In recent weeks, nearly every San Francisco voter has received, along with their ballot, a quasi-official looking voting booklet distributed by the tech industry's embarrassingly well-funded conservative political pressure group, GrowSF.
District 8 voters who venture between the booklet's cover pages will find a glowing endorsement of Manny Yekutiel for Supervisor. For now, this is an unfortunate accident of timing: GrowSF's 2026 Midterm Election guide was already printed and en route to San Francisco voters on October 1st, when the organization unceremoniously pulled its endorsement of Yekutiel in a one sentence post on X: "Due to credible allegations we have rescinded our endorsement in District 8." It's worth noting that GrowSF was one of the last holdouts to unendorse Yekutiel after a a second round of allegations of sexual assault against him emerged that day. And that the group's original endorsement was made well after the first such allegation came to light.
GrowSF is notoriously mindful of Search Engine Optimization: Their voting recommendations routinely show up as top search results for any and all races in San Francisco around election time, to the chagrin of many a campaign. Leaving Yekutiel's name and the words "sexual assault" out of their post could well have been a signal of their future intentions. And Lo! Within a week the organization began circulating a poll asking voters how they feel about Yekutiel reentering the race.
While the Voter Guide featuring Yekutiel could be excused as unfortunate, the group's website states that it "is not making an endorsement in District 8" without mentioning that it did, indeed, make an endorsement in the race and withdrew it ostensibly out of concern with undefined "credible allegations." Indeed, GrowSF's online voter guide continues to list Yekutiel and his policies first among the four District 8 candidates.
GrowSF's poll comes after several semi-prominent tech figures took to social media to suggest they'll still vote for Yekutiel despite the barrage of allegations that he repeatedly groped party-goers without their consent and continued to do so after being told no. Yekutiel has suspended his campaign, but will still appear on the ballot, again because of how late he dropped out. Nothing prohibits tech billionaires or Grow SF from funding a last minute independent expenditure committee to urge voters to vote for Yekutiel regardless of the status of his campaign.
The latest allegations against Yekutiel came shortly after articles describing the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment in the local tech industry. This is not the first time this aspect of the culture has come to light, and instances of accountability are vanishingly rare. By being so late to pull its endorsement and so early to suggest Yekutiel's comeback, GrowSF is letting San Franciscans know that sexual assault isn't a problem they're interested in fixing.
