We recommend voting for Xavier Becerra for Governor.

Our full analysis of this race is coming soon.

We recommend voting for Fiona Ma for Lieutenant Governor.

In June we endorsed Josh Fryday, who unfortunately finished third and didn't advance. The general election is now Fiona Ma, a Democrat, against Gloria Romero, a Republican, and Ma is the clear choice.

The Lieutenant Governor sits on the State Lands Commission, holds voting seats on the UC Regents, CSU Trustees, and Community Colleges Board of Governors, and chairs the Commission for Economic Development. Most candidates treat this office as a stepping stone. Ma has specific plans for its actual tools.

Why vote for Fiona Ma?

Fiona Ma started her public service career in San Francisco, serving as the Sunset's Supervisor from 2002 to 2006, and has since held office at every level of California government: six years in the Assembly, where she had more than 60 bills signed into law and served as Speaker pro Tempore, a term on the Board of Equalization, and two terms as State Treasurer. We endorsed her for Treasurer in 2022 and called her the safe and stable choice. She was.

I have never lost a race for office, and that is not by accident. When I set out to accomplish something, I commit fully and I deliver.

— Fiona Ma, GrowSF questionnaire

The Treasurer's job turns out to be direct preparation for this one. Ma chairs the committee that allocates the tax credits that make affordable housing possible, sits on the California Housing Finance Agency board, issued the state's first-ever bonds for community college student housing, and launched the Dream for All down payment program for first-time homebuyers. As Lieutenant Governor she would sit on the boards of the very institutions she has been financing, and she is the only elected official who sits on all three. Her plan would put workforce housing on the 75,000 acres of land that school districts and colleges already own, funded through a zero-interest revolving loan fund, so teachers and college staff can afford to live where they work. On the State Lands Commission, she wants to push California's first commercial-scale offshore wind hub at Morro Bay and Humboldt into active construction.

She is also proposing a reform we've already endorsed in another race: abolishing the Board of Equalization. Ma served on that board, chaired it, and initiated the outside audits that exposed the mismanagement behind the 2017 reforms that stripped most of its powers. Now she wants to finish the job, which is exactly the position we took in our Board of Equalization endorsement. It says something when a politician proposes eliminating a body she herself sat on.

Shirley Weber has done the job competently, and we endorse her for another term.

The Secretary of State's primary job is running California's elections, and Weber has done it without drama — which is exactly what you want. Under her tenure, California hit a record 22.6 million registered voters in 2024, and over 5 million Californians signed up for ballot tracking through the "Where's My Ballot" system. She's also expanded same-day voter registration and grown the number of Voter Choice Act counties, which give voters more flexibility in where and when they cast their ballots.

When the federal government demanded access to California's statewide voter registration database, Weber refused and won in court.

We'd like to see her push harder on campaign finance transparency. The state's Cal-Access disclosure database is difficult to use and makes it too hard to trace certain types of electoral spending. Voters deserve full transparency around political money.

We recommend voting for Malia Cohen for State Controller.

Cohen knows public finance, and she knows San Francisco.

Before becoming Controller, Cohen chaired the Budget and Finance Committee and the Audit and Oversight Committee on the SF Board of Supervisors. After that, she ran the San Francisco Employees' Retirement System, a $35 billion pension fund. Now she sits on the boards of CalPERS and CalSTRS, the two biggest public pension funds in the country, with almost $1T in assets, combined.

She also went after California's largest-ever charter school fraud. Cohen led a task force that came up with 20 fixes for how the state checks school finances — tougher rules for auditors, faster reporting, and more disclosure. Her office also publishes pay data for over 2 million government workers across 5,000+ agencies.

We would like to see the Controller's Office return $15B in unclaimed property such as forgotten bank accounts and uncashed checks that belong to Californians. Other states send it back automatically — California still doesn't. Overall, Cohen has brought transparency and accountability to the state's spending.

We recommend voting for Eleni Kounalakis for State Treasurer.

The Treasurer chairs CDLAC (which decides how billions in tax-exempt bonds get spent) and CTCAC (which hands out the federal tax credits that make affordable housing possible). If those agencies move slowly, housing doesn't get built. Kounalakis is the only candidate in this race who has actually built housing, financed infrastructure, and managed large-scale investments in the private sector.

Kounalakis named three measurable outcomes voters should use to judge her after two years: more housing units financed through state programs with faster time to delivery, pension returns that meet or exceed benchmarks with improved transparency, and significant growth in CalSavers, CalKIDS, ScholarShare 529, and CalABLE enrollment — especially among working families and underserved communities. That kind of accountability is rare in a statewide race.

I will focus on lowering financing costs, unlocking capital, and partnering with local governments to move projects from approval to construction faster — because affordability depends on supply.

