Inside SF's most expensive supervisor's race. Can tech money oust an incumbent?

As weary eyes scroll back and forth between the presidential and mayoral races, another San Francisco election is buoyed by an outstanding amount of cash and attention from some of the nation’s biggest politicians and tech overlords.

To his fans, Supervisor Dean Preston has made himself an outlier in local politics as a staunch progressive, receiving endorsements from national figures like Rep. Nancy Pelosi and fellow democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. To his critics, Preston is the personification of everything wrong with San Francisco, a NIMBY who slings an array of policies soft on crime, addiction and homelessness that polls have shown city voters are moving away from.

His main challenger, Bilal Mahmood, is a tech entrepreneur and relative newcomer who first made waves in his unsuccessful run for state Assembly in 2022, where he clinched a third-place finish despite his lack of experience as a candidate.

Another challenger, Autumn Looijen, who led the recalls of progressive school board members in 2022, has emerged as a more moderate, if not conservative voice to the race compared to Mahmood and Preston. For example, she received the endorsement of the San Francisco Republican Party earlier this week.



https://sfstandard.com/2024/08/16/dean-preston-billionaires-san-francisco-bilal-growsf/