Damian Writes About Stuff

I’m so tried I cant wait for this to all be over

Starting off with some thoughts on the state of the governors race now that the picture is pretty clear. I still can’t get over the rogues’ gallery we have as our options to be in charge of one of the largest economies in the world. All-time greats like Barack D. Obama Shaw (D as in Denzel Washington)¹ , We got LivingForGod AndCountry DeMott and newly minted Grimez sample Matt Mahan. This primary season has been a wild ride, from the expected frontrunner Swalwell getting exposed and having to drop out, to seeing all the ways candidates will debase themselves for votes. It’s a lot to process even as a politics-head, so it’s not surprising that, despite the onslaught of ads, voters have had no idea who to vote for and are still just barely now deciding.

From voter registration data on the ballots that have already been returned, it shows a proportionally higher number of Republicans who have returned their ballots compared to normal statewide margins, even keeping pace with Democrats at the beginning of the month. This can partially be attributed to the fear early on that a split Democratic field could allow two Republicans to go on to the general, but as polling has come in it’s showing just a three-person race for the top two spots.

With most polls showing Xavier Becerra in the lead, and Republican Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer fighting for the second spot the implications on strategy become clear. A Becerra-Steyer general election is ideal for a few reasons. With no Republican in the governor’s race and it being an off year for California Senate, this will depress Republican turnout statewide, which will help ensure that as many house seats stay blue as possible, and possibly even flip some of the “safe” Republican seats from the redistricting. The national Democratic Party is wildly unpopular right now, so we should do everything in our power to keep them from snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Having someone to Becerra’s left will hopefully cause him to shift on some of his stances and make concessions to broaden appeal. Becerra seems like an extremely mid candidate (moderate corporate Democrat), with Tom Steyer, a billionaire, somehow being the most viable progressive person in this race, something that when DSA California explained in their voter guide caused them grief. We at the Damian Writes About Stuff Blog were already Steyer-heads, but if you were considering voting for Katie Porter, Matt Mahan, or even Xavier, I think Tom Steyer should be your pick instead.

And just my luck, as a degenerate politics enjoyer, they were both in San Francisco on Saturday holding campaign events, so I was able to see them both in person. After conducting a thorough investigation of the vibes at each event I can conclude that Steyer clears Becerra².

In actually good news, the two signature-gathering campaigns , Connect Bay Area and Stronger Muni For All, to save Bay Area transit from the impending fiscal cliff of doom have both collected enough signatures to appear on the November ballot. They didn’t just make it but blew past the required 186K, getting 305K³ for the Connect campaign. It was a great organizing achievement with volunteers punching way above their weight, and hopefully this enthusiasm is carried into the General. Also, shout out to Climate Action Club and Mint Manor for a lovely event where we gathered signatures, drank delicious coffee, and hung out with our community.

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There’s one last ballot measure that I’m collecting signatures for this year and that is the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act that SF DSA is running. It protects a real estate transfer tax from being axed and ensures proceeds are actually going to affordable housing. Find us every Friday at Horsie’s from 4–6PM until July if you want to sign the petition or if you want to help gather! Check out the link below for more info: https://sfsocialhousing.org/guarantee-act

The last thing I want to share is a couple of projects that I worked on this month. The first is a website that tracks endorsements from progressive organizations and people. I searched around and couldn’t find anything like that, other than people listing out candidates in Twitter threads. Rather than make another ugly spreadsheet, I made a website to display the info nicely and make it easily shareable.

As a side note, I met one of the people who run TrackAIPAC, which is one of the endorsement sources, while working on this. It was interesting hearing about how much their org does with its very lean team and the unexpected reach they have garnered. Hasan Piker also pulled it up on stream, and reacted to being one of the sources, which was pretty cool.

The other project this month is related to the CA-11 Congressional race. This race will be a nailbiter, I suspect, so I wanted to see if I could glean any additional info from what’s available online, so I decided to hit the streets. The plan was to catalog campaign window signs around the city as an alternative polling method. So after some legwork and some help from friends, I ended up with the following map and will attempt to do some analysis.

For how well Scott Wiener is polling, he had a disproportionately low percentage of the signs I logged. He has been the frontrunner, but this could indicate that Scott voters aren’t as excited as supporters of the other candidates, and maybe he is coasting off his name recognition. It could also be that Saikat and Connie focused more on ground game getting these signs out. I biked around District 2, which I assume will be a district where Scott will do well, but there were very few signs for this race and a ton for the Supervisor race between Sherrill (likely Scott voters)⁴ and Brooke (often paired with a Marie sign). District 4 also has a Supervisor race but was way more in tune with both races; it had a bunch of Connie/Wong and Connie/Gee sign combos and there were a decent amount of Saikat/Gee. Again, I didn’t see much of any Wiener on the west side. A disclaimer is that we only collected 200 signs and that’s not that statistically significant, but it was a fun exercise (both mentally and physically).

One final note to leave people on: it seems like ballot returns overall have been lagging behind a bit this year. If we end up with a lower turnout election, your vote will matter even more. This house race will go down to the wire, so get out there, fight against apathy, and vote!

The Overwhelmed San Franciscan Voter Guide June 2026

1. “So I said, ‘What I’m gonna do is I’m going to legally change my name, listen to what the people say, create a great conglomeration of a possibility, represent my grandfather, my dad, represent Denzel Washington and represent Barack Obama, and myself,” https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/05/18/the-candidate-for-governor-nobodys-talking-about-barack-obama/ ↩︎
2. As an ethical journalist I refused the free burritos at Becerra’s event but almost faltered when I saw the Tom Steyer Class Traitor hats, lucky fate intervened (they ran out) ↩︎
3. Mission Local Reporting: https://missionlocal.org/2026/05/bart-ballot/ ↩︎
4. Joint campaign events: https://www.facebook.com/ScottWiener2/photos/1530199068471641/ ↩︎