SAN FRANCISCO — The tech-fueled movement that ousted San Francisco’s liberal District Attorney Chesa Boudin and school board members in a pandemic uprising is just getting started.
Powered by voter frustration over drugs and homelessness and backed by millions of dollars, a constellation of centrist groups is working to shift the balance of power in a famously progressive city whose woes have become a national political Rorschach test. The groups, which are planning to push progressives out of San Francisco’s governing board and local Democratic party, argue it’s a rescue operation that could reverberate across the country.
Their critics see something more sinister: business interests and conservatives seeking to control the establishment in a city animated by tension between the center and the left. It is a struggle for the soul of a city that regularly produces Democratic stars from Kamala Harris to Gavin Newsom and, depending who you ask, embodies the best or worst of liberal ideals.