Board of Education

Phil Kim won with millions of dollars and the benefit of many key slate endorsements, as well as the advantage of incumbency.

Virginia Cheung got twice as many votes as Brandee Marckmann, spending $5k against Brandee’s $152k.

Virginia got three precincts, and Phil’s margin of victory wasn’t as great in the southeast, the Sunset Surfer’s Strip, and parts of Chinatown.

While incumbent Phil Kim won, progressives splitting the vote helped make this a 60/40 race. In the best case scenario, even serious fundraising and progressive unity probably would not have won against the low turnout. But this is a useful lesson for the November election, relative to the power of coalition-building in alignment with the United Educators and labor slate.

Ultimately, this shows that even with strong unified messaging across progressive coalitions and serious fundraising, it would have been very hard for a progressive to win in a low turnout election with millions being spent on the incumbent.

Looking at just Virginia vs Brandee votes, and excluding Phil Kim votes, the blue precincts are where Virginia Cheung got more votes than Brandee Marckmann. Virginia got more than double Brandee’s votes, while spending less money. Chinese language precincts preferred Virginia over Brandee, while Brandee did slightly better than Virginia in parts of SOMA/Mission Bay and the Bayview, as well as the Japantown precinct in D5 that’s surrounded by D2.