I thought Heather is scribbling for the Times not the New York Post.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues – 4.2.2024

A note to Heather Knight – New York Times San Francisco ‘Nightcrawler’ correspondent (formerly at the San Francisco Chronicle) 4.2.2024

Heather

Seeing your laudatory piece on Mr. Garry Tan.

Going into journalistic contortions. Trying to paint a picture of Garry Tan as nothing more than a civic minded do gooder.

You can’t hide the reality. Garry Tan is a vicious political operative with a fat wallet “trying to buy City Hall.”

Makes me think of your fawning articles on former San Francisco District Attorney Suzy Loftus and current DA Brooke Jenkins. Who replaced the progressive DA you helped destroy with your pen, Chesa Boudin.

The good news is San Francisco Chronicle readers are spared your misleading propaganda cheerleader style reporting. 

The bad news is NYT readers may take this PR blurb re Garry Tan as truth.

And I thought you are scribbling for the Times not the New York Post.

Excerpted from The New York Times – Heather Knight – 4.2.2024

Garry Tan. A man evangelizing for change in San Francisco, owning a condo that used to be part of a church comes in handy.

(Blogger’s Note: Sound familiar? Accused felon Donald Trump hawking his “God Bless USA” bible for $59.99)

Last year, Tan scooped up the $3.95 million space near the city’s palm-tree-studded Dolores Park to hold events like this one — events he hopes will shift San Francisco from its idealistic progressivism toward nuts-and-bolts centrism.

Under cathedral ceilings and soaring stained glass windows, Garry Tan clutched a microphone as he greeted a crowd of political centrists, including San Francisco’s mayor, local prosecutors and police brass.

“Welcome to the church of turning San Francisco around!” said Mr. Tan at a fund-raiser he was hosting for local Asian American female political candidates just days before the Super Tuesday elections this month.

But Mr. Tan’s passion, as it is for a growing number of tech industry leaders, is San Francisco politics. He is one of a cadre of love-them-or-hate-them tech executives and investors with lots of opinions about the city and endless piles of cash to, as they say in the tech industry, move fast and break things. (Their critics would say it’s more like they’re trying to buy City Hall.)

To some of San Francisco’s political establishment, Mr. Tan, 43, has become the most annoying in a parade of wealthy tech executives. He has created a bombastic online persona while spending about $400,000 on local politics in the past few years — with potentially a lot more to come. And on the social media site X, where he has 425,000 followers, Mr. Tan doesn’t just rub some people the wrong way, he enrages them.

Just after midnight on Jan. 27, he posted on X, formerly Twitter, that seven left-leaning members of the city’s Board of Supervisors, listed by name, should “die slow,” punctuated by an expletive. It was a subtle reference to the rap legend Tupac Shakur’s famous track “Hit ’Em Up,” released 28 years ago as an insult to his music rivals. But to some people, it sounded like a threat.

Mr. Tan was, he admitted when an X follower asked him, drunk.

A few hours after his post went up, Mr. Tan deleted it and apologized. But plenty of people had already seen it.

A couple of days later, some supervisors received anonymous letters at their homes bearing Mr. Tan’s face and the words: “Garry Tan is right! I wish a slow and painful death for you and your loved ones.” Aaron Peskin, a supervisor who is considering challenging London Breed, the San Francisco mayor, in the November election, was one of a few supervisors to file police reports based on Mr. Tan’s post.

Mr. Tan has tried to learn from his online mess — or says he has. In person, he speaks kindly and calmly and smiles often, frequently bowing to people while making a prayer gesture with his hands. At his political fund-raiser in the former church, he said he was sipping a mocktail, a “Green Goddess” with apple, celery and cucumber juice.

“Alcohol doesn’t have a lot to teach me these days,” he said. Asked whether that was because of the drunken post that got him in hot water, he said, “There’s some correlation.”

He thinks moderate Democrats with common-sense ideas are taking back their city, and he’s supporting centrists on the November ballot in hopes they will seize a majority of the board of supervisors.

Mr. Tan encouraged his fellow middle-of-the-road Democrats at the church turned condo to keep the faith. “Politics can be rough. As centrists, we find ourselves facing criticism for questioning policies that haven’t delivered,” he told his quasi-congregation, his voice rising. “My dedication to making San Francisco a city that works for everyone is a commitment I will not abandon.”

The crowd of about 100 roared.

Mayor Breed then spoke about the “dogfight” of San Francisco politics and thanked Mr. Tan, one of her donors, for braving it.

Several supervisors named in Mr. Tan’s controversial post called for candidates who received his donations to return the money. None did. Mr. Tan said the police had never contacted him about the post. The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to requests for comment on whether an investigation was being conducted.

“And no, I’m not giving my money back!” she said to laughter.

Top photo: Irving Penn exhibit – de Young Museum San Francisco