S.F. Elections Official Blindsided by Decision Not to Renew His Contract Due to ‘Racial Equity’

San Francisco elections director John Arntz has known for several months that the city’s election commission was not likely to renew his contract. He was caught by surprise, however, when he discovered the reason the commission had decided not to reappoint him was because of its “racial equity plan.”

The commission voted 4-2 last week not to renew Arntz’s position, not because he was underperforming, but because he is a white man and the commission wants to open the role to candidates of diverse backgrounds.

The panel has elected to hire a search firm that will consider Arntz, if he chooses to reapply for his job, among a pool of other candidates. 

Arntz, who has served in his role for two decades, told National Review that he first became aware that the commission was launching a candidate search for his position three months ago via an agenda item for a closed session meeting of the commission to discuss the potential recruitment.

“My assumption then was basically I wasn’t going to be reappointed and so I just sort of started planning around that,” he said, adding that he was concerned about how the news would impact his department heading into the midterm elections, which was also the department’s fifth election in just over a year.

However, he was not given a reason for the decision to open up recruitment until Monday, he said. For three months, he believed the decision was due to the push for the department to develop a voting system using open source software, where the code for the voting system is posted online. He said that development is not something his department can do, but there had been heavy advocacy around the use of open source. 

“I got the email from the commission president … that the reason was [that] they wanted to further the city’s racial equity plans, essentially,” he said. “So that surprised me and that’s the first time that the Commission had indicated the reasoning behind their opening up their recruitment for the position.”

“I did not expect that to be the reason,” he added. “And that can go 100 different ways. But that’s really my first response … that was not something that I expected.”

Commission president Chris Jerdonek wrote in an email to Arntz on Monday explaining: “Our decision wasn’t about your performance, but after twenty years we wanted to take action on the City’s racial equity plan and give people an opportunity to compete for a leadership position,” per the San Francisco Chronicle. “We also wanted to allow enough time for a fair and equitable process and conduct as broad a search as possible,” the email added.

Jerdonek, along with City Attorney appointee Cynthia Dai, DA appointee Robin Stone and Public Defender appointee Renita LiVolsi voted not to renew Arntz’s contract, while mayoral appointee Nancy Crowley and treasurer appointee Lucy Bernholz voted to renew.  

Just two years ago, the Elections Commission wrote Arntz a commendation “for his incredible leadership … The Department successfully ran two elections this year while facing significant challenges, including national threats to election security, mandatory vote-by-mail operations to all registered voters, anticipated increase in voter participation, budget cuts, and the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to Mission Local.

Arntz declined to say whether he has concerns regarding fairness or discrimination as it applies to the commission’s decision.

“The commission made a statement or put forward its reasoning and so I just have to go with that,” he said.

All 12 of the managers in Arntz’s department signed a letter to the commission ahead of the panel’s final decision asking that it renew his contract.

“This all happened eight days after the Nov. 8 election,” deputy elections director Nataliya Kuzina told Mission Local. “They discarded the opinion of the very same people who have been conducting city elections and discarded the director with a proven record to do his job. He has extensive election experience and knowledge. People whom he manages are supportive of Director Arntz. So, those are the facts in front of us. Considering all these facts, this decision seems to have been driven by something else.” 

Mayor London Breed also spoke out against the decision.

“John Arntz has served San Francisco with integrity, professionalism and has stayed completely independent. He’s remained impartial and has avoided getting caught up in the web of City politics, which is what we are seeing now as a result of this unnecessary vote,” she said in a statement.

Breed added: “Over the last year John successfully ran four elections, while navigating a pandemic that thwarted San Francisco into crisis response — all without a single issue. Rather than working on key issues to recover and rebuild our City, this is a good example of unfair politicization of a key part of our government that is working well for the voters of this city.”

Supervisor Aaron Peskin called the decision “commission malfeasance.”

“This is demoralizing and humiliating to John and to the staff of the department,” Peskin told Mission Local. “Rarely do you see employees of a department come together to champion their boss and that is the case here.” 

Arntz said he is “not prepared to make any sort of conclusion publicly about how I would approach potentially applying for this position,” but added that he will remain in his role until May.

He said he is concerned about how the decision may impact his department, particularly if key staff start to leave. He said from what he has seen it is “certainly impacting them and their decision making and what they want to do going forward.”