Eleni KounalakisLieutenant Governor of California

On fiscal discipline, she's specific: hold the state's debt-service-to-General Fund ratio at or below 6%, publish a public "California Balance Sheet" dashboard tracking bond debt, pension assets, and investment performance in plain language, and push for stable pension returns with downward pressure on fees. California's heavy reliance on capital-gains tax revenue creates boom-and-bust budget cycles — Kounalakis would align cash management with economic cycles, maintaining liquidity during downturns rather than borrowing at the worst time.

Before entering public life, Kounalakis spent nearly two decades as a housing developer at AKT Development, building master-planned communities in the Sacramento region where thousands of California families now live. She has firsthand experience with the bond financing, tax credit programs, and capital market tools that the Treasurer's office controls. As Lieutenant Governor, she sits on the governing boards of the UC, CSU, and Community College systems — including voting to approve construction of over 60,000 new student housing beds statewide.

The Treasurer's job is about managing the state's money: bonds, investments, pensions, and cash. Kounalakis is the only candidate in this race with private-sector experience doing exactly that. That's why she has our endorsement.

Rob Bonta has been an effective Attorney General, and we're happy to endorse him for another term.

For San Francisco voters, Bonta's most important work has been on housing. He co-sponsored SB 1037 with Scott Wiener, which gave the AG's office real teeth to fine cities that block housing, and he has used them. His office has forced compliance from cities across California that were illegally stalling housing plans, including settlements with Fullerton, Norwalk, Elk Grove, and Huntington Beach. When Woodside declared the entire town a mountain lion sanctuary to avoid SB 9, Bonta told the town it was breaking state law. Woodside rescinded the policy the same week and started accepting applications. Every home that gets built because a NIMBY city was forced to follow the law makes San Francisco's regional housing market a little less insane.

He's also gone after anticompetitive behavior in the rental market. His office got a $7M settlement from Greystar, the nation's largest landlord, for using software to coordinate rent prices with competitors, which is a cartel run through an algorithm. That kind of enforcement matters to every renter in the Bay Area.

Bonta has also been active defending California against the Trump administration, filing over 50 lawsuits on issues from immigration to environmental protections.

We recommend voting for Ben Allen for Insurance Commissioner. Allen has the experience, knowledge, and track record to fix California's broken insurance market.

In the June primary we endorsed Patrick Wolff while mentioning that Ben Allen was also a good choice. Unfortunately, Patrick Wolff lost, so the November election is a head-to-head matchup between Ben Allen and Jane Kim. We strongly recommend Ben Allen and strongly oppose Jane Kim.

California's insurance market is broken. Insurance companies are leaving the state, the state-run FAIR Plan has blown up to 610,000+ policies (up 154% since 2021), and homeowners in fire-prone areas are getting pushed into a bare-bones backup plan that just asked for a 36% rate hike. The next Insurance Commissioner needs to understand what's actually broken and how to fix it. Only one candidate in this race does.

Why vote for Ben Allen?

Allen has spent over a decade working on insurance, climate, and consumer protection. As a State Senator, he represents the communities devastated by the Palisades Fire, where he spent the aftermath helping hundreds of constituents fight for their insurance claims, an experience he calls "a front-row seat to our broken insurance system." He watched the FAIR Plan nearly collapse under $4 billion in losses from the LA fires, with the costs spread to policyholders statewide through a $1 billion emergency assessment, and he drew the right lesson: letting the FAIR Plan grow unchecked creates systemic risk for everyone.

Standing amid smoke, ashes, and uncertainty, I saw what failure looks like.

Ben AllenCalifornia State Senator

Allen didn't wait for tragedy before acting, though. In 2024, a year before the Palisades fires, he authored Proposition 4 to authorize a $10 billion bond for wildfire risk reduction and water infrastructure that voters approved. While other candidates talk in vague terms about affordability while dodging question about their relevant experience, Allen has already put $10 billion to work reducing the risk that makes insurance expensive in the first place.

His plan for the office pairs regulatory flexibility with hard accountability: insurers get more flexibility to price risk accurately so taxpayers won't be forced to bail them out after a disaster, and in exchange they must actually write and renew policies in California. He also wants an independent consumer advocate inside the Department of Insurance, public dashboards tracking insurer behavior, and a ban on Commissioners working for the insurance industry after leaving office. You can read his full plans in his answers to our questionnaire.

Why not Jane Kim?

Jane Kim is a career politician who went from being a San Francisco Supervisor, to losing her run for State Senate, to running a socialist political party (the Working Families Party), and now wants a state takeover of disaster insurance. She has no insurance experience, no insurance license, and no financial services background. She's running on a plan called "Disaster Insurance for All": a government-run program that would replace private disaster coverage. You'd pay a fee to the state, and the state would cover wildfires, earthquakes, and floods. Private insurers would have no reason to stick around. The next big wildfire or earthquake means either a massive taxpayer bailout or a wave of unpaid claims.

