San Francisco redistricted

Here's a map of the city's new supervisor districts (red), overlaid on the old districts (purple). Getting there via the Redistricting Task Force, was a nightmare project, but here we are. See Mission Local's summary.

There are plenty of hard feelings. Communities which had hoped to aggregate their influence, but instead were broken apart, are angry. The coalition of organizations working as San Francisco Rising summarized these complaints: 

There's nowhere in the new map where Black voters live in enough of a cluster to be easily influential -- because there aren't enough Black San Franciscans remaining to constitute such an area. That's mighty damning, but it is not a problem with redistricting.

I feel a bit disloyal saying this, but I'm not convinced the new lines will change city politics as much as some might fear -- or hope. 

For a political point of view, the biggest deal here is excising the Inner Sunset, a quite progressive area, from District 5 and dumping it into District 7, much richer and more "moderate" turf. Likewise cutting Cole Valley (generally progressive) out of District 5 and adding it to District 8 (more and increasingly "moderate"). The new District 5, with the Tenderloin added in, looks poorer and likely less likely to vote at a high rate -- but maybe not. District 6 had gained a lot of new population and had to be shrunk and reconfigured. We won't know until there have been some elections how the new residents lean in the Mission Bay area. 

But in general, the old map held up surprisingly well. In general, the same neighborhoods will be voting with the same neighborhoods, so existing coalitions and alliances will continue to make sense. 

Electing supervisors by districts will continue to have the same advantages it has had as long as we've used it: energetic candidates who do the work to embed their campaigns in the life of their districts can break through, despite all the big money corrupting city politics. We see that today in District 4, new and old, where a very conservative area elects a progressive supervisor. This sort of thing is not easy, but it remains possible.

If we want more progressive supervisors, we need strong principled candidates who can dialogue with the competing communities and interests that make up their districts. Being a San Francisco politician is not for sissies.