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: Ahsha Safaí. Read earlier dispatches here.
Lauren Chung keeps a spare swimsuit in her trunk, just in case a time slot opens up for a quick swim in the Bay. “That cold, cold water gives me a reset,” she said.
Such resets are rare these days. At 28, the Los Angeles native is running a mayoral campaign for District 11 supervisor Ahsha Safaí.
It’s a slim staff, so the aide with the tote bag packed with Safaí’s campaign signs is likely Chung. She also snaps pictures, takes care of the lunch bill, and ushers Safaí to his next meeting when the candidate gets carried away by a conversation: “Can we walk and talk? You are gonna be late.”
Chung didn’t foresee running a mayoral campaign at this point in her career, and she takes pride in that.
“I didn’t think that I would be here, sitting in a room with people who have been doing this job for decades. And I have a voice in that room,” she said. “A lot of those spaces are mostly white, mostly men, and then me.”
Chung grew up in an apartment in Los Angeles County with her parents, who both immigrated to the United States from Taiwan. One day when Chung was around five years old, the family received an eviction letter from the landlord.
But her dad had a lawyer friend who wrote a letter to the landlord, “and everything stopped,” Chung said.
Her mom showed her the letter, even though the young Chung did not understand a word of it. “Look, this is what true understanding of the law can get you. It can get you peace, and it can get you power,” Chung’s mom told her.
That stuck with her. Chung went on to participate in a debate class in high school, and then off to Boston University for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science.
Moving from a predominantly Asian American Southern California neighborhood to Boston in 2013 gave Chung a reality check. She used to be surrounded by people who looked, and often thought, like her. In Boston she was a minority, and she quickly realized that “there’s a lot of work to be done on equality and having a voice. You really need to fight for everything.”
“As liberal as Massachusetts was, the progress they were making felt slow,” Chung said, noting that in 2014 Boston elected its first Asian American, Michelle Wu, to the city council.
So she moved back to California and during a week-long trip to San Francisco in 2017 she toured beyond the Fisherman’s Wharf and the cable cars to visit neighborhoods like the Richmond and Potrero Hill. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” she said.
She moved to the city that year and started working for Gavin Newson’s gubernatorial campaign, as “a very low-level staffer” in fundraising. Next, she worked part-time in 2019 fundraising for Safaí’s re-election campaign as District 11 supervisor before becoming his campaign manager.
Her first week transitioning into the new position was in March 2020, and Chung had to rethink all she knew about campaigning. No door knocking. No rallies. People were home and bored, but they might not want to talk.
“It just really was dealing with the crisis, more than it was campaigning,” Chung said. “It was delivering masks. It was delivering food to seniors. It was going with him to a food pantry and bagging groceries.”
Safaí was re-elected, and Chung worked as his legislative aide. This spring, she took on the campaign manager job again.
But this time, the scale is different. Instead of a tiny office in the Excelsior, the campaign headquarters has a big space at Mission and 22nd streets. Beyond his own district, Safaí goes to neighborhoods around the city with Chung by his side, from the Tenderloin to the Sunset, courting votes wherever he can.
Chung is always on. On a good week, she has one day off. On the other six days, she faces a daunting to-do list that she refers to as “all these little things that I don’t want the candidate to ever have to think about.” That includes finding out: Who’s calling the Mariachis for the headquarters opening? Who’s getting the food? Are all the campaign fliers bundled?
“The only reason I feel like people can get through campaigns is because there’s always an end date. You’re reaching towards a goal,” Chung said. “At the end of it, campaigning is not as hard as governing. When you get to the place where you can make decisions, you have to work even harder.”
About what the future holds, Chung said she doesn’t like to think that way.
“More than anything, I’m gonna see this campaign all the way through.”
This candidate worked for Governor Newsom, the Governor who has
presided over the largest budget deficit of any state in the United States.
And, she is part of the Demo Urban Machine which has, run
San Francisco into the ground, according to a recent survey which
had San Francisco as the worst run city government in all of the
United States.
A very impressive young person. She will go far.