In theory, this could work, but it would depend on the state accurately pricing risk. But the private market is in a crisis precisely because the state has not let insurers price risk accurately. Kim's plan would make that problem worse, not better.

Her plan reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what insurance is. Insurance works by pricing risk and spreading it across a big pool. Kim won't commit to pricing risk. When pressed on it, she told Washington Monthly: "I imagine we would look at both value and risk, but one of the goals is to make sure that [coverage] is affordable." This hedging worries economists. Holding rates down for affordability is precisely how you end up not charging for risk. When fire-prone homes don't pay what their risk actually costs, people who live in fire-safe cities like San Francisco pay more. Insurance prices are supposed to make people think twice about building in dangerous places. When that signal is weakened, more people will move to fire-prone areas, more homes will burn, and San Franciscans will pay even more to cover it.

In short, Jane Kim wants to end private disaster insurance and dump everyone into one state-run account that mis-prices the actual risks, then hope nothing bad ever happens.

We've already seen this movie in California. The FAIR Plan, the state's existing backup insurer, got hit with $4 billion in losses from the LA fires, ran out of money, and had to charge private insurers a $1 billion emergency fee just to stay alive. That's with only 610,000 policies. Kim wants to put every California homeowner on a plan like this.

The models she points to aren't success stories either: New Zealand's earthquake insurer was overwhelmed after the 2011 Christchurch quake, underpaid people for over a decade, and is now getting sued.

We are not alone in this read. The San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board endorsed Allen under the headline "One candidate is ready to be California's insurance commissioner. The other would be a disaster." It called Kim "as rash as they come," said her platform is "politically seductive" but "a recipe for disaster," and pointed to her 2016 Prop C, the inclusionary housing rates that supervisors had to cut three times because projects stopped penciling out. Its conclusion: "If Prop C is an example of how Kim would operate as insurance commissioner, voters should run screaming."

This race is a choice between a legislator who has spent a decade on the problem and a candidate whose plan would make it dramatically worse. Ben Allen understands how insurance works and has already done more than anyone in this race to fix it. That's why he has our endorsement.

GrowSF's endorsement and analysis for this race are coming soon.

We recommend voting for John Pimentel for the State Board of Equalization, District 2.

The Board of Equalization has a fairly narrow role, after most of its powers were stripped in 2017 following an audit that revealed missing funds and signs of nepotism. Governor Brown signed legislation stripping the Board of most of its duties, and the real work went to two new agencies the governor controls. What's left is setting the taxable value of railroad and utility property, overseeing statewide property tax assessment practices for consistency across county assessors, and hearing certain tax appeals. In fact, the office should probably be abolished. Legislators have proposed exactly that, and former board member and State Controller Betty Yee questions how the board "continues to have relevance".

Pimentel is the rare candidate who agrees that this elected office shouldn't exist. He campaigns on folding the board's remaining work into the state's other tax agencies, which would end the practice of paying four elected board members $184,000 a year to oversee a technical, administrative function. The San Francisco Chronicle endorsed him "for his willingness to eliminate his own job."

California does not suffer from a lack of good intentions. We suffer from a lack of follow-through, accountability, practical execution, and the discipline to say 'NO'.

— John Pimentel, GrowSF questionnaire

Why vote for John Pimentel?

But until the board is abolished, it needs someone who can run it well. The board has been plagued by scandal and mismanagement, and the Legislature has stripped it of most of its powers. The remaining duties are technical and administrative, and the board deserves someone who has actually run large, complicated things.

His platform is practical: modernize the board's oversight of county assessors with shared data tools, speed up assessment appeals and refunds, and use the office to push for ending the sales tax on groceries and prepared food.

Pimentel's record is heavy on execution. As California's Deputy Secretary for Transportation, he oversaw the emergency rebuild of Los Angeles freeways after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, using incentive-based contracts that finished the work in record time, and led the merger of the California State Police into the Highway Patrol. In the private sector, he built more than $1.5B of clean energy and water infrastructure.

As a San Mateo County Community College District trustee, he led the effort that made community college tuition-free for county residents, and enrollment rose 24%. When the district's former chancellor was fired amid a corruption investigation, Pimentel pushed to cancel his do-nothing emeritus contract, create an internal auditor position and a whistleblower hotline, and sue the contractors accused of paying him off. Both efforts landed. The chancellor was convicted in January on eight felony counts of perjury and tax fraud, and in June the contractors settled with the district for $20M, money that goes back to taxpayers. That anti-corruption record will serve Pimentel well on the Board.

