San Francisco voters will see a long list of local measures this November. The money behind those measures is considerably less evenly distributed.
As of August 24, the committee supporting Propositions D, E and F reported approximately $9.38 million in supporting funds, according to the San Francisco Ethics Commission. A separate committee supporting Proposition H, a parcel tax for Muni operations, has attracted several six-figure corporate contributions, including $500,000 each from OpenAI and Anthropic.
About $9.38 million behind D, E and F
The largest disclosed ballot-measure pot belongs to Clean Up City Hall, Mayor Lurie's Ballot Measure Committee.
The committee supports three propositions: Prop D, changing the ballot-measure process; Prop E, changing the City Administrator's authority and city contracting; and Prop F, changing executive-branch management.
The Ethics Commission's combined D/E/F page, updated August 24, lists $9,380,595.78 in supporting funds and about $5.49 million in expenses.
Among the leading disclosed contributors are venture capitalist Michael Moritz, at just over $2 million, and Ripple co-founder Christian Larsen, at just under $1.5 million. Lyna Lam and John Pritzker each appear at $1 million. John Doerr, Dagmar Dolby, Emerson Collective and John Wolthuis are among contributors at the $500,000 level.
Those figures are snapshots. Campaign-finance pages and late-contribution reports can change quickly as Election Day approaches.
OpenAI and Anthropic are both putting $500,000 into the Muni campaign
Prop H has a different donor profile. The measure would impose a parcel tax to support Muni operations, and the Ethics Commission's Prop H page shows a multimillion-dollar supporting campaign.
| Contributor | Reported support |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | $500,000 |
| Anthropic | $500,000 |
| Ripple Labs | $500,000 |
| Airbnb-sponsored committee | $500,000 |
| Visa | $250,000 |
Those contributions make the Muni campaign interesting well beyond transit policy. They put some of San Francisco's most closely watched technology companies directly into a local ballot fight.
The records establish that the companies contributed to support the measure. They do not, by themselves, establish the reason each donor decided to give.
Great Highway money is substantial too
The fight over Prop G and the Great Highway is smaller financially but already serious. The election-wide Ethics dashboard showed roughly $881,000 in funds associated with that contest in its August 21 snapshot.
Among leading disclosed contributors to the No side are Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman, former Twitch chief Emmett Shear and Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, according to the Ethics Commission's contributor database.
The late-August money map
The Ethics Commission's August 21 election-wide snapshot gives a useful, if temporary, comparison across the ballot. The numbers below are not all from identical filing timestamps, and later reports can move them quickly, but they show the scale of the campaigns at this stage.
| Ballot fight | Approx. reported committee funds in the snapshot |
|---|---|
| Props D/E/F — Clean Up City Hall | $9.38 million |
| Prop H — Muni parcel tax | $3.45 million |
| Prop G — Great Highway | $881,000 |
| Prop C — Housing Fund | $400,000 |
| Prop I — real-property transfer tax changes | $291,000 |
| Prop J — foreclosure transfer-tax exemption | $50,000 |
| Prop B — municipal finance corporation/public bank | $4,500 |
The D/E/F committee alone represented more money than the other listed local-measure committees combined in that snapshot. That is a comparison of committee funds, not a forecast of the vote and not a measure of how much media any campaign has actually purchased.
The rest of the ballot is operating on a different scale
The Ethics Commission's election-wide snapshot showed far smaller totals for several other local measures, including campaigns around the real-property transfer tax, Housing Fund contributions, a foreclosure transfer-tax exemption and a proposed municipal finance corporation and public bank.
That gap is the larger story: San Francisco's November ballot is not attracting money evenly. A few fights have already built serious war chests while others remain comparatively small.
Campaign money tells voters who is trying hardest — not how to vote
Campaign money is evidence of political effort and interest. It is not evidence that a proposition is good or bad.
A large contribution can tell voters who is willing to spend heavily on an outcome. It cannot substitute for reading the measure itself. Likewise, money raised is not the same thing as money spent; the Ethics Commission reports both supporting funds and expenses, and independent expenditures can sit outside a measure committee's own spending.
That is why SF News Today will attach dates to campaign-finance figures as the election approaches rather than treating a late-August total as final.
The money race is already underway
Election Day is November 3. By late August, Mayor Lurie's D/E/F committee had assembled by far the largest single disclosed local ballot-measure war chest, the Muni campaign had attracted half-million-dollar checks from OpenAI and Anthropic, and the Great Highway fight had drawn substantial tech wealth of its own.
The totals will change. The concentration is already clear.