Filing fees and public financing as clues to 2010 supervisor races - SFBG

08/03/10 - San Francisco Bay Guardian
by Sarah Phelan

For months now--and in a few cases, over a year- a bunch of dedicated residents have been campaigning in the hopes of becoming the next supervisor in districts 2,4,6,8 and 10. But now comes the moment of truth:

Between July 12 and August 6, all these potential candidates must file all necessary paperwork and pay all necessary fees to qualify for the November ballot.

And, provided they get enough signatures, they can submit a petition in which each signature represents 50 cents towards offsetting their $500 candidate-filing fee.

These signatures are called signatures-in-lieu (or SIL) and they provide an interesting data point if you are trying to figure out who has community support and/or money.

A spokesperson for the San Francisco Elections Department recently told me that the point of the signature-in-lieu petition is to allow anyone to get on the ballot, regardless of their financial circumstances—provided they have valid support.

“If they were to collect, let’s say, 1,000 valid signatures, then that totally offsets their candidate filing fee,” the Elections spokesperson said. “But if they go over 1,000 signatures, they don’t get extra money back.”

And, as of July 26, Elections started to look at candidates’ SIL petitions to get an idea of who will owe what come Friday, when the filing fees are due. This is done by figuring out of the signatures are valid or not. To be valid, a signature must come from a person who resides in the geographical area that is covered by the race.

In D. 10, none of the candidates has so far succeeded in qualifying for a complete waiver, which is an interesting statistic in a race that remains wide open at this point.

But Steve Moss came close (1097 sigs submitted, 955 are valid). Chris Jackson came fairly close (904 submitted, 802 valid), Marlene Tran got half way (718 submitted, 574 valid) as did Lynette Sweet (509 submitted, 479 valid), and Malia Cohen secured a third of needed sigs to waive the fee (504 submitted, 338 valid).

Fellow D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly told me that he decided not to concentrate his energies on signature-in-lieu gathering, based on on-the-ground intel that Jackson and Moss had already done a thorough job of knocking on doors and asking for folks’ sigs.

Kelly said he’s focusing his efforts on qualifying for increasing levels of public financing. And so far, Kelly is one of eight candidates in D. 10, who have either qualified or are under review for public financing, making D. 10 the top public financing district, citywide, with $233,065 distributed, as of July 30.

Leading the D. 10 public financing pack is Malia Cohen with $53,671 in public funds disbursed. She is followed by Moss ($53,284) and Jackson ($50,220). Kelly is in fourth place ($39,548), Kristine Enea is in fifth ($26,342), DeWitt Lacy is sixth—and Lynette Sweet and Eric Smith’s public funds applications are still under review.