From San Francisco, another sign of progressives' burgeoning discontent with urban decay

San Francisco.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

Special elections are an unreliable indicators of political trends. Held outside the regular schedule, usually in response to a death or other unexpected event, and plagued by low turnout, the outcomes can defy both conventional wisdom and underlying conditions. Remember when the obscure Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown shocked the country by winning his 2009 race to replace Ted Kennedy? (Brown lost his bid for a full term in 2012.)

Still, special elections can provide a hint about where the wind is blowing. That's the case with the race for California State Assembly which concluded last night. With nearly two thirds of the vote, San Francisco Supervisor Matt Haney declared victory over his opponent, former Supervisor Dave Campos. The outcome was the run-off sequel to an earlier election in February, when no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote.

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Samuel Goldman

Samuel Goldman is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and director of the Politics & Values Program. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow in Religion, Ethics, & Politics at Princeton University. His books include God's Country: Christian Zionism in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and After Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). In addition to academic research, Goldman's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.