More Middle School Melodrama Enlivens 2024 Election Season
Right on the heels of Garry Tan's drunk-tweeting suss fuss comes yet another clip for the blooper reel as a Westside columnist and activist may have been caught red- handed tearing down campaign signs
This is a developing story; we’ve contacted Pitta and the witness for comments.
A prominent supporter of District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan may have been caught red-handed doing one of the more futile and foolish dirty tricks you can do in a political campaign: tearing down an opponent’s campaign signs.
Richmond resident Julie Pitta, a columnist in the Richmond Review and former Forbes editor and Los Angeles Times correspondent, was reportedly seen removing a campaign sign for District 1 Supervisor and Democratic Central Committee candidate Marjan Philhour from the window of a neighborhood coffee shop on Feb. 3.
An anonymous eyewitness apparently saw Pitta enter the coffee shop, remove the sign, tear it up, and then take it in her car. Supporters of Philhour took photographs of Pitta getting into a car on the 5300 block of Geary Blvd. while holding a torn-up Philhour campaign sign. Removing a campaign sign authorized on private property is technically petty theft.
The incident recalls a May 2021 controversy over the theft of petition signatures in support of a recall of San Francisco school board members. The person who stole the signature forms, Jason Kruta, was charged with a misdemeanor and completed a diversion program. It also follows another controversy last week over posts on X by Y Combinator president Garry Tan that called Chan and other supervisors a “motherfucking crew,” urging that they “die slow,” in an apparent reference to a 1996 diss track by Tupac Shakur. Tan later removed the post and apologized.
Pitta is an outspoken supporter of Chan. She was also on the board of the San Francisco Berniecrats until she stepped down Jan. 31, according to a post on X, formerly Twitter, by the organization. Pitta is also involved in the Phoenix Project, which aims to expose what it describes as “a takeover of San Francisco” by tech and real estate industry groups.
Philhour, a small business advocate and former aide to San Francisco Mayor London Breed, is running against Chan in the November supervisorial election, and both Chan and Philhour are running on opposing slates in the March contest for Democratic County Central Committee.
Update: Here’s a video of Pitta removing the sign. She says she’s a regular customer of the cafe and obtained permission to remove the sign from a person behind the counter of the cafe after she told them, “I won’t come back if that sign is here.” Pitta says that she has done this before with two other local businesses where she is a regular customer.
“I think my mistake maybe is, I don't know who the owner was and maybe I should have talked to the owner, but I just talked to the guy that I see there all the time,” she added.
Another Update: Apparently the owner of the cafe was none too pleased as Pitta attempted damage control today.