Two tech billionaire-backed political organizations, GrowSF and Abundant San Francisco, have endorsed Ruth Ferguson, Elijah Ball, Erwin Tam and Monroe Lace for City College\u2019s Board of Trustees.<\/p>\n
GrowSF and Abundant SF are part of what political watchdog the Phoenix Project calls the \u201cAstroturf Network.\u201d The term \u201castroturfing\u201d refers to a carefully orchestrated and well-financed political campaign presenting itself as a community-based, grassroots movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GrowSF brands itself as committed to \u201cmaking San Francisco work for everyone.\u201d It is headed by Sachin Agarwal, a tech entrepreneur who used to work at Apple, Twitter and Lyft, and Steven Bacio, a software engineer who worked at Amazon and Google.<\/p>\n
Abundant SF boasts a similar mission: delivering \u201coutcomes that make our city vibrant and affordable.\u201d It is the local chapter of the bigger Abundance Network, a political group founded by Misha Chellam, a serial entrepreneur, and Zack Rosen, founder of tech company Pantheon. Its political arm is called Families for a Vibrant San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Analysis of publicly available data shows that GrowSF\u2019s major donors include crypto-CEO Chris Larsen and Y Combinator partners Jessica Livingston and Garry Tan, while Families for a Vibrant San Francisco is heavily backed by Larsen, former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson, and Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman.<\/p>\n
Fiscal responsibility is a priority for these groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBall knows how a campus gets built and paid for, Lace knows where the students would come from, and Tam knows how to read the books,\u201d says GrowSF\u2019s voter guide. \u201c[Ferguson] has the college’s cost problem down to specifics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of Ball, Abundant SF says in its vote guide that \u201che can provide the guidance our government needs to best execute complex matters involving land use and development.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Tam and Ferguson, Abundant SF emphasizes their \u201cfinancial expertise,\u201d and for Lace, they point to her interest in dual enrollment for high schoolers.<\/p>\n
In 2024, City College nearly lost its accreditation for noncompliance around financial planning and board governance. Today, the dominant narrative about City College is that it is struggling with a budget deficit and shrinking reserves, with declining student enrollment as the culprit for loss of funding. In March, the Chancellor announced a plan to stop offering classes at the college\u2019s Downtown Center, and to relocate them to other centers,.due to impending cuts in state funding and low enrollment<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn order to address a lot of the issues that City College will be facing, especially with running into our structural deficit, I realized we need to have a broad coalition,\u201d Ball said when asked about those endorsing him.<\/p>\n Ball, Tam, Lace and Ferguson have endorsements from other GrowSF candidates including Mayor Daniel Lurie himself, Senator Scott Weiner, school board President Phil Kim, and several district supervisors.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, AFT 2121, City College\u2019s faculty union, and the Phoenix Project hosted a presentation on money in San Francisco politics.<\/p>\n According to their research, the Astroturf Network has facilitated massive spending on local candidates and ballot initiatives by some of San Francisco\u2019s most prominent billionaires \u2014 at least $78 million since 2020.<\/p>\n \u201c[What] concerns me is that the billionaire agenda tends to go towards gentrification and consolidating executive power,\u201d said Robin Pugh, a business teacher at City College and the president of AFT 2121.\u00a0<\/p>\n AFT 2121 has made their choices for community college board of trustees, supporting the labor-backed slate of Bunny McFadden, Leah LaCroix and Jeremy Lee, along with United Educators of San Francisco and SEIU 1021. These unions are also teaming up to support several board of education candidates in a campaign dubbed<\/a>, \u201cSF Teachers vs. GrowSF.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that we see some of these billionaire-backed candidates do is throw up their hands and buy into the \u2018doom loop\u2019 about both San Francisco and City College,\u201d Pugh said. \u201c[The Board] has been talking about a structural deficit and throwing up their hands, wringing their hands. And it’s just not true.\u201d<\/p>\n Pugh pointed to AFT 2121\u2019s own analysis of the budget<\/a>, where they have actually found a surplus of $20 million for the 2024-25 school year.<\/p>\n The \u201cdoom loop\u201d she\u2019s referring to is a term picked up by mainstream media outlets<\/a> to describe the phenomenon of capital abandoning urban centers after the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also been used to describe San Francisco\u2019s increasing homelessness, drug use and other crimes of poverty.<\/p>\n