About the ‘Deep Slate

Last updated: October 2026

WHAT IS THIS?

Every San Francisco election cycle, I put out my “‘Deep Slate” voter guide – I’ve been doing this since sometime in the late 90’s. Each post is my guide for that election!

The format is:

  1. The LIST: the simple list of my endorsements for the election.
  2. The DETAILS: the whys and wherefores of each endorsement. This is how I arrived at each position.
  3. This page: my values, my sources, where to vote, and older ‘Deep Slates, to help make sense of my opinions.

The more CAPITALS, the more strongly I feel about it – especially on ballot measures.

A few days after each election, you can come back to that post and check the RESULTS.

If you want me to email you the ‘Deep Slate (no spam!) every SF election cycle, send me an email and I’ll add you to my list.

HOW I THINK

I recommend reading all of this (it won’t take that long!) to understand how I think, so you’ll have a sense of how to assess my recommendations for yourself.

  • I’m basically an idealist, an optimist, and a humanist.
  • My opinions come from my experience in local politics since 1995. I’ve done A TON of candidate interviews and lots of lobbying in my roles:
  • I don’t get a dime for this. I’m a software engineer by day and a political activist in my spare time.
  • The three biggest “norths” of my political compass are environmentalism, social justice and good government (reform type) issues.
  • While my views are definitely shaped by my activities in the SFLCV and previously the SFBC, my endorsements do NOT represent the views of either of those organizations.
  • I use the term “progressive” a lot, as something I value. Unfortunately, classic San Francisco progressivism has become fairly problematic – but more on that after I mention what it means. In SF, progressivism has historically meant a combination of classical liberal Democratic politics (equity – social, gender, racial, diversity, a sense that government can and should play an important role in solving society’s problems) plus environmental values (sustainability, long-term systematic thinking) and neighborhood-level populism (tenant’s rights, ethnic and socio-economic diversity, populism vs. corporatism). So that’s the good stuff. The bad stuff is that SF’s progressive movement has too often become “circle the wagons and shoot inward” performance art. Pragmatism and progress are too often sacrificed in the name of litmus tests and posturing – and it’s sad to see. I still believe in similar things at the end of the day, but I’d rather get things done.
  • I try to be aware of my biases; here are few that come to mind:
    • Poorer before richer when considering fairness issues. It’s best if something is fair, but if someone has to get screwed, make it the rich person. Because society always favors the richer.
    • The more money a local campaign has, the more questions should be asked of it: if a campaign has a lot of expensive media ads, mailers, etc… why? It might be fine, but the more money, the more questions as to why.
  • In some of these races it is a matter of picking between flawed options. 🙁
  • Ballot measures are a REALLY bad way to govern:
    • Most laws created by ballot measures SHOULD be done in the normal legislature, where they are easier to fix if they turn out wrong: you have to use a another ballot initiative to change or fix something that became law by a ballot measure, whereas the legislature can amend or fix any of their laws whenever they want.
    • Another problem is that you have to boil complex issues down to yes/no votes – which rarely is a good idea. But this is what we have, so keep in mind that some good ideas make bad ballot propositions, and a bad idea can sound good in a ballot initiative because the devil is often in the details. Also note that these measures are often gray – there is a lot of balancing going on…
    • …Which leads to another fundamental problem: these issues are often complex. When they are, they would be much better served by decision-makers who have time and expertise at their disposal. This is the whole point of a representative democracy: people elect a set of deciders who have time and are given resources to study issues before making decisions on complex legislation. Far too many ballot measures would be better served by more informed choice.
  • Budget set-asides are usually a bad idea: a set-aside guarantees the same amount of funding be taken from the general fund every year for a given program. The problem is that in lean years, set-asides then squeeze out funding for other important things, and generally reduce our government’s flexibility. That is fine for public good that is almost always difficult to prioritize like, say, libraries or parks (which chronically get deprioritized, leading to deferred maintenance and more expensive fixes when the money finally does get appropriated) but a really bad idea for normal expenses. Set asides should be avoided whenever possible.
  • 90% of my experience and knowledge is about local San Francisco issues, so state issues are a little greyer for me unless I say otherwise. Thus, for state stuff, I do a lot of reading and research from the sources listed below and anything else I can find.
  • Just like you, some of my opinions come from listening to those I trust, or tend to trust. Organizations like the ones listed as “bedrock” below get more credence, as well as politicians I support and believe in. Obviously this is dicey, as nothing beats first-hand knowledge and analysis, but that just gets us back to why I think ballot measures suck.

