Stormy Henry has known London Breed all her life. They grew up together in Plaza East, the Fillmore public-housing project once known as “Outta Control,” and remembers the then-teenager as a bookish and quiet neighbor.
“She peered out the window, she read her books, she was kinda quiet. She cheered us on while we played Double Dutch,” said Henry, one of some 750 supporters who crowded the Fillmore music hall on Saturday morning to officially kick off Breed’s campaign for a second term as mayor.
Henry, who was younger, lived down the hall from Breed. “We shared the same rats and roaches,” she said, adding that the future mayor was a role model, and well-known in the complex.
What Henry called Breed’s perseverance and resilience — “I feel like I’m describing a superhero,” she said — was a throughline inside the Fillmore on Saturday.
Hundreds packed the dimly-lit hall, wearing yellow “London Breed for Mayor” hats and pins, and carrying yellow lawn signs. Roughly a third of the crowd was Black, another third Chinese elders organized by Breed’s well-oiled Asian outreach coordinators, and another third a mixture of volunteers, politicos and others seeking to give the city’s first Black female mayor four more years.
If Breed’s Fillmore to City Hall story helped to elect her the first time around, she is under considerably more pressure today.
Breed faces four serious contenders — former District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell, Tipping Point CEO and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie, Board President Aaron Peskin, and District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí — and is running on her record and a doom-loop narrative that she helped create. Voters are disgruntled, and multiple polls show Breed is deeply unpopular.
Nonetheless, on Saturday, she said her time at the helm presiding over the city’s most difficult years made her uniquely qualified to continue in leadership.
“You don’t just snap your fingers and black magic happens,” she said. “You do the work. You do the work. And I did the work.”
Supporter after supporter said Breed’s journey from public housing to City Hall, her care for Black San Franciscans, and her management of the city through Covid-19 and its accompanying ills made Breed the best choice for mayor.
“She’s an SF native, I’m an SF native, we were both raised in public housing,” said Alan Banks, Sr., the president of the nonprofit City Ball, which recognizes athletes from San Francisco. The group’s honorees include Breed, now 49 years old, who was a softball player while at Galileo High School.
Banks Sr. said the city needs a Black mayor because “the Black population has plummeted,” and an official like Breed would be best placed to help. Her housing policies, he said, are particularly important to him for prioritizing locals in affordable housing. And, he said, “she doesn’t shy away from the problems.”
The NorCal Carpenters Union had dozens of members in attendance, wearing orange and yellow neon vests; “I got voluntold” to attend, one said while waiting in the entry line. As pop music filled the air, Breed’s team served barbecue pork buns ahead of the speechmaking.
“I didn’t even like her at first,” said Chanel Blackwell, a 26-year resident of the city. But Breed’s shepherding of San Francisco through Covid-19 — Blackwell’s son was in 9th grade during the outset of the pandemic — changed her mind. “I saw that she really cares about the students in San Francisco.”
The event was filled with politicos: Willie Brown, Jr., was in attendance, as were Sen. Scott Wiener, Assessor-Recorder Joaquín Torres, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, and city supervisors Matt Dorsey, Joel Engardio, and Catherine Stefani. “She’s the best candidate,” said Brown of his protege. And, looking around the energetic room, he added: “Her opponents — I hope their spies deliver the truth to them.”
It was also somewhat star-studded: Actor Danny Glover, a San Francisco native, took the mic and emphasized the importance of supporting a candidate who was raised “right down here,” urging the audience to start “knocking on doors” to get Breed re-elected.
And, when Breed herself took the stage, as Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” played in the background, she, too, emphasized her public-housing past.
“The Fillmo’ community, the Mission District is here, Hunters Point is here, Chinatown is here, the VGs [Valencia Gardens] are here, the TLs [Tenderloin] are here, the Westside is here,” she said, after briefly greeting the crowd in Cantonese and pointing to her “Chinese grandmother,” Mrs. Wong, near the front row. “The whole San Francisco is represented in this room!”
Breed said she was “honored” and “excited” to have her kickoff very near to the complex where she was raised. And, she said, she knew the music venue well. “When I was 14, I snuck into my first Ice Cube concert right here, in the Fillmore.”