Why we changed our endorsement

We endorsed Sally Lieber in the June primary, but we've decided to change our endorsement to John Pimentel for the general election.

Before the primary, Lieber was the only candidate who answered our questionnaire. We definitely didn't agree with all of her positions, but she had a scandal-free and competent record on the board.

But after the primary, Pimentel returned our questionnaire, and we found his answers very compelling. More compelling, in fact, than Lieber's.

Ultimately, this general election is a choice between two Democrats with opposite views of the office itself. Lieber defends keeping the board, describing it as a lean and effective forum for taxpayers. We think the 2017 scandal, the Legislature's own abolition proposals, and the doubts of the board's former members tell a different story. Pimentel's positions are more in line with ours and more aligned with good government.

When the central question in a race is whether the office should exist at all, we side with the candidate who wants to wind it down and has the record to run what remains well in the meantime. That's why John Pimentel has our endorsement.

We recommend voting for Matt Haney for State Assembly, District 17.

Haney has been one of the most productive SF legislators in Sacramento. His biggest win is AB 507, signed by Newsom in 2025, which makes it easier to turn empty office buildings into housing statewide. The law started as a San Francisco fix, since our downtown has millions of square feet of empty office space, and Haney got it expanded to the whole state. Projects that meet the rules now get approved automatically, no rezoning needed. He's also pushed hard on public safety: AB 2475 stops state hospitals from releasing patients with violent criminal histories without a plan for supervision, housing, and treatment.

In his questionnaire, Haney lays out an ambitious but grounded agenda for a second term. On housing, he wants to end exclusionary zoning, accelerate office-to-housing conversions, and move toward by-right permitting for infill projects. On the fentanyl crisis, he's working to expand treatment access and guarantee drug-free recovery housing, while supporting enforcement against trafficking networks. And he's championing downtown revitalization: modernizing nightlife rules, supporting small businesses, and making urban cores places people want to spend time again.

Haney works across party lines and gets bills signed. He's running unopposed, and he's earned another term.

We recommend voting for Catherine Stefani for State Assembly, District 19.

Stefani has had a productive first term. Newsom signed seven of her bills into law in 2025. Highlights include the Restitution First Act (AB 1213), which makes sure crime victims get paid back before other fines are collected; a license plate cover ban (AB 1085) that closes a loophole criminals used to dodge toll cameras; and Wyland's Law (AB 1363), which closes a deadly gap in how California enforces gun-restraining orders. Gun safety is her signature issue. She founded the SF chapter of Moms Demand Action and wrote SF's first-in-California ghost gun ban as a Supervisor.

We do have some concerns about Stefani's alignment with Sacramento special interests, particularly on issues where the priorities of state-level advocacy groups don't always match what's best for San Francisco. We'll be watching her second term closely. But on the merits of what she's done so far, she's earned our endorsement.

These justices are up for a yes/no retention vote. Analysis coming soon.

These justices are up for a yes/no retention vote. Analysis coming soon.

What is it?

Prop 1 is an $11.25B bond: $10B to finance subsidized housing and $1.25B for CalVet loans to help veterans buy farms, homes, and mobile homes.

The state repays the bonds from the General Fund over up to 35 years. The CalVet funds are different: veterans' loan payments pay those bonds back, and the General Fund covers any shortfall.

Fund allocations

Half of the $10B housing bond funds go toward the Multifamily Housing Program, totaling $5.1B to build and renovate affordable rentals. The other half will be divided across supportive housing ($1.15B), the CalHome Program ($600M) and Home Purchase Assistance Fund ($500M) to help people buy homes, infrastructure ($500M), and $1B for farmworker, student, and tribal housing, among others.

The Legislature can change these splits later without going back to voters.

Veterans' bonds

The remaining $1.25B for veterans funds the existing CalVet program to help veterans buy farms and homes.

Accountability

The state must publish a yearly report on how it spent the bond money.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 2 doubles the cap on California's rainy day fund, the Budget Stabilization Account, from 10% to 20% of General Fund tax revenue.

Yearly deposits

The fund is fed by a base deposit of 1.5% of General Fund revenue plus a share of capital gains taxes, the most volatile money the state collects. Good years produce a surge the state can bank, and bad years produce almost nothing. Today, any capital gains revenue worth more than 8% of tax revenue goes to the fund. Starting in 2027-28, Prop 2 keeps that rule but counts the portion above 10% at one and a half times its value, so the bigger the windfall, the harder the state saves. Once the fund hits the 20% cap, money that would have gone in can only be spent on infrastructure.

The Gann limit

Starting in 2027-28, reserve deposits stop counting against the state's constitutional spending limit (the Gann limit) until the year the money is pulled back out and spent.

