Jim Hartman
Courtesy Photo
Few Nevadans realize the Silver State is now on a banned list of 28 states where the City of San Francisco prohibits city-funded travel and includes any city contracts involving Nevada-headquartered businesses.
What’s the basis for San Francisco’s Nevada boycott?
It’s completely unjustified. The Nevada Legislature last year unanimously passed legislation authored by Democrats and signed by Gov. Sisolak raising the maximum number of people who can be in a precinct from 3,000 to 5,000.
The bill’s intent was not to disenfranchise minorities but, rather, to ensure that large apartment complexes weren’t confusingly split into multiple precincts.
But according to the San Francisco Elections Department, increasing the size of precincts decreases the number of precincts, which also reduces the number of polling places, which San Francisco officials deem to be “voter suppression.”
Nevada, according to San Francisco officials, was racist.
Nevada’s being on the boycott list means that businesses headquartered in the Silver State are not awarded city contracts and official San Francisco city travel to the state is forbidden.
The ban applies not just to Nevada state government, but to all businesses in the state. That means that if you own or work for a business headquartered in Nevada, then San Francisco won’t do business with you.
Most impacted will be Las Vegas-based hospitality companies and Lake Tahoe-area resorts, losing potential conference and convention participants. But, small businesses throughout Nevada are denied doing business with the City of San Francisco as well.
San Francisco can’t manufacture the parts it needs to keep its buses running, fix its buildings or run its computers. The city needs to procure products and receive services, many of them best sourced from Nevada suppliers.
Nevada has hundreds of businesses that sell things San Franciscans need.
The March 4 memorandum from City Administrator Carmen Chu announcing the Nevada ban disclosed San Francisco will not enter into contracts with businesses headquartered in most of the United States – an astounding 28 states at current count.
San Francisco’ s boycott campaign started in 2016 when the city passed its first ordinance banning states with “repressive anti-LGBT laws.” Then, in 2019, states with what San Francisco officials judged as “restrictive abortion laws” were added to the list. Most recently, in 2021, states with “restrictive” voting laws were added.
No other city has joined San Francisco in its boycott frenzy. Chu confirms “no other city has reached out to say they want to mirror our rules.”
As a result of this vast boycott, Chu acknowledges it adds onerous time constraints to the contracting process for San Francisco, leading to poor outcomes and driving up costs for city taxpayers.
In states aware San Francisco is boycotting them, even ideological allies don’t welcome the boycott or believe it productive . On the contrary, organizers and activists in blacklisted states believe the San Francisco action is high-handed, unwelcome and wrong-headed.
“This is definitely not anything we want,” says Emily Persaud-Zamora, the executive director of the Nevada voting right group Silver States Voices.
Persaud-Zamora was dumbfounded Nevada would be punished by San Francisco for its voter access laws.
Last year, Nevada adopted a permanent vote-by-mail law, with the goal of expanding voter access. In 2019, it passed legislation to enable same-day voter registration; initiated automatic voter registration; and expanded both early and absentee voting, over strong Republican objections.
Nevertheless, Nevada is now blacklisted for “voter suppression” – and proof of racism.
The Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantor in the 1960s is credited with the observation “San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.” San Francisco’s traditional liberal politics have now devolved into left-wing extremism and craziness.
As San Francisco keeps adding new states to its blacklist each year, eventually San Franciscans will only be able to visit and do business with themselves.
E-mail Jim Hartman @lawdocman1@aol.com
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