See how they run: Aaron Peskin goes to a house party

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Mission Local is publishing a daily campaign dispatch for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: Aaron Peskin. Read earlier dispatches here.

For over a year, says Winnie Porter, every time she saw Aaron Peskn, she would tell him to run for mayor. Or rather, she would address him only as though he were already mayor. “I would say, “Hey, mayor, how are you doing?” Porter said brightly, waving like a friendly townsperson in a musical.

Now Peskin has called her bluff. And so, last Sunday, Porter held a house party not just to convince people to vote for Peskin — Porter suspected that many of them would do so just for lack of other options — but to get them excited enough to join the campaign.

Around her, campaign staff and volunteers bustle around Porter’s brightly painted home in the Excelsior district, putting out tubs of Ben & Jerry’s and ice-cream sandwiches. On the walls, folk art and family photos are interspersed with images of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Frida Kahlo and Bernie Sanders. Peskin hadn’t arrived yet — because he has a full-time job as a supervisor, his nights and weekends are tightly booked.

Porter has always been politically engaged. The first campaign she volunteered for was George McGovern’s run for president in 1972. But when she became an elementary school teacher, the job absorbed most of her organizational energy. Then she retired, and political Porter roared back with a vengeance. “I realized that all this political stuff that I had done within the teaching community was great. But it’s not going to make a big difference. We’ve got to get politicians elected to support education.”

“This house is kind of famous,” says Porter. She’s lent it out to many political campaigns over the years: “John Avalos,” says Porter, fondly. “Jane Kim.” Porter’s tone becomes less fond. “Who I no longer support. She endorsed Ahsha Safaí in MY district.”

 “Those are vegan,” says Jordan, a volunteer, pointing meaningfully at the ice-cream sandwiches and making firm eye contact with anyone within grabbing range. “Don’t touch those until the vegans have had a chance.”

By the door, a young man named Jack Shelley takes down names and contact information. Shelley’s journey here began when he maneuvered his way into an internship at Peskin’s office in City Hall. “I graduated early, and my parents, quite graciously, said that I could go do something that doesn’t quite pay the rent,” said Shelley. “I went to his office way too early every day with a suit on and said, ‘Give me stuff to do.’”

From that internship, Shelley went on to manage the successful campaign for incumbent San Francisco Superior Court Judge Patrick Thompson before joining Peskin’s campaign as fundraising coordinator. “My family’s been in politics for a very, very long time,” says Shelley, when asked how he learned to manage a campaign. This turns out to be extremely accurate — Shelley’s grandfather, also Jack, was once mayor of San Francisco, and a congressman. His father, Kevin, was a supervisor and, later, California’s secretary of state

The guests begin to arrive — a few dozen friends and friends-of-friends of Porter, many of them also current and former schoolteachers — and make their way to the living room, where all the furniture has been pushed against the walls to form a circle.

When Peskin arrives, Porter presents him to the crowd with great enthusiasm. “It’s my pleasure to introduce the next mayor of San Francisco,” she says. “I know none of his staff can say this, but there ain’t no one else to vote for. He’s the only one who is going to bring the city where it needs to be.”

“Let us not count our chickens,” says Peskin. “There is a lot of work to do between now and November, which I think is 170 days from today.” It was not an easy decision to run for mayor, he continues, “but I was hearing from many people like Winnie that we did not have a lot of choices.”

“We didn’t have any!” says Porter, outraged.

The speech that follows would be familiar to anyone who heard Peskin announce his candidacy — but more conversational, and tailored toward an audience with a deeper-than-average understanding of San Francisco history and politics. Peskin talks about volunteering in Tom Ammiano’s mayoral write-in campaign in 1999. “It was actually not dissimilar to what is happening now. We were in the middle of an overheated economic boom. The income inequality gap was growing rapidly. People were being evicted. I got into it because I loved my neighborhood, and I wanted to take care of my neighbors.”

