GrowSF, TogetherSF and other benign-sounding local political organizations are more rightwing innovations from rich tech barons like David Sacks and Michael Moritz. Julie Pitta, a journalist previously at the LA Times, Forbes, and the SF Richmond Review, talks about the newly launched Phoenix Project, which looks at how dark money flows in California politics.

(FYI: The conversation with Julie was recorded in early February, shortly after Garry “Die Slow” Tan’s drunken appropriation of Tupac lyrics calling for the death of a bunch of local politicians, and just before a rightwing trolling campaign convinced the Richmond Review’s publisher to abruptly end Julie’s column there.)

• The Phoenix Project
• ‘Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics’ (Julie Pitta in the Richmond Review)
• ‘The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco’ (Gil Duran in the New Republic)
• Our Garry Tan episode (f/ Emily Mills)

Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas. Please support the show and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.