco Police Commissioner Angela Chan likewise called the outcome “extremely disappointing.”
“We can hardly be surprised that campaigns funded by ultra rich which outspent their opposition by 10 times in the case of Prop E and more than 20 times in the case of Prop F were able to propagate misinformation and mislead voters," Chan said. "The fact of the matter is both of these ballot measures will waste city resources and cause harm to San Franciscans, including increasing homelessness in the case of Prop F."
The two largest committees in favor of Proposition E raised $1.58 million with funding from tech billionaires. Its opponents, including civil rights organizations, only raised $212,000.
The disparity was even greater for Proposition F — with $667,000 raised in favor compared with $37,000 opposed. All told, a single donor, Silicon Valley Investor Chris Larsen, spent more in favor of the propositions than the entire budget was for the opposition for both.
As results poured in on Tuesday, critics highlighted this massive funding disparity. “Progressivism didn't lose in San Francisco, common sense and proven solutions did," John Hamasaki, a criminal law attorney and former candidate for district attorney, said on X.
"Billionaires and their bought-and-paid-for candidates won this round," Hamasaki addded. "But now conservatives own the city. Everything that is wrong, is solely on them.”
The results seem to signal a shift to more conservative policies in the famously liberal city by the Bay.
Even still, the passage of the measures doesn’t necessarily mean that the city has lost its progressive ways, said Steven Buss, director and co-founder of moderate advocacy group GrowSF.
“I think it's the voters saying that they're tired of things not working," Buss said. "To me, it's not any kind of shift in ideology. Our polling for two years now shows that the balance of ideologies in the city has not changed at all."
“So, it's not the voters’ ideologies or parties that are shifting," Buss added. "The people we've elected have done such a bad job running the city that now voters just want something different.”
Buss said that Breed’s measures show she is in tune with the voters of San Francisco, who he said are tired of property crime and drug use in the city. He said his research shows property crime is underreported in the city. In his view, voters see measures like Proposition E as common-sense solutions to those problems.
In that light, the measures' passage could be viewed as a boon for Breed’s reelection chances in November.
Still, Buss said it's too early to read much into results.
“Basically everything that she introduced is passing with a landslide,” he said. “Now, her job, of course, is to carry that momentum into November and remind voters that she understands the need. I'm not going to pontificate on if she'll be able to follow through on that, but that's what she needs to do.”
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