Fair Ballot Access filed papers on Friday to become the first official opponent of one of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s three charter amendments, setting up the earliest organized challenge yet to his effort to reshape how San Francisco government works. The group is targeting a measure that would sharply raise the signature threshold for citizen-led initiatives, from 2 percent of registered voters to 8 percent.
That change would lift the number of signatures needed from about 10,700 to about 42,000, a jump that would make it far harder for residents to place measures on the ballot. Daniel Anderson, who is helping lead the committee, said the fight is not about Lurie personally but about whether voters keep a long-held right. “Our contention will be, this is not about the mayor. This is about removing a right that San Francisco voters have had for a long time,” he said.
The filing matters now because Lurie is trying to send three ballot measures to November, and this is the first one to draw a formal committee against it. It also lands in a city where local ballot fights can become sprawling, costly and decisive: San Francisco had 15 local measures on the ballot in 2024, far more than Los Angeles, Oakland or San Jose.
Backers of Lurie’s measures have already put $8.6 million into the effort, including $2 million from Michael Moritz, who also backed the losing city charter fight in 2024. That campaign supported Prop. D, which would have dramatically cut the number of city commissions, and it finished with roughly $9 million in support against about $130,000. The new committee says Aaron Peskin is not involved, but the money already in motion suggests this year’s charter fights will not be quiet.
The sharpest point of conflict is the framing. Lurie’s allies present the proposal as cleanup and reform, and supporters say it would make San Francisco more like other large California cities where initiative requirements are higher. Opponents say that is the point they fear most: a measure sold as process reform that would make it much harder for ordinary voters to force issues onto the ballot, and could do so even for people who otherwise support the mayor. “I think there will be people who like the mayor but still think the measure goes too far,” Anderson said.
Fair Ballot Access is only the first committee to file, and the next question is whether the fight stays narrow or expands around Lurie’s other two charter amendments as the November vote approaches. For now, the committee’s filing turns one of the mayor’s signature plans from a government overhaul into a ballot battle over who gets to write the ballot in the first place.