Taking money out

Taking money out still requires the Governor to declare a budget emergency, and the Legislature can withdraw no more than half of the fund's balance in one year, unless money was already withdrawn the year before.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 3 makes California's extra income tax rates on high earners permanent by deleting their 2030 expiration date from the state constitution.

Above the regular 9.3% rate, the state adds three higher brackets: 10.3%, 11.3%, and 12.3%. Voters set those rates with Prop 30 in 2012 and extended them with Prop 55 in 2016; they expire after the 2030 tax year. Prop 3 deletes that expiration date, so the rates keep applying until another vote of the people ends them. Prop 3 does not change the rates or the incomes they apply to, and it does not create a new tax.

Where the money goes

The money goes into the Education Protection Account that Prop 30 created, which is split 89% to K-12 schools and 11% to community colleges. If the account holds more than the school formula requires, half of the leftover, up to $2B in a year, goes to children's and family health care under Medi-Cal. Prop 3 does not change how any of that money is divided.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 4 lifts California's ban on candidates taking public money to run for office.

Prop 4 does not create a public financing program and does not spend any money. It removes the ban and sets rules for any future program. Each city, county, or the state would still have to pass its own law to start one and decide how to pay for it.

Current law

The ban comes from Prop 73, which voters passed in 1988. In 1992 the California Supreme Court ruled it does not apply to charter cities, which set their own rules for city elections. Five charter cities run public financing programs today: Berkeley, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. That is why San Francisco's program can match small donations for local candidates, up to $255,000 for a supervisor race and $1.2M for mayor, while the state, all counties, and non-charter cities remain covered by the ban. The Legislature tried to lift the ban by statute in 2016, and a court struck that down in 2019 because changing a voter-passed law requires voter approval. That ruling is why Prop 4 is on the ballot.

Rules for public financing programs

A candidate who takes public funds must accept voluntary spending limits and show broad-based support in their district, for example by collecting donations of $10 or less from a set number of voting-age residents. Public funds cannot pay a candidate's legal defense fees or fines or repay a personal loan the candidate made to their own campaign, and the rules cannot discriminate by party or by whether a candidate is an incumbent or a challenger.

Foreign money

Existing law already bars foreign governments, foreign interests, and foreign nationals from giving to California campaigns. Prop 4's one change is the fine, which becomes a range: at least the amount given or spent, and up to three times that amount. The legal text carries two versions of this section because a separate bill, Assembly Bill 953, rewrote the same law effective January 1, 2026.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 5 changes how California recalls a statewide officer, such as the Governor, Attorney General, or Controller.

Today, the California Constitution puts two questions on a recall ballot at once: whether to remove the officer, and who should replace them. The replacement needs only the most votes, even if that is well under half. The officer facing recall cannot run for their own seat.

Prop 5 drops the replacement race. Voters answer one question: remove the officer, yes or no. If a majority says yes, the seat is vacant and gets filled the same way as any other vacancy in that office. The recalled officer cannot be appointed back in, but can run in a later special election.

If the Governor is recalled

The Lieutenant Governor becomes Governor for the rest of the term. One exception: if the recall lands before the nomination deadline for the next statewide election in the first two years of the term, voters pick the Governor in a special election instead.

Prop 5 does not change how many signatures it takes to qualify a recall, or the deadlines for holding it.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 37 is a $25B state down payment loan program for middle-class buyers of newly built homes.

If an eligible buyer provides a 3% down payment, the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) will issue the buyer a second mortgage covering up to 17% of the home's purchase price, to bring the total down payment to 20%. Buyers will then obtain a traditional mortgage.

These are revenue bonds, not general obligation bonds, so the state's General Fund does not back them. Bondholders get repaid out of borrowers' loan payments, so investors (institutions and individuals who buy the bonds), not taxpayers, carry the risk if borrowers stop paying.

Who qualifies

A buyer must have lived in California for at least 1 year, earn no more than 200% of the area median income for their family size, and move into the home as their primary residence. The home must be brand new, with the buyer as the first owner, and priced at no more than 125% of the federal conforming loan limit for that county.

Construction defect lawsuits

Currently, builders can be sued for defects in new homes for 10 years after construction, but for just 4 years for rentals. Researchers at UC Berkeley's Terner Center and SPUR say this is a big reason developers build apartments instead of condos: condos were just 3% of California's new multifamily housing from 2011 to 2021, versus 38% in Canada, and insuring a condo project costs three to four times as much as a similar rental. Lawyers often approach homeowner associations about suing as the 10-year deadline nears, and the Terner Center notes that contingency fees of up to a third of a cash settlement discourage settling for repairs alone. Housing groups including the Terner Center, SPUR, and California YIMBY have recommended changing these rules.

