{"id":427366,"date":"2026-08-08T13:34:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T13:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/427366\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T13:34:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T13:34:24","slug":"five-takeaways-from-the-latest-campaign-finance-filings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/427366\/","title":{"rendered":"Five takeaways from the latest campaign finance filings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The November election<\/a> is a mere 88 days away, and filings released last Friday offer a glimpse of the money pouring into the San Francisco races.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While fundraising has stalled in Districts 2 and 4, where Stephen Sherill and Alan Wong both won in June by resounding margins<\/a> and cleared the field, candidates are raising much more in Districts 8 and 10 where the races are contested.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Money continues to follow in Mayor Daniel Lurie\u2019s footsteps<\/a>: The mayor\u2019s committees supporting a Muni funding ballot and his own charter reform initiatives have collectively raised a staggering $12.1 million as of the end of June.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Lurie continues to use his mayoral candidate committee as a means to raise money to pay for private consultants and strategists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an overview of the fundraising and spending across the major contests.<\/p>\n

Muni measure<\/p>\n

Tech companies have made the majority of contributions to support the Muni parcel tax measure<\/a> on the November ballot, which would provide an estimated $160 million<\/a> yearly to San Francisco\u2019s transit service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of note: OpenAI and Anthropic made a first foray into San Francisco election spending by each giving $500,000 in support of the measure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The committee, which is sponsored by Mayor Lurie, has raised a total of $3.5 million. Other major donors include AirBnb ($500,000) and cryptocurrency firm Ripple Labs ($500,000).\u00a0<\/p>\n

If passed, the measure would establish a tiered parcel tax on commercial and real estate properties to raise money to fund Muni and help address its financial crisis<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Charter reform measures\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mayor Lurie\u2019s packet of three charter reform measures has drawn more money than anything else on the ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Virtually no new filings have been reported since Mission Local last wrote about the committee\u2019s eye-watering $8.6 million haul<\/a> on July 6. This sum has largely been raised from a small pool of wealthy individuals<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most recent filings, however, also reveal that the committee has already spent $5.5 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That significant sum has mostly gone toward signature gathering. According to the filings, the committee spent $4.5 million on petition circulation, while $700,000 went to consultants and the remaining $280,000 or so has mostly covered polling and administrative costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

District 8<\/p>\n

District 8 supervisor candidate Manny Yekutiel has taken a strong fundraising lead, bringing in more contributions than his three opponents combined. <\/p>\n

But the numbers fail to reflect the impact from a June 30 story in the San Francisco Standard detailing a 2020 sexual assault allegation<\/a> from Brad Joseph Chapin, a political activist and former Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club board member.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That story was followed six days later when the San Francisco Chronicle ran a similar story<\/a>, adding that Chapin, who made the allegations, was wearing a police wire when he met Yekutiel in Duboce Park in what he told the Standard<\/a> was an attempt to \u201cfind some way to forgive him and move past the incident.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yekutiel has denied the allegations. How the reports will impact his campaign is unclear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At present, Yekutiel has stopped raising money altogether, according to his campaign.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cManny has stopped fundraising because he is already at the spending limit and has maxed out the matching funds,\u201d said a campaign spokesperson. \u201cMore fundraising right now wouldn\u2019t be a good use of his time, so he is instead spending the time on voter interactions.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of June, Yekutiel had a total of $509,341 in contributions, while his chief rival, Gary McCoy, had raised $104,832. <\/p>\n

Michael Nguyen had raised $55,364, and Darshini Patel had raised $20,354.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On top of that, every candidate but Patel has received disbursements from the city\u2019s public financing program: $255,000 for Yekutiel, $155,304 for McCoy and $89,364 for Nguyen.<\/p>\n

Candidates who participate in the city\u2019s public financing program \u2014 in which the city matches contributions received from supporters \u2014 are subject to campaign spending limits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The initial limit is $350,000 for supervisor candidates, provided there is no third-party spending in the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s currently the case for each supervisor race \u2014 so far. As of the end of June, Yekutiel had spent $220,360 and had $540,801 remaining in cash on hand. For the most part, that\u2019s money the campaign can\u2019t tap into until there\u2019s third-party spending in the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If recent supervisor races are any indication<\/a>, it\u2019s likely independent expenditures will come in as the election approaches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

District 10<\/p>\n

In District 10, the fundraising benchmarks are also far apart. Theo Ellington, like Yekutiel, has brought in more contributions than his two major opponents combined.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ellington has raised $217,302 in contributions and received more in public funds. J.R. Eppler has raised $50,039 in contributions and received $100,470 in public funds. Meanwhile, Dion-Jay Brookter has raised $69,112. There are seven other candidates registered<\/a> for the District 10 race, but none appear to have fundraised.<\/p>\n

Mayor Lurie\u2019s committee<\/p>\n

Beyond fundraising to support his ballot measures, Lurie continues to fund a private PR team that works alongside his City Hall communications office to push forward on his priorities and agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since taking office last year, he has spent $1.2 million on consultants and strategists, as first reported by the San Francisco Standard<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That includes $305,000 spent in the first half of this year, according to filings released last week that detail financial activity for his officeholder committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of that, $245,000 went toward campaign consultants, who include Elisabeth \u201cLis\u201d Smith, Max Szabo and Jennifer Pitts.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The November election is a mere 88 days away, and filings released last Friday offer a glimpse of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7917,35072,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-427366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-campaign-finance","tag-election-2026","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}