MY SOURCES

My best sources are personal experiences, and interviews and lobbying I’ve done with the SFLCV and the SFBC. But the limits of this are pretty obvious. I have very little direct experience with state issues, so below are some of the sources I use and a bit on how I arrive at my endorsements.

The first source for SF stuff is the official SF Voter guide and for California stuff, the State Voter guide. I like to read the pro and con arguments and also note who is writing them, as that often tells you at least as much as what they say. Also the analysis and explanations are critical. Dig in!

And for good baseline info on all of it, I highly recommend Ballotopedia: A wiki for ballots and elections! This is an incredible resource! I donated and maybe you should too! Here are there SF and CA pages – but you can fine other pages easily too:

Some of my bedrock sources are:

The groups above, with the possible exception of SPUR, generally share my values directly, and as such influence me a lot. SPUR is somewhat of an outlier, in that they seem a tad more centrist-pragmatic than the others (and occasionally me) but they are pro-urban, good-governmenty and I trust their motives. I particularly enjoy their commitment to sound policy, their clarity of thought, and their thorough write ups – I’d love to have the time and energy to do a slate as well as they do!

For state issues in particular, I really like to look at the various larger city newspapers. I know the most about the SF Chronicle‘s bias – I take them with a grain of salt on local stuff as they tend to be more conservative than me, but on state stuff I like to hear them out. It is also worth checking the other state papers like the San Jose Mercury News, the LA Times and the Sacramento Bee. Sadly, most of these are behind a paywall, but often you can read a certain number for free. (They should all make their endorsement editorials free as a public service.) Ballotpedia often has good links to the various newspapers as well.

In the “Worthwhile but Rabid” category are two more organizations I value, but view their recommendations with caution. Both are super “progressive”, and I tend to share a lot of their values, but they are often are the chorus of the “circle the wagons and shoot inward” progressivism I mention above – so I try to check their work:

  • The League of Pissed Off Voters: I’ve never liked their name ( Who can sustain anger for so long!?!) – but I really do enjoy reading their opinions, because they do their homework. Beware of absolutism and litmus tests.
  • The San Francisco Bay Guardian: Once the standard bearer of the progressive left in San Francisco, the quality of this source has really declined. They seem to be a bit of a shell ever since they were basically dissolved and the name got sold off to one of the editors. Beware of “more heat than light.” Still, it is worth reading.

Some other sources I check out are:

WHERE TO VOTE & MORE

WHERE TO VOTE:

SF has set up an awesome SF Voter Portal, a one stop website for all your “how to vote” type questions!

It should have anything you need to know:

  • Where do I vote?
  • Am I registered
  • Has my ballot been counted?
  • etc etc…

OAKLAND & SAN JOSE:

I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of Oakland or San Jose politics (If you have sites you like, please put ’em in the comments!) but the always thoughtful and thorough SPUR folks do SF, Oakland, and San Jose. See my thoughts on SPUR’s biases above.

OLDER ‘DEEP SLATES:

I’ve been doing the ‘Deep Slate since sometime in the ’90s. You can read all the ones I’ve saved by clicking here; It gets a bit dicey because before 2012, they were email only (not blog posts), so I’ve posted the email versions I could find.

AI & FORMATTING

All the writing in the ‘Deep Slate is directly mine. There is no AI-generated content. I have certainly used AI in numerous ways, but to improve my output, not create it:

  • Claude wrote me tooling to automate a lot of tedious cutting and pasting and searching and replacing!
  • New and Improved formatting! Claude made all the CSS styling to make the ‘Deep Slates all pretty like!
  • I also used AI to help me do web searches and find things in my previous ‘Deep Slates.

So, in the end, rest assured that all positions are mine, not Claude’s!