Here’s the fuller version. The statement is basically describing a San Francisco political arc from progressive optimism → visible dysfunction/frustration → recall backlash → more moderate reset.
The important caveat: the city’s problems were not all caused by progressives. COVID, remote work, fentanyl, housing shortages, police staffing, homelessness, budget problems, and downtown collapse all mattered. But voters increasingly attached those problems to progressive governance, especially where officials seemed more focused on ideology than basic competence.
Short Version
San Francisco went through this rough sequence:
- 2018–2019: Progressive candidates and ideas gained ground.
- 2020–2021: COVID made schools, crime, homelessness, drugs, and downtown disorder feel worse.
- 2021–2022: Parents and public-safety voters organized recalls.
- 2022: Voters recalled three school board members and progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
- 2022–2024: Moderate/YIMBY/public-safety Democrats gained strength.
- 2024 onward: Voters backed more enforcement-oriented policies and elected Daniel Lurie mayor, signaling frustration with City Hall’s status quo.
Timeline
| Year / Date | What Happened | Why It Mattered |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | San Francisco politics were already moving left on homelessness, policing, race, education, and criminal justice. Progressive activists had strong influence in city institutions. | This helped set the stage for later fights over whether the city was prioritizing ideological goals over basic services. |
| 2018 school board election | Several progressive school board members came into office, including Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga. | The school board later became the first major flashpoint of the backlash. |
| Nov. 2019 | Chesa Boudin was elected district attorney on a progressive criminal-justice-reform platform. He opposed cash bail, emphasized decarceration, diversion, and police accountability. | This was one of the clearest examples of San Francisco embracing the national “progressive prosecutor” movement. Source: 2019 San Francisco DA election overview. |
| Jan. 2020 | Boudin took office. | Almost immediately, his agenda became tied to debates over crime, disorder, prosecution rates, and repeat offenders. |
| 2020 COVID period | Schools shut down, downtown emptied, remote work hit San Francisco especially hard, and visible street disorder became more politically salient. | Many voters became less tolerant of arguments that city problems were merely structural or complicated. They wanted visible competence. |
| 2020–2021 school board controversies | The school board pushed controversial priorities while schools remained closed: renaming dozens of schools, changing Lowell High School admissions, and handling racial controversies involving board member Alison Collins. | Parents argued the board was distracted by symbolic politics while children were out of classrooms. This became a textbook “progressive governance vs. competence” fight. Source: Guardian on the school board recall. |
| Jan. 2021 | Parents began organizing the school board recall. | This showed that the backlash was not primarily Republican. It came from San Francisco parents, many of them Democrats or liberals. |
| 2021 | Boudin faced growing criticism over property crime, open-air drug use, anti-Asian violence, repeat offenders, and disorder. | Critics said his office was too lenient and poorly managed. Supporters said he was being scapegoated for problems he did not create. Both claims have some truth. |
| Sept.–Oct. 2021 | Recall organizers submitted enough signatures to force a vote against school board members. | The political pressure became organized and measurable. |
| Feb. 15, 2022 | San Francisco voters recalled three school board members: Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga. More than 70% voted for recall in each case. Source: KQED school board recall results. | This was the first major sign that even very liberal San Francisco voters would punish officials they saw as incompetent or ideologically distracted. |
| June 7, 2022 | Voters recalled Chesa Boudin as district attorney. The recall passed by a clear margin. Source: Los Angeles Times on Boudin recall. | This became the national symbol of backlash against progressive prosecutors. |
| July 2022 | Mayor London Breed appointed Brooke Jenkins, a former prosecutor and Boudin critic, as district attorney. Source: CBS San Francisco on Jenkins appointment. | This was a sharp shift from reform-prosecutor politics toward a more traditional public-safety posture. |
| Nov. 2022 | Jenkins won the special election to finish Boudin’s term. | The recall was not just a protest vote; voters then kept the tougher-on-crime replacement. |
| 2023 | San Francisco politics continued shifting around public safety, downtown recovery, housing, and homelessness. | “Moderate” in SF usually did not mean Republican. It meant Democrats more focused on policing, housing supply, business conditions, and city operations. |
| March 2024 | Voters approved Proposition E, expanding police tools and changing rules around surveillance, pursuits, and paperwork. Source: San Francisco Public Press on Prop E. | This showed voters were willing to give police more discretion after years of progressive police-reform politics. |
| March 2024 | Voters also approved Proposition F, requiring drug screening/treatment compliance for certain welfare recipients suspected of drug addiction. Source: SF Chronicle on Prop F implementation. | This showed frustration with open-air drug use and a move toward more coercive treatment policy. |
