The 1975 mayoral election was held to select the 37th mayor of San Francisco, and was held in two parts. In the November regular election, then-Speaker of the

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

State Assembly

George Moscone George Richard Moscone (; November 24, 1929 – November 27, 1978) was an American attorney and Democratic politician. He was the 37th mayor of San Francisco, California from January 1976 until his assassination in November 1978. He was known ...

placed first with conservative city supervisor

John Barbagelata John Barbagelata (March 29, 1919 – March 19, 1994) was a San Francisco City Supervisor and 1975 mayoral candidate, when he narrowly lost to George Moscone. He was also the owner of a local real estate firm. As of 2020, he was the last Repu ...

second and moderate supervisor

Dianne Feinstein Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein ( ; born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933) is an American politician who serves as the senior United States senator from California, a seat she has held since 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, she was ...

coming in third.Nolte, Carl
''CITY HALL SLAYINGS: 25 Years Later''
San Francisco Chronicle, November 26, 2003 Moscone and Barbagelata thus both advanced to the mandated

runoff election The two-round system (TRS), also known as runoff voting, second ballot, or ballotage, is a voting method used to elect a single candidate, where voters cast a single vote for their preferred candidate. It generally ensures a majoritarian resul ...

in December where Moscone narrowly defeated the conservative supervisor by 4,400 votes, a margin of less than 1%. For the rest of his life, Barbagelata maintained that the

People's Temple The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, originally Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church and commonly shortened to Peoples Temple, was an American new religious organization which existed between 1954 and 1978. Founded in Indianapolis, In ...

religious cult, led by Jim Jones, committed

election fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of ...

by bussing in out-of-town church members to double and triple vote for Moscone under the registrations of dead voters.Cothran, George
Barbagelata's Return?
San Francisco Weekly, November 18, 1998.

Proposition B

With Moscone in office there was a move to redefine how the city's governing Board of Supervisors should be selected as well as paid.Chester Hartman, ''City for Sale. The Transformation of San Francisco''. University of California Press, 1984, pp. 227-234. Neighborhood activists at that time sought to reduce the influence of downtown businesses and thus the method for selecting supervisors. Their aim was to create a new system of neighborhood-based supervisors. Many of the existing supervisors did not even live in the city itself. The activists founded the SFDE (San Franciscans for District Elections) and managed to get placed the initiative - so-called Proposition T - on a local ballot in November 1976. The ballot was successful but a group of existing supervisors, including Barbagelata, then met to plan a repeal election. However, Barbagelata then took the repeal further by getting put forward a more radical ballot, Proposition B, which called for the recalling of the mayor osconeand a number of other high elected officials in the city. The scheme was referred to as the "fire everybody petition". According to

Chester Hartman Chester W. Hartman (-2023) is an American urban planner, author, and academic. He is Director of Research of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) in Washington, D.C. Previously, he was PRRAC's Executive Director. He is also a Fellow of ...

, in his 1984 book ''City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco'', many viewed the measure as Barbagelata's attempt to get back at Moscone, who, he felt had "stolen" the 1975 mayoral election from him. In Moscone's own words: "There's only one goal in his arbagelata'smind and that's to dump me. I just know that his plan has nothing to do with reform, and if John arbagelatatries to sell that to anybody it's a loser." On August 2, 1977 Barbagelata's Proposition B lost 64% to 36%.

Results

First round

Runoff

References

{{1975 United States elections 1975 California elections Mayoral elections in San Francisco

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

1975 in San Francisco