San Francisco’s woes and wealth draw 2024 presidential contenders

Against a backdrop of graffiti and overflowing garbage in downtown San Francisco, with police sirens blaring in the background, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and Republican US presidential candidate, blasted the city’s liberal government for policies that he claimed had led to an exodus of residents.

“We came here and we saw people defecating on the street, we saw people using heroin, we saw people smoking crack cocaine,” he said in a one-minute video posted on Twitter on Tuesday. “The city is not vibrant anymore. It’s really collapsed because of leftist policies.”

DeSantis is one of several presidential candidates who in recent days have visited San Francisco, with some seizing on the city’s economic and social woes as campaign fodder for the 2024 election — even as they court top technology billionaires in nearby Silicon Valley for political donations.

President Joe Biden and his rival for the Democratic nomination, Robert F Kennedy Jr, along with South Carolina’s former Republican governor Nikki Haley have also toured the Bay Area in the past two weeks, in the hope that the tech sector downturn that has led to plunging valuations and severe cost-cutting will not impede the generosity of top donors.

The night before DeSantis’s video, he attended a fundraiser in the wealthy town of Woodside — a Democratic stronghold 40 miles south of San Francisco with fewer than 5,000 residents — to meet deep-pocketed Bay Area tech executives and investors and build a war chest to compete with Donald Trump, the former presidential candidate with a commanding lead in the race for the Republican nomination.

San Francisco is battling concerns over a “doom loop” fuelled by its slow recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and downsizing tech companies that could spark a real estate crisis and strip the city of tax revenues. Even still, its links to Silicon Valley give it an outsized influence in national politics.

“San Francisco has always been a piggy bank for both parties,” said Bob Shrum, a former Democratic campaign strategist who is now a professor at the University of Southern California.

Attacking California and its leftwing government over liberal policies on crime, drug use and homelessness is a standard part of the Republican playbook — even more so as the GOP has pushed a “tough on crime” stance in opposition to progressive politicians that criticised excessive policing after the murder of George Floyd.

The city has long been a “bête noir for Republican candidates”, Shrum said. A surge of homelessness and petty crime has only made it a more attractive target, he added: “It’s the perennial punching bag.”

Donations from the US tech community in past political cycles have overwhelmingly favoured Democrats. A decade-long bull market in tech created a donor base flush with cash in 2020, and industry executives — many who wanted Trump out of office — were among the biggest donors. In 2020, about 90 per cent of political contributions from internet companies went to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks spending. The chief executives of Asana, Twilio and Netflix were among the largest contributors.

But influential tech investors and executives such as Elon Musk are increasingly expressing their discontent with the Democratic establishment, leading to some unlikely alliances.

DeSantis announced his bid for the White House in May in a Twitter Spaces broadcast with Musk, the site’s owner. Musk, who has said publicly that he previously voted for Democrats such as Barack Obama and Biden, has repeatedly praised DeSantis. Last year, he wrote on Twitter that he was leaning towards him for president.

Kennedy, a member of the famous American political dynasty who also leads a broad anti-vaccine movement, counts fans that include Musk, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, who jointly hosted a fundraiser for the candidate in San Francisco on June 15.

While he is still polling behind Biden, Kennedy is performing better than many expected, making him a potentially disruptive force in the race. In a video published on Monday, Kennedy criticised San Francisco’s homeless problem — where 1 per cent of the city’s population are homeless compared to less than 0.2 per cent nationally — in front of tents in the city’s downtown South of Market district. He proposed a federal solution to the issue, such as providing “homeless vouchers” to people living on the streets.

A downturn in tech in the past year has meant the valuation of public and private groups has plummeted and bosses have been left far less liquid. But that has not stopped candidates from flocking to woo Silicon Valley venture capitalists and tech bosses, with their big ideas and deep pockets.

Venture capitalist Tim Draper, co-founder of the famed Draper Fisher Jurvetson that made early bets on Tesla and SpaceX, hosted a fundraising dinner for Haley in Silicon Valley on June 14.

Biden spent three days in the Bay Area this week, attending a fundraiser on Monday hosted by venture capitalist Steve Westly, a big investor in Tesla, at his home in Atherton, near Menlo Park. Tickets reportedly cost between $6,600 and $100,000.

Tim Scott, a Republican and senator from South Carolina, has also received support from notable tech figures. The billionaire founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, has declared his support, having already donated $30mn to a pro-Scott super political action committee. Scott has also received supportive tweets from Musk over an “anti-victimhood” advertisement in May.

California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, long-rumoured to be considering a White House bid at some point, issued a sharp rebuke to DeSantis this week, calling him “weak” and “undisciplined”. The leaders of two of the largest and most influential US states have had a fierce rivalry, with DeSantis attacking Newsom for a “leftist government” that he claims is “destroying California”.

“There have always been tech people that have supported Republicans,” said Shrum. One of them is Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, who splashed out millions on Republicans in recent cycles but reportedly said he planned to hold off on donations to 2024 candidates.

But despite the current jockeying, “I would wager that the vast majority of the tech community will vote for Joe Biden in a Biden vs Trump or Biden vs DeSantis race,” Shrum said.