San Francisco is known for its progressive ways so it’s no surprise that the City by the Bay has taken steps that have even liberals shaking their heads in confusion. Under its ever-increasing Chapter 12X of the Administrative Code, city officials have now boycotted 28 states that don’t meet their woke guidelines. This means no official visits and no doing business with more than half the country.
The Naughty List
Chapter 12X began on October 14, 2016, with a ban on states that had “anti-LGBT” laws. On August 9, 2019, it expanded the legislation to include states that prohibited abortion. And on November 5, 2021, states that have “voter suppression” laws were banned as well. The city even has a website that keeps track of all the states they are boycotting, called the State Ban List.
City Administrator Carmen Chu released a memorandum on March 4 that gives a list of the states being punished and the reasons why they are being banned. Texas, for example, was added to the list because it only allows transgender athletes to compete against their own birth-assigned gender.
Nevada made the naughty list because officials raised the maximum number of voters allowed in a precinct from 3,000 to 5,000. Senate Bill 84, which passed 60-0, was introduced by Democratic Senator Nicole J. Cannizzaro and was supposedly designed to make it easier for voters. Executive Director of the Nevada voting rights group Silver State Voices said the purpose of the bill was to make sure large apartment complexes wouldn’t be split into several different precincts, making the voting process a lot more confusing.
However, San Francisco’s Elections Department Director John Arntz said, “increasing the number of people in a precinct reduces the number of potential polling places and ‘restricts general voting.’”
Biting Off the Hands That Feed Them
Let’s face it; The City by the Bay isn’t exactly self-sustaining. Now that officials have banned the city from more than half the country, they find themselves stuck in a deep mud pit of their own making. Because they can not accept contract bids for jobs from these naughty states, they won’t have a surplus of bids to choose from – meaning they probably won’t be getting the lowest bids so jobs and materials will cost more. This also goes for procuring goods. With options dwindling down, the likelihood of finding cheaper foods, materials, and services does not look good.
In fact, even city officials have noticed the error of their ways. Chu admitted: “It limits our ability to procure products and receive services and contract services we need to run. It limits competition for our work, which is wild. Mind-boggling, even.”
Former City Supervisor Scott Weiner started the whole ban initiative in 2016 when he passed an ordinance forbidding travel to states that had anti-LGBT laws and disallowed any contracts with businesses in those states. At the time, he thought it was a good thing because LGBT employees might feel uncomfortable in areas that didn’t support their beliefs. Now, however, Weiner said, “over time I have come to have mixed views on the approach.” He continued:
“On the one hand, I believe in using our dollars to express our values. When you have a state like Florida right now, which is about to enact its horrific ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, the idea of spending our public dollars in Florida is an affront.”
“But on the other hand, we know that an awful lot of Floridians, maybe the majority, don’t support that law. There is a huge LGBTQ community in Florida, including many LGBTQ-owned businesses. We are sweeping in an entire state, and sweeping in businesses owned by people who are trying to help. So, it’s complicated and I have become very conflicted and I argue with myself.”
Chu also expressed her doubts, saying, “It is fundamentally not as straightforward an issue as I once believed,” and admitted that the idea is not as popular as officials may have thought it would be. “No city has reached out to say they want to mirror our rules,” she acknowledged.
(Photo by Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Wall Street Journal writer James Freeman chimed in on the issue: “Call it wokeness or super wokeness, but once again we see the power of progressive leftism to destroy without building anything of value.” Freeman then quoted Joe Eskenazi, a San Francisco reporter, who beat the streets to see what businesses and other people thought of these business sanctions. “On the contrary,” Eskenazi was quoted as saying, “on-the-ground organizers and activists told me San Francisco’s move was high-handed, unwelcome and wrong-headed.”
Eskenazi wrote in Mission Local: “As a result of this vast boycott, San Francisco is constraining the number of businesses it can ink deals with, which all but certainly inhibits quality and drives up costs. It also adds onerous time constraints to the contracting process, which leads to poor outcomes and also drives up costs.”
Chris Queen of PJ Media let loose this little gem: “San Francisco is awfully judgy for a city where homeless people poop in the streets all the time.”
Citizens of the Golden City are finally waking up to being so woke. Just last month, three school board members were recalled because they placed progressive politics over students during the pandemic. This was a huge step for the liberal community. What will officials do now that they’ve cut themselves off from half the country? Will they fully realize the error of their ways and lift the boycotts? Especially since they are alone in their righteous battle and no other city, so far, wants to join their mission and bite off the hands that feed them.
~ Read more from Kelli Ballard.
