Researchers use S.F. mayoral candidates’ positions to rethink their places on ideological spectrum

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San Francisco mayoral candidates (from left) Tony Hall, Joanna Rees, David Chiu, Terry Baum, John Avalos, Jeff Adachi and Michela Alioto square off at a forum hosted by UC Hastings. Photo by Steve Rhodes/SF Public Press

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Political scientists are trying to measure the ideology of candidates for mayor of San Francisco in an effort to give voters a better guide as to who most closely shares their views.

San Francisco’s crowded field of 16 candidates and a ranked-choice voting system, which some find baffling, seemed to be the ideal testing ground for a project that measures mayoral hopefuls positions by surveying them on past actions at the Board of Supervisors and on current policy debates.

Voters aren’t always as well informed as they can be for city elections, which tend to attract less attention than national races and also lack the party labels that help distinguish each candidate, said Christopher S. Elmendorf, a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, and a visiting professor at U.C. Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

“San Franciscans are overwhelmingly liberal with respect to national politics,” Elmendorf said. “But that doesn’t mean there’s ideological consensus about what the city should be doing locally.”

He and colleagues Cheryl Boudreau and Scott MacKenzie, assistant political science professors at U.C. Davis, are studying how voters choose candidates with ideological views similar to their own in ranked-choice elections, which allow citizens to indicate their first, second and third choices on the ballot.

The U.C. team is planning to release a more detailed analysis of the results at least a week before the Nov. 8 election.

Pinning down politicians

Few researchers have successfully answered a seemingly simple question: Can the policy positions of candidates for local office substitute for party labels?

The San Francisco Public Press contributed to this study by distributing a survey to all of this year’s 16 candidates for mayor. Thirteen have responded so far. Two leading candidates have been delinquent in submitting their responses: Ed Lee, who has been mayor since he was appointed by outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom in January, and Dennis Herrera, the current city attorney.

The questionnaire is based on current or past policy proposals debated at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. By precisely measuring each candidate’s policy positions, Boudreau said, political scientists can get a better sense of how liberal or conservative the hopefuls are in relation to each other.

“It’s a way of making sense of those one-shot votes,” MacKenzie said.

“If you know how a candidate is voting on one or two” specific issues, he said, “it can help you predict how they will vote on other similar or the same issues later.”

Debating, subway, Twitter tax

Politicians taking the survey were divided on many of the issues they were asked to address. In regard to some of the more controversial topics, they voted 8-5 in favor of delaying the Central Subway project, 8-5 against a three-year ban on condo conversions and 7-6 against giving Twitter and other businesses a tax exemption in the mid-Market and Tenderloin areas.

Most of the candidates attended a debate at U.C. Hastings on Oct. 14 to elaborate on their survey answers.

“It was Twitter who approached the city and said ‘we’re going to leave the city unless you give us a tax break,’” said mayoral candidate and Supervisor John Avalos. “I call that extortion. I call that backroom dealing. I’d rather have an across-the-board change to our business tax that can support economic development in the city.”

Board President David Chiu, another candidate, answered “yes” to the tax break because he said it could keep businesses and jobs in San Francisco. And he was one of the politicians against delaying plans for the city’s now $1.6 billion Central Subway project, which would add 1.7 miles to the T-Third Line.

“Great cities don’t regret building subways — they regret not building subways,” Chiu said. “And if we don’t move forward with this project we are going to lose $1 billion of federal funding that we will not be able to use for other transit improvements and will not otherwise come to San Francisco. That’s 45,000 jobs.”

Although Herrera had not yet answered the survey, he attended the debate and spoke in favor of a key plank in his platform: delaying and rethinking the Central Subway project.

“And saying we need to invest in it when it threatens the overall financial integrity of Muni just because we are going to be getting a chunk of money from the feds is like saying Barry Zito should continue to be a starting pitcher for the Giants because we invested $126 million in him,” Herrera quipped.

Tackling poverty

Much of the questionnaire offered only “yes,” no” or “I don’t know” answers to decrease the candidates’ opportunities to give evasive answers. But one section allowed them to elaborate on why they agreed or disagreed with certain statements.

Candidate Terry Baum, running on the Green Party slate, marked on the survey that she would “strongly disagree” with the statement that San Francisco should do more to keep its streets clean and free of panhandlers and worry less about protecting the rights of homeless people to use public spaces.

“How shameful that certain politicians have run for office on the backs of the most vulnerable among us,” she wrote. “We are a very wealthy city, and we need to invest money in creating supportive housing where people with mental health and substance abuse issues feel safe and cared for.”

Candidate Paul Currier answered that he would “somewhat agree” with the same statement because he does not support begging on city streets. Although it is free speech, he wrote, 99 percent of the time the begging is for drugs or booze and these people need to be treated for their sicknesses.

Voting system confuses

With the surveys and debate completed, the resulting data is being used as the basis of a nonpartisan voter guide to be created by newsdesk.org. U.C. professors Elmendorf, MacKenzie and Boudreau are next planning to use exit polls to study when, how and if citizens vote for candidates who hold similar ideological preferences to their own.

“In all elections when you have complicated choices, we are worried about whether voters can make choices that reflect their values and preferences,” MacKenzie said. “In an election with ranked choice, that problem is magnified. It’s an interesting analytical problem for political scientists as well as an important practical concern for local governments.”

While ranked-choice voting eliminates the need for runoff elections, politicians have expressed concerns that the method adds to voter confusion. “It’s been difficult to discern differences between the candidates,” Herrera said. “No one wants to alienate someone else’s voters because they want the No. 2 or 3 vote.”

However, candidates aren’t going to win in a ranked-choice election unless they are in the top two or three positions, and they can’t get into those positions unless they do something to stand out, said Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy, a national think tank based in Maryland.

“There’s a voter education challenge,” he said. “But once you know something about the candidates, voters are able to translate that into the rankings.”

A project like this one, which studies the ideologies of mayoral candidates and how they relate to the views of voters, could trigger an important discussion about what voters in San Francisco are really looking for, Richie said.

But one discrepancy could be that voters pay attention to qualities beyond ideology, he added. Does the candidate appear to be a good leader? Do the voters like the candidate’s personality?

“There’s a conversation in our country we should be having, which is: Have we made the right decision to make these offices non-partisan?” Richie said. “People think it is right, but we can lose the clarity of the understanding of what issues they stand for. It’s then easier for the candidate to elevate the nonideological qualities to make them matter.”

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The answers to the survey so far are availabile in PDF form in a 38-page document. Updates will be posted as answers from remaining candidates are available.