A lot of work has been done to change the city’s politics by the tech billionaires in San Francisco.
There is nothing new about wealthy people putting money into elections and politics to gain power. We’ve been seeing a lot of this in San Francisco, and many people have noticed. The Guardian did an investigation and found that this goes much deeper in San Francisco, as shown by records from non-profits, campaigns, and political donations.
A lot of powerful people, like David Sacks, the co-founder of PayPal, Michael Moritz, a wealthy investor, William Oberndorf, a hedge fund manager, and others, have given over $5.5 million to San Francisco in the last six years to try to game the system.
People who say they are these investors use a system known as “grey money” to hide how much money they are spending. This system lets them set up non-profits that work with PACs and “dark money” groups.
There are three main groups that have contributed more than $20 million since 2002. They are NeighborsSF, TogetherSF, and GrowSF. Jim Stearns, a political consultant, said, “They’re using many levels of organizations to hide where their money comes from and how much they burn.”
“This is a hostile $20bn takeover of San Francisco by people who have a stake in real estate and tech and don’t want anyone else to decide how the city is run,” he said.
The main thing these owners want to do is change how the city is run and how they deal with problems like homelessness. A lot of people think that politicians haven’t done enough to address these problems, so they “fix the problem” by getting money from “dark money groups” and other places.
When the specifics were examined, it became clear that many of the groups worked together, sent money to each other, shared staff, addresses, and other information. This demonstrated how deeply these groups were rooted before the current election.
