The City of San Francisco’s Elections Commission voted 4-2 last week not to renew the contract of its Elections Director, John Arntz, because he is white — i.e. to open the position in pursuit of the city’s “racial equity plan.”

The Mission Local website reported that Arntz was fired in spite of outstanding service over the past 20 years:

Elections Commissioner Cynthia Dai, who voted to not renew Arntz’s contract, said there was no performance-based reason for the commission’s decision. She did not dispute that San Francisco has run free, fair and functional elections for 20 years. Rather, she says, it was time to open up this position to a more diverse field; the city, she said, could not make progress on its racial equity goals without opening up its top positions.

“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,” reads an email sent from commission president Chris Jerdonek to Arntz. “We also wanted to allow enough time for a fair and equitable process and conduct as broad a search as possible.”

…

All 12 of the managers in Arntz’s department, without his knowledge, wrote a letter to the commission ahead of time pleading with them to re-appoint him. Their input was disregarded and, during Wednesday’s meeting, their letter does not appear to have been acknowledged.

The San Francisco Chronicle noted that Arntz is eligible to reapply for his job — among all the other applicants.

Mayor London “Breed, city staff and citizens expressed concern at the commission’s move, quickly jumping to defend Arntz’s record of running fair, free and functional elections without a glitch, especially during an unprecedented pandemic,” the Chronicle added.

Arntz also oversaw two historic recall elections this year — one in which voters replaced far-left District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and one in which they replaced three left-wing school board members.

Arnts has not publicly protested his impending replacement. The Chronicle noted that one area of criticism of his tenure had been that the city had not yet developed an open-source voting system, and relied on Dominion Voting Systems as the sole bidder for city election contracts because it is the only company whose software can run complicated ranked-choice elections.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.