For the longest time, the city of San Francisco was, like many other urban areas, dominated by a
Republican machine. While there had been some power held by both the Nativist Union Labor party and the national Democrats, the two's power collapsed when an attempt was made to merge the two, isolating both the UL's anti-immigrant base and the Democratic Party's immigrant base. From 1910 to 1976, the Republican party held power in San Francisco, with a machine that destroyed the Union power the city once held. Only once during this time had a non-Republican coalition even held control of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which happened in 1922, when the
Democratic-Union Labor party (or DUL) formed an unsteady coalition with the
Socialist and
Prohibition parties.
However, things had changed during the 1970s, with San Francisco growing as an urban area, and the more socially liberal policies of Mayor Jonas Williams[1] allowing for a greater migration of LGBT individuals to join an already quite diverse community in San Francisco. These things, along with the rising leftism of the 1970s and the 1974 San Francisco Rent Strike allowed for populist Allan K. Jordan to win the Mayoral Election with his own local party, the
San Francisco Progressive Party, with a coalition of Black, Latino, LGBT, and left wing white voters, who had aligned with the rent strike and then the SFPP.
As one machine left power, a new one emerged, however, the San Francisco Progressives appeared to be much less stable than the Republicans who preceded them. The first obstacle was that many more traditional labor voters disliked the growth of LGBT rights in the city, particularly as many leading members of the SFPP were gay. Businesses, who didn't mind LGBT customers making them money, began to dislike the growth of the IWW and the "People's Liberation Church" in San Francisco, who all promoted left wing causes and often disrupted businesses. This opposition was only helped by two left-wing split off groups, the
White Panther Party, a group of left wing activists who attempted to fashion themselves as the same as Oakland's Black Panthers, were furious when Mayor Jordan refused to immediately legalize marijuana and passed a gun control ordinance, causing the groups formation as an actual political party (they were only an activist group who called themselves a "party" before) in 1981. Another even more minor split, saw the creation of the
Worker's Party, a political party that espoused Communism and decried Jordan's policies as "Bourgeois faux-leftism".
Despite these splits, Jordan remained popular with much of the city, and was helped to re-election in 1979, 1983, and 1987 by some, *
ahem* maneuvers used by the IWW and People's Liberation Church, both major allies. However, when Jordan announced his retirement from public office in 1990, the San Francisco Progressives began to split. For years the party had held a much more minor wing that detested Jordan's more left-wing economic policies, but stood behind his moves for progress on social issues. However, when Jordan was replaced by a much more unpopular and politically unskilled crony named John West, this wing of the party revolted, and formed the
San Francisco Green Party. New leader Eileen D. Cobb began to run as an "Anti-Machine" alternative to the Progressives, and attacked them for "fiscal irresponsibility" and for not promoting "Green Businesses". Ironically, Cobb's party began to pick up many old white Republican voters, causing a nearly full-scale collapse of the Republican Party, as they fell behind even the White Panthers and Workers Parties, especially when the
United Party was started by Asian-American businessman Song Tung in 1994, and promptly scooped up many Asian voters who had been the last thing keeping San Francisco Republicans alive.
While the Greens provided a strong opposition to the Progressives, it still took years before they could fully defeat the Progressive Machine. It wasn't until 2002 that the Progressives lost their majority in the Board of Supervisors, and even then they just responded by forming an insane coalition with the DUL and the White Panther Party that provided San Francisco with a period of heavy business regulations, the end of the "Jordan Gun Control Law" (which both the WPP and DUL opposed), and a referendum decriminalizing marijuana in the city. However, in 2007, the Greens smelled blood in the water and with a campaign led by Eileen Cobb's husband, George Cobb, were able to take the mayors mansion and in 2008 they won a slim plurality in the Board of Supervisors, which was then propped up by the United Party. Cobb's mayoralty was a strange time for San Francisco, with attempts being made to reinstate Gun Control, go after the increasingly corrupt and splitting People's Liberation Church, and loosen some business regulations while also promoting "Green Business". Cobb faced recall from the White Panthers and the Workers Party in 2009, and while that failed hard, the Greens were shell-shocked in the 2010 board of supervisors elections, losing 10 seats to the Progressives now lead by Allan Jordan's son, Kendrick Jordan, who promptly celebrated this Board of Supervisors election with an announcement that he would be challenging Cobb for mayor in 2011.
