See how they run: Breed, the incumbent, holds down her day job

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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: London Breed. Read earlier dispatches here.

No incumbent mayor has lost a race in San Francisco since 1995, when Willie Brown unseated Frank Jordan, starting a years-long political dynasty that still defines the city today. Things then were not like they are now: Brown was one of the most powerful politicians in California, the self-proclaimed “Ayatollah” of the State Assembly, and early polls had him up on Jordan by six to 15 points. (Brown went on to win by 13 points, or 55-42.)

None of the challengers to Mayor London Breed today can boast that kind of clout, nor are they likely to wallop Breed the way Brown did Jordan. Ranked-choice voting changes the calculus, and makes pre-election polling more difficult than predicting an up-or-down contest.

But still: Anyone would rather campaign sitting within Room 200 than outside it.

“Ask any of the candidates challenging the mayor: They’d rather be the incumbent than the challenger,” said David Ho, a longtime Chinatown organizer and political consultant. It’s true, Ho said, that the electorate is surly, Breed’s popularity ratings are dismal, and San Franciscans overwhelmingly think the city is on the wrong track.

Much of that will be laid at Breed’s feet, fairly or unfairly, and the “two-edged sword” of incumbency is “reflected in the mayor’s low poll numbers,” Ho said. 

But if those polls show a possible route for her challengers, they are all still playing in the mayor’s arena. “The only poll that matters is election night,” Ho said. “And, generally, incumbents don’t get defeated.”

So far this week, Breed has been running for the job she already has. And using her incumbency to demonstrate action. 

On Tuesday at 11 a.m., standing inside the West Portal Recreation Center in front of some 75 attendees, Breed announced the hiring of Ivy Lee as director of the Office of Victim and Witness Rights, a new city body that will work on improving city services for victims of crime, including survivors of sexual assault and mugging. 

“This is a long time coming,” said Breed, harkening back to the “gun violence that was happening in our community” that she said motivated her entry into politics. That violence, she added, “forced us to create new tools that never even existed in San Francisco … It was more about prosecution, holding people accountable [at the time], but what happens to the wrap-around support necessary to help victims?”

The mayor’s audience, sitting in a playroom featuring childrens’ drawings clothes-pinned to overhead string, was perhaps half Chinese elders awaiting a noon lunch at the center. 

Much was said of the need to ensure adequate translation for Asian crime victims navigating the city’s bureaucracy, an issue likely to resonate with the voters who unleashed their fury on Chesa Boudin during the recall over a perception that he was unconcerned with anti-Asian violence.

The Chinese seniors are a staple of both city — and campaign — side events by officials, and Tuesday’s speeches were punctuated by Cantonese translations: Breed or a city supervisor would speak and, for two or three minutes after, an aide would translate their every word before the next official approached the podium.

How will the new victims’ rights office differ from its predecessor? It is too soon to know. But that is a benefit of having the perch of City Hall in a tight campaign. You can create programs and a whole new city body, while the competition can only dream of doing so. 

“It’s the contenders who get to say, ‘I would do this,’ and she can just go out and do it,” said Jim Ross, a longtime political consultant. Incumbents like Breed, he said, “get to define the race. They get to pick and choose which issues are going to be the topics of discussion and debate.”

Public safety has been a constant: The need for tough love, but also the fact that crime is now down after a post-pandemic rise, a change Breed would like voters to attribute to her policies.

Housing, too, has been a constant: Breed’s inauguration in 2018 was a boon for the ascendant YIMBY movement, which has stood by her side ever since. And she by its: She is committed to building housing “at all costs,” she said in her campaign kick-off, and has embraced a package of reforms to get to the 82,000 new units mandated by the state by 2030.

On Wednesday morning, Breed presided over the groundbreaking of some 335 low-income rental units in two new towers in the East Cut, at the former temporary Transbay Terminal, grabbing one of 11 golden shovels and heaping a symbolic pile of dirt from one side of a mound to another.

“I don’t know about you, but building housing gets me really excited,” said Breed shortly after, standing in the full sun before an audience of mostly suited men sitting on white plastic chairs; some standing in the back wore crisp, brand-new neon construction vests. “I feel like Oprah Winfrey: ‘You get a home, you get a home, you get a home. Everybody gets a home!’” 

Workers at the construction site paused and took in the sight, their own orange vests well-worn. The crowd was Breed’s base: Developers and housing advocates, who see in Breed their best shot at boosting supply and lowering prices.

The rate of housing production in San Francisco is so sluggish that it would take 41 years to meet the state’s goals if the city continues at a 2023 pace. There is likely nothing Breed can do to change that: All agree market forces are not ripe for a housing boom. There is too little private capital interested in development, and the state is not stepping in with significant funding.

Will it matter? Housing has taken a back seat to crime, but Ross, for his part, said voters will soon want concrete improvements. “She’s in a position where she has to show results, and rhetoric is not going to dig her out of the hole she’s in,” he said.

Yet Breed, more than the rest, can do something about it on the campaign trail. While her two supervisorial opponents, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí, do have the power to propose popular ballot measures (and have done so), the others must hope their rhetoric alone will suffice.

“I still think she’s the front runner,” said Ho. “The narrative is slightly changing in the city, they see light at the end of the tunnel. The question is: Is it going to be too late?”

For what it’s worth, Willie Brown has endorsed Breed in November. “She’s the best candidate, easily the best candidate,” he said at her kick-off earlier this month. Frank Jordan has gone for Daniel Lurie.