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Last year, maverick public defender Jeff Adachi raised a lonely cry about San Francisco's multi-billion dollar pension crisis, enraging the city's labor unions.

A fierce, union-backed campaign crushed his 2010 pension reform measure. Adachi reemerged this year with Proposition D, another pension fix, only to be painted as an anti-union Republican in a series of stinging television spots.

Now it appears that Adachi, who is also running for mayor, will not get the victory he has so doggedly sought.

Instead, San Francisco voters are poised to pass Proposition C, a pension reform measure backed by Mayor Ed Lee and the very unions who fought Adachi, according to new Bay Citizen/USF poll. 

If the election were held today, Prop. C would be the winner, the poll found. Adachi's measure is trailing by 9 percentage points with three weeks until election day. While it's possible that each measure receives a majority of votes, the measure approved by more votes wins, according to a spokeswoman for the city's election department.

A total of 45 percent of those polled support Prop. C. Just 19 percent oppose it, with 36 percent still undecided. 

Prop. D was supported by 36 percent with 23 percent opposed and 41 percent undecided.

Adachi said he believes he can narrow the gap by the election by highlighting the differences between the two measures. Notably, he said, Prop. D would save the city $400 million more than Prop. C, although opponents say the measure won’t withstand legal challenges.

"As the election nears, the voters will focus on the differences between the measures," said Adachi. "I expect that numbers will improve as the voters become more educated."

Prop. C was born out of the ashes of Adachi's 2010 pension reform measure. Labor and business leaders met with Mayor Lee, often behind closed doors, to craft their own version this year. Financier Warren Hellman helped guide the negotiations, paid $200,000 for an actuarial study for the measure and has donated $100,000 to the campaign so far. (Hellman is chairman of The Bay Citizen but plays no role in editorial operations.)

One man was not at the table -- Adachi.

Max Neiman, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said that support from unions and the "city family" is a big reason why Prop. C is polling higher than Adachi's measure. He also said that Prop. C may benefit from Lee's popularity. The Bay Citizen/USF poll revealed the Lee is the runaway favorite in the crowded mayor's race, while Adachi, who made pension reform a key issue in his mayoral campaign, is a long shot. 

“We anticipated that pension reform was going to be a very contentious issue, but it turns out there hasn't been very strong opposition to it,” said Neiman, who worked on the poll. “You don't have the largest and strongest opposition, which would normally come from the unions.”

Nearly 49 percent of people who are in a union or have union members in their family support Prop. C, while 22 percent oppose it and 30 percent are undecided, according to the poll. People without union members in their families were more likely to be undecided about Prop. C. Nearly 44 percent were in favor, 18 percent were opposed and 38 percent had not made up their minds.

Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, said the public employee unions came to support Prop. C because they “realized that there were going to be layoffs. They realized that as angry as they can be, they still have to be responsible.”

Neiman had a slightly different take. “I think the unions have been very circumspect about the issue: they don't want to see a harsher measure coming down the pike,” he said.

The poll suggests that the unions still hold a grudge against Adachi for his pension reform efforts. Nearly 34 percent of people who are in a union or have union members in their family oppose Prop. D, while 31 percent support it and 35 percent are undecided.

San Francisco, like many other cities across the country, faces ballooning pension costs that could affect its ability to provide basic services. The city will have to pay out some $4.4 billion in pensions over the next decade.

Prop. C would save the city between $1 billion and $1.3 billion over 10 years, according to the city controller. It would require city workers to contribute 7.5 percent of their salaries to their pensions. In years when the retirement fund is performing poorly, the contribution could rise to 13.5 percent. City workers would also have to contribute to a health care fund for retirees.

Prop. D would save the city $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion, according to the controller. Most city employees would contribute 7.5 percent, while police and firefighters would contribute 10 percent to their pensions. Workers earning less than $50,000 would never pay more than 7.5 percent, while those making more than $200,000 could contribute as much as 16 percent. 

Last year, the campaigns for and against Adachi’s measure were fierce and expensive. All told, the campaign to pass the measure raised $1.1 million in 2010. Opponents, including city unions, raised $1.8 million to defeat it.

This year, the money is flowing again.

Adachi’s Prop. D had raised $637,000 this year as of Sept. 24. Venture capitalist Michael Moritz and businessman George Hume had donated $250,000 apiece.

Prop. C had raised $349,000 this year as of Sept. 24. An Oct. 13 filing shows that the campaign has now raised $545,000. The city’s police union has poured in $125,000, while the AFL-CIO Local 21 has contributed nearly $110,000.

Neiman predicted that one or both of the measures would pass, even with the large number of undecided voters. 

“You would have to have a very substantial majority of the undecideds being against C or D to switch things around,” said Neiman, who worked on the poll. “It’s not something you would expect unless you saw a large, well-funded, well-organized opposition.”

But political consultant Jim Ross said that the high percentage of undecided voters could hurt both measures, including the frontrunner, on election day.

"Prop. C could pass, but at 45 percent, you have a big hill to climb," said Ross, who is not working on either campaign. "If somebody's undecided at this point in the election cycle, they either don't vote or they vote no."

As both sides fight for the remaining undecided voters, they are all in agreement about why so many San Franciscans have not made up their minds. When people hear “pension reform,” their eyes glaze over.

“It’s a complicated subject, and when you’re presented with two proposals, it's more difficult to ferret out what’s what,” Adachi said.

When asked whether they’d heard about pension reform, 29 percent said “a lot,” 20 percent said “somewhat,” 20 percent said “a little” and 40 percent said “not at all.”

The poll results are based on telephone interviews of a random sample of 551 likely San Francisco voters between Oct. 7 and Oct. 13, 2011. The poll has a 4.2 percent margin of error for the overall pool of voters. The poll also surveyed 140 people with union members in the family and 411 without. The margin of error for that portion of the poll is slightly higher.