San Francisco’s ‘Twitter Menace’ or True Believer? He Might Be Both.

The deep pockets of the tech investor Garry Tan are valued by his allies, but his pugnacious online habits are creating plenty of enemies in the city he says he wants to save.

The tech investor Garry Tan has courted San Francisco’s moderate Democrats and angered its progressives. Credit... Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times

Under cathedral ceilings and soaring stained glass windows, Garry Tan clutched a microphone as he greeted a crowd of political centrists, including San Francisco’s mayor, local prosecutors and police brass.

“Welcome to the church of turning San Francisco around!” said Mr. Tan at a fund-raiser he was hosting for local Asian American female political candidates just days before the Super Tuesday elections this month.

For a man evangelizing for change in San Francisco, owning a condo that used to be part of a church comes in handy. Last year, he scooped up the $3.95 million space near the city’s palm-tree-studded Dolores Park to hold events like this one — events he hopes will shift San Francisco from its idealistic progressivism toward nuts-and-bolts centrism.

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