| Nov. 2024 | Mayor London Breed lost reelection to Daniel Lurie, a wealthy nonprofit founder who ran as a change candidate focused on public safety, homelessness, and competence. Source: ABC7 on Breed conceding to Lurie. | This was another sign voters wanted a reset, though Breed herself was not simply a left-progressive figure. She had already moved rightward on public safety. |
| 2024–2025 | The Board of Supervisors shifted toward a more centrist/YIMBY/public-safety alignment, though SF politics remained complex. Source: San Francisco Chronicle analysis. | The old progressive-vs-moderate labels became less clean, but the general trend moved away from maximal progressive governance. |
What “Progressive Wave” Means In SF
It does not mean San Francisco became socialist in one clean sweep. It means several institutions were influenced by a bundle of progressive priorities:
| Area | Progressive Priority | Voter Backlash Concern |
|---|---|---|
| Criminal justice | Less incarceration, less cash bail, more diversion, less punitive prosecution | Repeat offenders, theft, open-air drug markets, disorder, low accountability |
| Schools | Equity framing, renaming schools, changing Lowell admissions | Schools closed too long, symbolic politics, Asian American parent backlash, competence concerns |
| Homelessness | Housing-first, harm reduction, less punitive enforcement | Encampments, street disorder, drug use, public spaces feeling unsafe |
| Policing | More oversight, less aggressive enforcement, concern over racial disparities | Slow response, property crime, visible disorder, lack of deterrence |
| Housing | Split: progressives often emphasized tenant protections; moderates/YIMBYs emphasized building more | High housing costs, permitting dysfunction, anti-development politics |
Why The Backlash Happened
The backlash was not just “people became conservative.” San Francisco is still overwhelmingly Democratic and socially liberal. The shift was more like:
“We still believe in liberal values, but we are tired of disorder, symbolic politics, weak execution, and officials who seem dismissive of normal residents’ concerns.”
Three issues especially drove the turn.
1. Schools
Parents were furious that schools stayed closed while the board focused on renaming schools and changing Lowell admissions. That made the board look unserious to many voters. The recall was enormous: over 70% supported removing all three eligible members. Source: KQED school board recall results.
2. Crime and disorder
Boudin became the face of public frustration. It is debated how much he personally caused crime trends, because crime is affected by many factors beyond the DA. But politically, voters associated him with non-prosecution, repeat offenders, disorder, and a sense that the city had lost control. Source: Los Angeles Times on Boudin recall.
3. Homelessness and drugs
Open-air drug use, encampments, and fentanyl made progressive harm-reduction language sound inadequate to many voters. Even people sympathetic to addiction treatment wanted more visible order.
Was SF Actually “Suffering”?
That phrase is rhetorically loaded, but it points to real frustrations.
San Francisco had:
- Severe homelessness and encampment problems.
- Highly visible public drug use.
- Fentanyl crisis and overdose deaths.
- Downtown commercial collapse after remote work.
- Property crime and retail theft concerns.
- School governance fights.
- Housing affordability crisis.
- A feeling that City Hall spent huge money without delivering clean, safe streets.
But the fairest version is: San Francisco was suffering from a mix of structural problems, pandemic shocks, and policy/governance failures. It was not all caused by progressive ideology. The political problem for progressives was that many officials sounded like they were explaining away the problems instead of fixing them.
Why Recalls Worked There
San Francisco is unusually recall-friendly because local voters are politically engaged and the city allows direct-democracy mechanisms. Recalls become possible when three things line up:
| Ingredient | SF Example |
|---|---|
| A clear villain or symbol | Boudin; school board members |
| A daily-life grievance | Schools closed, crime, disorder, drugs |
| A donor/organizing network | Parent groups, public-safety groups, moderate Democratic donors |
| A replacement path | Mayor could appoint replacements; voters could later confirm them |
| A public mood shift | “Enough. Fix the basics.” |
Did SF Come Out Better?
Mixed.
Better in the political sense: voters showed they could punish incompetence and force a course correction.
Possibly better in governance: there is now more emphasis on public safety, housing supply, downtown recovery, and visible results.
Not magically fixed: homelessness, fentanyl, affordability, and downtown recovery remain hard problems. A recall can remove a symbol, but it does not automatically rebuild institutions.
So the original comment is best understood as:
“I’ve seen this movie before: voters elect very progressive officials, the city’s quality-of-life problems get worse or feel worse, voters eventually snap back through recalls or elections, and the city becomes more pragmatic afterward.”
That is a reasonable interpretation of San Francisco. The overstatement is the certainty that every other city will follow the same path or that the outcome will definitely be better.