Prop 37 changes them for homes built under its program. Builders can opt in: in exchange for taking on labor standards, they get a reformed construction defect process under the Right to Repair Act for those homes. A defect claim must name each homeowner and each alleged defect, the builder can work with homeowners directly and get a signed release once repairs are done, and a lawyer suing on contingency can take at most 30% of what homeowners win unless a judge approves more. A builder who sells a home for more than 25% above the price cap loses these reforms for that home.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 38 is an $8.4B state bond for research in immunology and immunotherapy. Half of the funds will go to a single nonprofit research institute picked by the state Department of Public Health, and the other half will be distributed as grants for specific projects at California public and nonprofit universities and nonprofit research institutions.

At least $2.1B out of each half, or $4.2B of the $8.4B, must go to cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's.

Strings attached

Taking this money carries two obligations, no matter how small the grant:

1. A recipient owes the state 10% of all revenue from any patent that comes out of the funded research, until the state recovers the full bond cost plus interest
2. Any drug developed with the money must be sold in California at least 20% below the national average price.

Robert Kaplan, a UCLA health policy professor and former NIH associate director, argues these terms could push drug companies away from taking the money or selling the resulting products in California.

Past programs

Voters approved $3B in 2004 and $5.5B in 2020 for stem cell research through CIRM, the state's stem cell agency, for a total of $8.5B. The first therapy with CIRM funding to win FDA approval came in March 2026, about 21 years in: a gene therapy for an extremely rare, often fatal childhood immune disorder.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 39 requires voters to show valid government-issued ID when voting in person. Vote-by-mail voters instead write the last four digits of their ID number on the ballot envelope. The state must issue a free voter ID card to any eligible voter on request.

The measure defines government-issued identification as "documentation that allows conclusive verification of the voter's identity." It does not say which documents qualify, such as a driver's license, state ID card, or passport.

Citizenship checks

The state and counties must check voter rolls for citizenship against government data and report each year on how much of each county's roll has been verified.

Current law

Today, California asks for a driver's license number, state ID number, or the last four digits of a Social Security number when you register to vote, though you can register without one and the county assigns you a number instead. Voters are not asked to show ID at the polls. The exception: if you registered by mail and your number could not be verified, you may be asked for identification the first time you vote, and a broad list of documents qualifies, including a utility bill or bank statement.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 40 is a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California residents worth $1B or more, for the 2026 tax year only. It also taxes certain trusts a billionaire has put property into. All persons who were residents of California as of January 1, 2026 are subject to the tax.

The tax phases in at net worths between $1B and $1.1B, and applies to the entire net worth so it is not a progressive tax. A married couple counts as one person.

Every California resident filing a 2026 state tax return must declare that their net assets were $1B or less, or else file the wealth tax forms.

What counts as net worth

Everything the taxpayer and their spouse own worldwide, minus debts, except real estate, retirement accounts, up to $5M of art, or other property outside California, unless moved to dodge the tax.

Where the money goes

Revenue goes into a new fund held outside the General Fund, exempt from the state spending limit. It is split 90% to health care (Medi-Cal and other coverage for low- and moderate-income people) and 10% to K-14 education and food assistance (CalFresh and school meals).

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 41 does two things. Before voters decide on a new special tax, the State Auditor must audit the programs the tax would fund. And new state taxes can no longer be exempt from the state spending limit, the cap voters approved in 1979.

Audits

Once backers of a special tax initiative (a tax earmarked for specific purposes) certify they have gathered 25% of the signatures required to qualify, the State Auditor must start an audit of every program the tax would fund. If the initiative qualifies, the audit's summary is printed in the state voter information guide. Special taxes passed on or after January 1, 2026 also get a repeat audit every four years.

Spending limit

Any state tax enacted or taking effect on or after January 1, 2026 cannot be exempt from the spending limit; the state cannot impose, collect, or enforce such a tax.

Conflicting measures

Prop 40, the one-time 5% tax on billionaire net worth on this same ballot, routes its revenue into a fund that does not count toward the spending limit, and Prop 41's conflicting-measures clause deems a same-ballot measure with such a tax to be in conflict. If both pass and Prop 41 gets more Yes votes, all of Prop 40's provisions become null and void. Neither measure names the other; a court would decide whether Prop 40 falls inside the clause.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 42 bans two kinds of new state taxes: taxes on simply owning retirement holdings and other personal savings, and retroactive taxes that reach back to before they took effect.

The ownership ban covers retirement accounts, investments, and essentially everything else a person can own. It blocks taxes on simply owning these things; earning, selling, or withdrawing money can still be taxed, so income and capital gains taxes are unchanged. Taxes already on the books before 2026 are untouched.

