These were the politicians that techies voted into office. The politicians that techies voted out of office opposed all development whatsoever - they were the folks that opposed the San Antonio Center development as a whole, and that blocked the North Bayshore redevelopment for over a decade until Googlers actually did form a voting bloc and voted the supervisors opposed to redevelopment out en-masse.
There are a surprising number of tech employees who actually do favor smart urbanization, community engagement, and mixed-use developments instead of holing themselves up in their employers and writing code. Tech (and particular Big Tech) has become a lot more extroverted than the days when it was kids who got bullied at recess because they spent all day playing with computers rather than learning social skills. (And IMHO, this is one reason why the industry has become less innovative lately - there are fewer programmers willing to hole themselves up with a computer for years until they solve a hard technical problem, and fewer managers willing to sponsor that kind of work. The Erlich Bachmans are outnumbering the Richard Hendricks.)
As bad as the current supervisors are, the former ones were a hundred times worse as they opposed ALL development.
And because of the changing demographics of the city, the worse politicians were voted out. Which basically proves my point.
And as demographics continue to change, the political power of this voting Bloc will continue to improve as well.
Maybe in another decade this increase in voting power will allow us to vote in politicians who are actually decent, as opposed to merely being less horrible than previous ones.
Yes, techie voting power has fought off the worst of the problems, but we can still continue to improve.
