Pacific Heights Moguls Fund Sit/Lie

The passionate debate about San Francisco’s controversial sit/lie ballot measure may be hottest in Haight-Ashbury, where residents and small business owners are boiling mad about transients on the streets. But many of the bucks behind Proposition L are coming from a different neighborhood — Pacific Heights — and a more elite group of residents.

Campaign finance reports filed Aug. 2 reveal that the measure’s backers include some of the Bay Area’s wealthiest and most influential players. Among those who have donated a total of $50,800 to date are two major Silicon Valley financiers, a former Wells Fargo CEO, a local high-society philanthropist who runs a real-estate company and the principal of a Michigan-based development firm. (Scroll down to see an interactive chart of the donations.)

Ronald C. Conway, a managing partner of Angel Investors LP, was the first to donate to the campaign. In total, he has given $35,000 — the largest contribution from any donor — to the Coalition for Civil Sidewalks, which is pushing for passage of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ordinance to ban sitting or lying down on city sidewalks. Conway, known as the “Godfather of Silicon Valley,” was an early investor in Google and PayPal and serves on advisory boards for Twitter, Facebook and Digg, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Gary Rivlin, the author of a 2001 book about Conway, was surprised to learn that the investor had thrown his weight behind a local political effort. “Conway was the kind of guy who put almost all of his time and energy and money into helping his startups and hardly struck me as the kind to devote himself to side political causes,” Rivlin wrote in an e-mail.

But that's just what he did. "I donated to get the campaign off the ground," Conway wrote in an e-mail. "This movement began by merchants and neighbors coming together and I wanted to help them build their organization as I believe in their cause."

Conway said he was "very active in numerous other causes that help the City at large."

"I am confident that there will be many more donations following mine as a cross section of San Franciscans have embraced this issue," he wrote.

More donations did indeed follow Conway's gift. They came largely from a cadre of business-affiliated power brokers, many of whom list addresses on the Peninsula, in Pacific Heights or in downtown San Francisco.

Tied for second place, with $5,000 each in contributions, are Michael Moritz and Diane B. Wilsey. Moritz, a partner at the Menlo Park venture firm Sequoia Capital, said he was too “swamped” to comment for this article. Moritz has given $150,000 to another San Francisco political cause — Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s pension-reform measure, Proposition B. Union members planned to protest Moritz’s involvement in that effort outside his Pac Heights home Wednesday evening.

Wilsey, who goes by Dede, is best known for having headed up the $200-million renovation of the de Young museum. A 2005 Chronicle article credited her with single-handedly raising more than $190 million for the project through her “charming, savvy and willful” manner. She “knows how much people can afford to give and makes a pithy case for why they should,” reporter Jesse Hamlin wrote. The campaign finance filing identifies Wilsey as president of A. Wilsey Properties Co.

In fourth place, at $2,500, is Richard M. Kovacevich, a former CEO and board chairman of Wells Fargo. Fifth place goes to Stephen Grand, president of Grand Sakwa Properties LLC. While Grand is based in San Francisco, his company is headquartered in Farmington Hills, Mich., and is a major developer of residential and retail properties in Southeast Michigan, including, according to a Detroit business newspaper, the former Kmart headquarters in Troy, Mich.

Of the $50,800 in funding, the campaign has spent or plans to spend $31,613.99 — much of it on political consultants. Payments of $5,000 each went to Hsieh and Associates, the firm of San Francisco consultant Tom Hsieh; and Ground Floor Public Affairs, the company founded by Alex Tourk, Newsom’s former campaign manager and deputy chief of staff. Another $5,000 is owed to Hsieh, and $6,792.15 is owed to Tourk’s firm.

Bob Offer-Westort, an organizer with the opposing campaign, Sidewalks Are for People, said the funding told a story different from the public image of the Civil Sidewalks campaign, which has highlighted the plight of neighborhood merchants and residents. “The idea that this is a grassroots campaign I think is belied by where the money is coming from,” he said. “It’s coming from the finance sector and the real-estate sector.”

But Kent Uyehara, merchant chair of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association and head of the Civil Sidewalks campaign, said the people who donated are the ones who can afford to do so, and who have the political savvy to get a proposition passed. Small business owners "don't have the money" and historically have not been politically organized, he said.

On Monday, the anti-Prop. L campaign received its first $5,000 donation, from Scott Handleman, an independent attorney in San Francisco. Prior to that, Sidewalks Are for People's total bankroll had been $50 — the minimum needed to open a bank account — donated by Paul Boden, an advocate for the homeless. Both campaigns will file finance reports again in early October.