The retroactive ban means a new state tax could not reach back and bill you based on conduct, activities, or a status (including where you lived) from before it took effect. Both bans cover any state law or constitutional provision enacted on or after January 1, 2026, including statewide initiatives on the same ballot as Prop 42 itself.

Competing measure

Prop 40, on this same ballot, would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of Californians worth $1B or more. Under Prop 42's conflicting measures clause, a same-ballot initiative that taxes the ownership of these assets, or taxes conduct or status from before its effective date, is deemed in conflict. If Prop 42 gets more yes votes, all provisions of the other measure become null and void.

Read the full annotated legal text →

What is it?

Prop 43 requires a two-thirds vote to pass a local special tax, no matter who put it on the ballot.

A "special tax" is a tax for a specific purpose, like a parcel tax for schools or a business tax that pays for homeless services. Prop 43 does not touch general taxes, which go into the general fund and still pass with a simple majority.

What changes

From 1978, when voters passed Prop 13, until 2017, every local special tax needed a two-thirds vote. A 2017 California Supreme Court ruling, California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland, changed that: courts now let a special tax pass with 50% plus one if voter signatures put it on the ballot. San Francisco used that route in 2018 to pass Prop C, the homelessness gross receipts tax, with 61%.

Starting January 1, 2027, Prop 43 restores the two-thirds rule for citizen initiatives. It covers cities, counties, charter cities, and special districts, including school districts. It also bars voter initiatives from imposing a tax based on a property's value; local governments already cannot, and the regular 1% Prop 13 property tax is unchanged.

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What is it?

Prop 44 penalizes certain nonprofit health clinics that spend less than 90% of their revenue on their mission. The penalty equals the shortfall.

It covers nonprofit clinics that are federally qualified health centers, or FQHCs, plus "FQHC Look-Alikes" that meet the federal rules without getting an FQHC award. Tribal and urban Indian organizations are excluded, and so are hospitals and private practices.

Each covered clinic would send the Attorney General two numbers every year: what it spent on its mission, and its total revenue, both starting from figures the clinic already reports to the IRS. The Attorney General divides one by the other to get a "Mission Spend Ratio," then publishes it.

The 90% penalty

If a clinic's ratio comes in below 90%, the Department of Public Health charges a penalty equal to the whole gap: 90% of the clinic's total revenue, minus what it actually spent on its mission. The measure never states the 90% figure as a spending mandate. It enforces it through this penalty.

Penalty money goes into a state escrow account, and a clinic can ask the Department of Public Health for a waiver of the 90% requirement.

The measure's findings talk about clinic executive pay, but the operative sections do not cap or regulate pay. Executive pay counts against the ratio the same way any other non-program expense does.

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What is it?

Prop 45 adds a new chapter to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the state law that requires agencies to study a project's environmental effects before approving it. The chapter sets deadlines and limits lawsuits for eight categories of projects.

The eight categories, which Prop 45 calls "essential projects", are housing, clean energy, water, public health, public safety, broadband, education facilities, and transportation. Using the chapter is the applicant's choice. An applicant, which can be a company, a public agency, or a utility, may use all of it, part of it, or none of it. Essential projects still go through environmental review, and agencies keep the power to approve or deny them.

The housing category covers any housing, including market-rate. There is no affordability requirement anywhere in the definition.

Deadlines

The longest clock is 365 days for an environmental impact report, then 180 days for a negative declaration, 90 days for an exemption, and 30 days to decide whether an application is complete. The main review clocks run in business days, not calendar days, so the 365-day EIR clock works out to roughly 1.4 calendar years, longer than CEQA's existing one-calendar-year deadline.

Only the applicant can extend a review deadline. If an agency misses a deadline, the applicant can demand a hearing where the agency must vote the project up or down using whatever environmental documents exist, and the applicant can sue to force it.

Lawsuits

Prop 45 also narrows what courts can do: a challenger's claims are limited to "objective existing laws", and a court that finds a violation may block only the part of the project affected by it until it is fixed, but may not order the agency to rescind its approval.

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We recommend voting for Scott Wiener for U.S. House of Representatives, District 11.

A note on this race: This is a federal race, but our questionnaire focused only on issues that directly affect San Francisco. Our expertise is in local, city-scale policy, not national or international affairs. We asked each candidate to answer with a San Francisco lens, as someone who would represent the City's interests in Washington.

Scott Wiener has spent the last decade as one of California's most persistent and effective pro-housing legislators. As a former San Francisco supervisor and now the state senator representing District 11 (San Francisco), he has built a record on the issues that most directly shape San Francisco's quality of life and cost of living: housing production, transit, and government's ability to actually deliver.