Jordan, unsurprisingly, defeated Cobb quite easily, with Unions and the People's Liberation Church backing him hard, and the Progressives were able to regain majority power in the Board of Supervisors. However, the "Lesser Jordan" began to have a similarly transformative time as mayor. He began to co-op many different factions of each platform, moving green energy policy through the Board of Supervisors, getting a referendum to legalize psychedelics, investing into Chinatown and other Asian neighborhoods, and to the surprise of many, going after the People's Liberation Church after the suspicious death of a former member. This caused both a rise in the Worker's Party, who had sucked up much of the People's Liberation Church's support as it went under heavy investigation by Jordan's administration, and the collapse of the Progressive Party's majority in the Board of Supervisors in 2014. This collapse lead to the creation of the "Rainbow Coalition", a coalition of every party in the BoS with the exception of the Worker's Party, who generally agreed on Jordan's policies. Jordan easily won re-election in 2015, and as he continued many more nonpartisan reforms, his popularity has only grown.
However, while Jordan is heavily popular, the Progressives seem to be hurting on a citywide level, especially as Jordan began to campaign less due to the strength of the "Rainbow Coalition". As such, the 2018 Board of Supervisors Election seemed like a premier time for the Greens to take a plurality in San Francisco's legislative body, and push policy more towards their side. George Cobb, the former mayor of San Francisco, had begun to make a political comeback, and took the Green Party's Board of Supervisors leadership position following a surprisingly poor performance in 2016. Cobb, despite being 74 years old, began to campaign heavily, running a campaign that "exerted" energy, even throughout 2017.
However, things were shaken up for the race in February of 2018, when the Democratic-Union Labor convention was held. Aging leader Thomas Vigil, who had forced the DUL into the Rainbow Coalition, faced a challenge from much younger Board of Supervisors member Louis Wallace. Wallace ran a right-wing campaign, and won easily on an anti-Rainbow Coalition platform. The Rainbow Coalition had grown unpopular with members of the DUL, who saw their greatest defeat since 1944 (by percentage of seats held) in 2016, being forced to only 6 seats in the Board of Supervisors, and losing many seats to other Rainbow Coalition candidates. However, the party saw serious potential in the Asian-American community in particular, as the United Party, despite being lead by the same leader, Song Tung, as they always had, had moved to the left after joining the Rainbow Coalition, and in particular many non-Chinese Asian-Americans saw the United Party as increasingly a "Chinese Only" party despite largely being seen as the party of Asian-Americans. The few White voters who voted for the United Party, despite its largely Asian base, voiced the same concerns, and began to look to the DUL as a conservative option. On the campaign trail Wallace attacked Jordan for his "movement away from the people" and for "prioritizing neighborhoods", taking up much of the conservative vote, and looking much stronger than originally expected in original polls, as many also wanted a party that opposed the Rainbow Coalition and wasn't openly Communist.
As the campaign went on, Mayor Jordan began to take a much more active role in campaigning, hoping to save the Progressives, who, after the growth of the DUL, looked like they'd be campaigning more for second place than first. While some were swayed by Kendrick Jordan, who was, after all, quite popular, many didn't really see the need in supporting his Progressives if they were going to be coalitioning with the Greens, and as such, the Cobb campaign held a massive lead throughout the race. Jordan's own machine apparatus that his father had build had been choked out by Jordan, and there were quite a few IWW members who didn't mind the thought of supporting the Workers party. In the end, the Greens took a large plurality, the DUL returned to third party status, the Workers Party continued to fail upwards, and as a result both the Progressives and the United Party took hits. Many expected the so-called Rainbow coalition to completely fall apart, and in a way it did, but the Green, Progressive, Union, and White Panther parties still formed a large governing coalition in San Francisco.
[1] Generated name, yes this is inspired by Seventh Party system