“You know I was born and raised in this community,” she continued. “I grew up in a public housing unit with my grandmother, where we received public assistance … I benefited from many of the services that I am now responsible for.”
“When you live over 20 years of your life in conditions you have no control over, in poverty, those experiences you never forget,” she added, as the boisterous crowd clapped and hooted. “And I want to be very clear: Every decision I’ve made as mayor, [those experiences] are the reasons why I have made those decisions.”
Breed’s 20-minute speech at times looked forward: She said her priorities for the next four years would be to build housing “at all costs,” boost the city’s transportation networks, and revitalize downtown by adding 30,000 residents to it by 2030. “Downtown can’t afford to be a 9-to-5 financial district. It has to be a neighborhood.”
But she particularly emphasized her past: Her tenure during covid made San Francisco a national leader when addressing the pandemic, she said. Others have attributed the city’s low mortality rate to an early lockdown by tech. And, while the city did well, it took months for public officials to redirect testing resources to the Latinx communities, which was the hardest hit by covid.
While Breed acknowledged on Saturday that, after the pandemic, “we did see an explosion of crime, we did see more people living on the streets in tents,” she’s now pointing to increased shelter capacity, declining crime, and record low rates of street homelessness.
And, she said, her administration has also employed a heavier hand: Breed has repeatedly called for crackdowns against drug dealers and users in the city, arrests that have contributed to a swelling jail population that deputies and inmates alike describe as out of control.
Decisions like that may be unpopular, Breed said, but she was defiant in supporting tough love. And some Black leaders have said they back that stance.
“I will not apologize for being aggressive to try to save somebody’s life, I am no longer going to be an enabler of people dying on the streets of San Francisco,” she said. “I’m not talking about it, I’m being about it with the work that I’m doing to help keep our streets under control.”
Her policies were the result of deep personal knowledge, she said, involving former drug addicts and dealers working with her administration. That approach made her confident that “this is not the War on Drugs” returned, she added.
That may be, but many experts have repeatedly questioned her approach. Those in public health say that arresting drug users is unlikely to combat addiction or reduce overdose deaths, and others have criticized her denunciation of “harm reduction” approaches, saying they are one of the best tools in the toolkit to save lives.
Still, Breed said, she is the only candidate in the race with the requisite experience to run the city. She took aim at her opponents without naming them, saying “we don’t have time for the foolery, we don’t have time for folks who have no idea what it takes to actually run the city, we don’t have time for no one who doesn’t know what it’s like to have to actually pay rent every month.” (Breed is one of very few city officials who rent instead of own their homes.)
And though Breed in the past perpetuated a sense of spiraling crime — even when statistics showed otherwise — she said that, today, she was the only one looking forward.
“The folks that are running against me, they want you to believe that this city is messed up. They want you to believe that there is no hope. Their whole message is predicated on what’s bad … saying that this city has lost its way,” she said. “I’m lifting San Francisco up … because this is a city that made a girl from the projects mayor.”
“So San Francisco, jump on this roller coaster,” she added, finishing off her speech. “Let’s win this race — in high heels.”
It’s never a good sign when a politician runs on identity and victimhood, instead of policies and track record.
I voted for Breed in 2018. I supported her efforts during COVID and agreed with many decisions she made early on.
Since 2021, it has all been downhill. No, it definitely isn’t all Breed’s fault. This city is grappling with decades of bad policy decisions.
However, Breed hasn’t demonstrated the vision required to take this city where it needs to go next. She blames everyone around her when there is a crisis. Governing by press release is not leadership. Flip flopping to pander to the politics of the moment is not leadership.
I will be voting for her opponents in this upcoming elections. I expect many will do the same.
So what happens if Supervisors, the Courts, particularly the 9th circuit and a GOP dominated Congress and White House continue to block efforts to resolve The City’s problems?
Breed has some very flowery rhetoric, but I don’t think that things in SF are as great as she says they are.
i hope the voters allow london breed’s record of corruption and systemic city failure under her watch as the most powerful person in the city administration to speak for itself.
Breed is responsible for $5 million to supply Vodha and beer to people with alcohol problems. Breed is responsible for all the waste of money to non profits .
Of all the programs your pick to highlight as poor management, you pick one that is actually working. I mean she’s def not my first choice, but that is a proven program that actually helps people 🤦🏻