In this field, Wiener stands out because he has already passed big, controversial laws in hostile political conditions, and that matters in Washington, where rhetoric is cheap and follow-through is not. Like every candidate, there are things we don't align with Wiener on (his positions on AI regulation and public safety diverge from ours in places), but he's still the best choice for getting results.

Results over rhetoric. My job isn't to maintain ideological purity; it's to improve people's lives.

Scott WienerState Senator, District 11

Why vote for Scott Wiener?

Scott Wiener's top policy goals are:

1. Build more housing to lower the cost of living

Wiener's strongest argument in this race is simple: he has actually passed pro-housing law at scale. SB 35 forced cities that weren't building enough housing to approve qualifying projects automatically. SB 423 extended and tightened that framework. And SB 79, signed in 2025, legalized mid-rise apartment buildings near major transit stops throughout California. Those laws did not solve California's housing crisis on their own, but they changed the terms of the fight, making it harder for cities to dodge their housing obligations and easier to get badly needed homes approved.

But state law can only do so much. The country is short 8 million homes, and Congress controls the federal tools that decide how housing gets paid for and built: tax credits, Section 8 vouchers, and environmental review rules. Wiener wants to expand housing tax credits, fund rental assistance, reward cities that build, and cut through federal red tape. He treats housing as both a building problem and a rules problem. We need someone in Congress who gets how permitting, timelines, and financing keep homes from getting built.

2. Protect transit and urban infrastructure San Francisco depends on

San Francisco's affordability depends on whether people can get around the city and region reliably. In 2023, Muni and BART were staring down a multi-billion-dollar fiscal cliff that threatened service cuts across the region. Wiener built the coalition that kept both systems running by bringing together labor, environmental groups, suburban counties, business associations, and urban riders to secure $1.1 billion in emergency state funding.

That funding bought time, not a permanent fix. With federal COVID relief exhausted and ridership still well below pre-pandemic levels, Bay Area transit is now facing another fiscal cliff in 2026. BART alone is staring at a $376 million deficit, and Muni faces 50% service cuts without new revenue. Wiener's response was SB 63, the Connect Bay Area Act, which authorizes a regional sales tax measure on the November 2026 ballot that would generate roughly $980 million per year to stabilize transit across five Bay Area counties. He has done this work twice now, and he is not done.

In Congress, he wants to fix how the federal government funds transit, fight for money to keep trains running (not just build new things), and protect clean energy transit programs from getting cut. Too many politicians talk about transit as branding. Wiener has spent years doing the hard work of keeping it alive.

3. A record of governing, not just campaigning

The next Congress will be a difficult environment for a junior Democratic House member from San Francisco. Wiener's argument for why he can still get things done is credible: he has passed over 100 bills in the state legislature, often against powerful opposition. He has authored major laws not just on housing but also on mental-health and addiction treatment coverage (SB 855) and net neutrality (SB 822). That willingness to pick fights, including with his own party, and the discipline to come back with a revised version when a coalition falls short, is exactly what federal legislating requires.

Why not Connie Chan?

Connie Chan has built her political career around opposing things: blocking housing, fighting development, and siding with the most obstructionist factions on the Board of Supervisors. She actively tried to weaken San Francisco's housing plan at a time when the city desperately needed to build more. She has no meaningful legislative accomplishments to point to. Sending someone to Congress whose primary skill is saying no is not what San Francisco needs right now.

On other issues

Technology and AI: Wiener authored SB 1047, a first-in-nation AI regulation bill, which was opposed by SF-based tech companies big and small. Governor Newsom vetoed it in 2024. Wiener followed it up with SB 53, a much narrower transparency-focused bill that drew broader industry support. We think the Federal government has a role in setting up AI regulations and guardrails, and think Wiener's approach in California has been somewhat misguided. That said, voters in the tech sector should evaluate his track record on the merits rather than the headline, and importantly, compare him to the alternatives. Chan would sooner ban AI than regulate it.

Healthcare and treatment: SB 855 expanded mental-health and addiction treatment coverage, and his campaign platform continues to emphasize lower drug costs and broader access to care.

Civil rights and immigration: Wiener has made LGBTQ rights and immigrant protections a major part of his public record. San Francisco voters care about that, and they should.

Public safety: Wiener opposed Prop 36, which GrowSF supported and nearly 70% of California voters passed. His approach to the fentanyl crisis emphasizes treatment access and federal interdiction funding over the accountability measures GrowSF favors. That's a real difference, but it doesn't change the overall calculus in this race.

Scott Wiener has shown he can pass hard laws on the issues San Francisco most needs solved. Connie Chan has spent her career blocking; Wiener has spent his delivering. That's why he has our endorsement.

GrowSF's endorsement and analysis for this race are coming soon.