And then things, inevitably, get wonky. “The Board of Supervisors has to approve leases and purchases of land,” say Peskin. “We all usually vote for them 11-nothing. But there was a lease at 1155 Market for 100,000 square feet of office space. I looked at it, and I thought, ‘$64.60 per square foot? This was last September.’ Peskin looked more closely, he says, and noticed that the appraisal for the space was a year old. He persuaded the other supervisors to reject the lease, and they did. “Three weeks ago,” said Peskin,“we approved a lease at $29.95 per square foot.”

Another audience might have been bored to tears. This one erupted into a chorus of ohs and wows.

“I’m telling this story now,” continues Peskin, “because now is the time that we can actually get 2,000 shelter beds. Now is actually the time that we can invest in real estate.”

“And, by way of viability of this campaign,” Peskin continues,  “I spent my first dollars on a poll. This is an absolutely viable campaign. Public financing, which is remarkably democratic, is the instrument that we have: $150 donations from San Francisco residents are matched by a factor of six. Your $150 donation becomes $1,050. We’re going to be outspent. I need your help.”

“And then, finally, ranked-choice voting, “ says Peskin, clearly winding up his intro with a few action items. “You’re throwing away your vote if you just vote for one person. You can vote for up to 10. Fill out as many as you feel comfortable.” The poll the campaign commissioned shows that people whose first choice is Daniel Lurie or Ahsha Safaí tend to pick Peskin as their second choice. After that, things get harder to predict, but, adds Peskin, his electoral track record is pretty good so far. “I’ve run five times. I’ve never lost. I don’t want to lose this.”

After that, it is time for questions. “How is it possible that the voters of San Francisco vote for something, get money for this thing, and the mayor refuses to spend it?” says Porter.

Well, says Peskin, under state law — Proposition 218 —if you want to put a tax on the ballot and dedicate the money to a particular thing, it requires a two-thirds vote to pass. But if you want to raise a general tax that just goes into the general fund ,you only need a simple majority vote. The Berniecrats and Dean Preston said that Proposition I was about housing, says Peskin, but it was technically a general tax. Legally, the mayor can put that money wherever she wants.

This is followed by the kind of flurry of questions that one might expect from a group of teachers. There are ardent inside-baseball discussions of the state of City College of San Francisco, pensions, changes to healthcare plans. Those with connections to social work complain at how the number of executives at the Human Services Agency has ballooned while regular social workers are overworked and understaffed, and HSA’s headquarters at 170 Otis St. slides into further disrepair.

In the last six years since London Breed has been mayor, the number of municipal executives has grown disproportionately relative to the number of rank and file employees, says Peskin. This is the kind of situation that a mayor can cause, and something a different mayor could fix. “Interestingly enough,” Peskin adds, “the story I told you earlier about the $29.95 lease — that actually has become the opportunity to get HSA out of 170 Otis. I agree with you.That building is horrible.”

A question about how to counter the narrative that San Francisco is a crime-ridden cesspool leads to Peskin’s frequently stated campaign promise to fully staff the police department. At this, a dapper man in a sweater raises an objection. “ Yes, we need more police,” he says. “but we need more jobs, so people will not have to be criminals.” Specifically, the man adds, we need language and vocational schools for people, “so that they don’t have to end up on the streets. Being chased by cops.”

“I completely agree that we have to be involved in job training,” says Peskin. “And, by the way, that’s where City College plays a tremendous role.”

“They cut to hell all of those programs that give people jobs,” one woman says.

“City College had an incredible program that trained airline mechanics who got jobs down at SFO,” Peskin reminisces.

Then the conversation takes a turn. Many of the people present are involved in mutual-aid programs. Maybe the city could pay for a big truck that could drive around the city, picking up food from places that have too much, and dropping it off at places that need it? Or a camper van that distributes used clothing?

“Those all sound like great ideas,” says Peskin, making no promises. He chats with a few people one-on-one, and is off to the next event.

“Well,” Porter says to the assembled guests. “What did you think?”

“I liked … ” says the man in the sweater, thoughtfully. “I liked that he said that he could win.”