Yesterday San Francisco Mayor London Breed made a gutsy appointment to the presidency of the SF Board of Education when she selected Phil Kim, who served as the national director of STEM education for the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and is a charter school champion. As we have written to you before, a political renaissance is taking place in San Francisco where an ecosystem of political philanthropies is persistently supporting candidates who serve the public interest. We support those organizations and their candidates, including four for the SF Board of Education. We encourage you to do the same, which you can do here with a single click. Maximum donation is $500 per candidate.
These local races could have a BIG impact on state politics, including future races for governor. As with our support of Matt Mahan’s Proposition 36 PAC, our support for reformer-led contests is critical to communicating to Democratic candidates that there is a path to power that does not require supplication to public employee unions and other special interests. At present, ambitious Democrats see only the supplicant paths to power taken by conventional politicians like Gavin Newsom. It’s our job to show them there is another route. If we fail to do so, then the $100+ billion per year in compensation and benefits being provided to public employees in California will continue growing at a rapid pace even as services decline and taxes rise.
