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| Tech billionaire Ron Conway |
It turns out
that Andy Stern is not
the only SEIU official who’s working with billionaires to fight pro-worker
candidates.
Ten days
ago, Dave Regan deposited a quarter
million dollars of SEIU-UHW members’
funds into a Super PAC to oppose two pro-worker candidates running for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
One of the
candidates is Gordon
Mar, the Executive Director of “Jobs
with Justice San Francisco,” a pro-labor organization backed by many unions…
including SEIU.
Go figure.
According to
campaign
records, Regan dropped the $250K into a PAC that’s long been associated
with billionaire tech investor Ron
Conway, a San Francisco resident who’s been sharply criticized for using
his cash to exert outsized influence on San Francisco politics.
Just days
after Regan deposited the money into Conway’s PAC (“Progress San Francisco”), the
PAC funneled more than $120,000 into two “Independent Expenditure”
campaigns to oppose the pro-worker candidates. (The two IEs are “San
Franciscans for Change, Supporting Johnson and Trauss for D6 Supervisor 2018”
and “Safe and Clean Sunset Coalition, Supporting Ho for D4 Supervisor 2018.”)
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| SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan |
Conway, once
dubbed the “Godfather of Silicon Valley,” was an early investor in Google,
Facebook and other tech companies. He was the single largest donor to former San
Francisco Mayor Ed Lee… dumping
$600,000 into an independent expenditure committee to support Lee. After Lee
was elected, observers criticized him for taking actions to benefit the companies
in which Conway has investments.
When Lee
died suddenly in office, Conway threw his support behind London Breed, who defeated two progressives in June 2018 with the
help of a half million dollars of Conway’s money, according to campaign records.
Breed now sits in the mayor’s office.
Regan, by pouring
$250,000 into Conway’s PAC, has joined forces with a gang of SF business titans.
In recent
days, a business association representing San Francisco’s 40 largest employers --
the so-called “Committee on Jobs” --
dumped $50,000 into Conway’s PAC. The group’s board is headed by Lloyd Dean, the CEO of Dignity Health, which employs about
13,000 of SEIU-UHW’s members. Conway also serves on the Board of Directors of
the “Committee on Jobs.”
Another
contributor is Diane Wilsey, the
owner and CEO of A. Wilsey Properties
Company, a San Francisco-based real estate company. Last week, she dropped
$150,000 into Conway’s PAC, according to campaign
records. (See below.)
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| Diane Wilsey -- Dave's pal |
Wilsey, the
daughter of a US ambassador and the great-granddaughter of the founder of Dow Chemical, inherited $300 million
and a real estate company when her husband, a real estate tycoon, died in 2002.
She’s also a
socialite who pays special attention to the ballet, the opera and museums, which
earned her the title of “San Francisco’s queen of philanthropy” by the New York Times. (Jori Finkel, “For
San Francisco’s Queen of Philanthropy, No Quiet Exits,” New York Times, August 1, 2016)
By the way…
she loves her pet dogs. She donated thousands of dollars to put her dogs’ names
on the walls of a San Francisco museum, where her pure-bred canines are
memorialized as generous donors to the museum.
WTF, right?
And here’s a
shocker.
Wilsey reportedly
doesn’t have much respect for regular people.
A former director of San
Francisco’s museums told the New York
Times: “She can laugh and joke with anyone, even a truck driver. Her
failing is that she has not always listened to what people told her if they
didn’t have social standing.” (Laura M. Holson, “Dede
Wilsey Is the Defiant Socialite,” New
York Times, September 24, 2016)
Another
former director put it more bluntly: “A lowly staff member does not command her
attention. There is a master-servant relationship that gets in the way of
things.”
Yo, Dave… she
sounds like a f*cking perfect ally for the workers in SEIU-UHW. Great job.
So who are
the two candidates opposed by Regan, Conway, Wilsey, and the other gold-plated
execs?
One is Gordon Mar, the Executive Director of “Jobs
with Justice San Francisco.” He’s a candidate in District 4 for the Board of
Supervisors. The second is Matt Haney,
a tenants rights attorney who served as the President of the Board of Education.
He’s a candidate in District 6.
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| Diane Wilsey relaxing with her dogs |
Mar and
Haney have each been endorsed by more than 20 unions, including UNITE HERE, NUHW,
CNA, UFCW, Teamsters, the teachers’ union, the San Francisco Labor Council, and
SEIU Local 1021. They’ve also been endorsed by groups like the Green Party, the
San Francisco Tenants Union, San Francisco Berniecrats, the San Francisco
League of Pissed Off Voters, as well as progressive members of the San
Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Meanwhile,
their opponents -- Jessica Ho, Sonja Trauss and Christine Johnson, whom Regan is backing to the tune of $250,000 --
are each endorsed by just two unions.
So why is
Regan working with corporate fatcats to oppose pro-worker candidates?
First of
all, this isn’t new for Regan. Since Andy Stern appointed him as the trustee of
SEIU-UHW, Regan has dramatically reshaped the union’s former political orientation
in order to align it with business executives and the right wing of the labor
movement.
In 2014, for
example, Regan joined billionaire Conway and AirBnB investor Reid Hoffman
in backing David Chiu, another
corporate Democrat, in his race against David
Campos, a progressive candidate for a California Assembly seat in San
Francisco.
Secondly,
there’s undoubtedly a transactional deal hidden behind Regan’s contribution --
a tit-for-tat exchange in which Regan kicks down $250,000 of SEIU-UHW members’
money in return for some secret benefit to Regan.
From the
face of it, it’s difficult to see how SEIU-UHW’s numbers could possibly benefit
from defeating pro-worker candidates and replacing them with corporate Democrats
beholden to a billionaire tech investor and corporate bosses, including the CEO
of Dignity Health.
Leave it to
Regan -- a so-called “21st century thinker” -- to sell out workers
in favor of corporate executives.
For more
information, see excerpts from campaign filings below. Also, here are links to several
articles:
Joe Kukura, “Massive
Dark Money Donation Rocks D6 Race,” SF
Weekly, September 20, 2018.
Joe
Fitzgerald Rodriguez, “Mystery
backers of Trauss, Johnson drop $100k into D6 race,” San Francisco Examiner, September 20, 2018.
Matier &
Ross, “The
one-two strategy in SF’s District Six supervisor race gets money behind it,”
San Francisco Chronicle, September
24, 2018.
