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.
It was a sunny Saturday, and Mayor London Breed bopped her way around town, moving from a Juneteenth pop-up market at the Ferry Building to “Grillin’ in the Mo’,” a Fillmore block party that Breed said she helped start before she was a supervisor.
The theme for the day — as it was for Breed’s campaign kick-off, in numerous city press releases, and at a considerable number of her public appearances — was rebound: San Francisco is on the up-and-up, naysayers be damned.
“Look at this,” she told this reporter, moving her outstretched finger along a long line of food vendors and artisans set up on the Embarcadero. “I know you’re writing about me, but look at this line,” she said, indicating the more than 20 people dutifully waiting for Roti Roti chicken, spinning on the spit and dripping grease onto roasting potatoes underneath.
“Look at this,” she said, pointing to the Juneteenth-themed, Black-owned craft stalls set up for the special day, selling Maasai earrings and Black beauty products. These crowds, filled with residents and tourists spending cash and enjoying their weekends, happen every week, “every time they have the farmers market,” she said.
It is every mayor’s job to be a booster for their city, but for Breed, the incumbent, her political future depends on that upbeat view. While crime rates have been at historic lows and continue to decline, multiple polls show San Franciscans feel crime has worsened; drug overdose deaths have exploded as fentanyl has made its way westward, killing 2,299 people in the city since 2020 (75 percent of the total 3,085 drug overdose deaths in that time); and homelessness is up, although visible street homelessness is down — more people are living in cars or shelters, fewer in tents.
Inevitably, those ills have stuck to Breed. In 2021 and 2022, then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin was assailed for perceptions of rising crime, despite the historic lows and expert agreement that DAs have little impact on crime waves. Breed engaged in significant naysaying herself at the time, saying that residents should be “less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.”
Boudin is gone, Breed’s chosen DA is in — and statistics, now, are paramount to the mayor.
“There’s no more boogeyman to blame,” said David Ho, a political consultant and Chinatown organizer. “Her people didn’t care about numbers, and now all the sudden they do? You can’t have it both ways.”
Breed’s narrative of comparing the San Francisco of two years ago to that of today reminded consultant Jim Ross of the opening scenes of “The Wizard of Oz:” Dorothy’s sepia-toned house crash-lands in Munchkinland, and she emerges into a multicolored dreamscape. “In London Breed’s world, it’s black-and-white versus Technicolor.”
If Boudin were still in office, added Ho, he could take some of the electoral heat off Breed ahead of November. “The biggest mistake was going after him too early,” Ho said.
Breed’s opponents are making hay of the climate of fear that Breed helped to create. Both Mark Farrell and Daniel Lurie have repeatedly said on the campaign trail that residents and shopkeepers do not feel safe in San Francisco, laying blame at the mayor’s feet; Ahsha Safaí has said the mayor’s arrest crackdowns are not a coherent plan, and had overlooked consequences; Aaron Peskin has attacked Breed’s past rhetoric as “an effort to make people feel afraid for … political gain.”
But for Breed, the candidate who is five months away from an election, it’s all sunshine.
“This is one of my favorite events every single year now, and what happens when I come out is, I run into people, not just people who live in San Francisco, but people who are visiting San Francisco from all over the worlddddd!” she told a small gathered crowd at the Ferry Terminal Plaza shortly after 11 a.m. on Saturday, standing in front of gold balloons spelling out “Juneteenth.”
“So, when you go back to the various places you come from, you tell them the story of San Francisco, you tell them the story of good food and good cuisine, you tell them the story of good people and amazing opportunities,” she continued, before raising a small plastic cup of strawberry lemonade and making a toast: “To the success of San Francisco!”
Skrillex, Hollywood and firefighters
The turn-around story of San Francisco is now hitting Breed’s pocketbooks personally, albeit slightly: Before leaving the farmer’s market, she mentioned the surprise Skrillex rave announced this past week, and said young family members are asking her to get them in.
“I was never cool with the young people, like I have young people I’m cool with, but they usually are just calling me for money, my nieces and everybody else. And now they’re like, ‘Auntie, can you help me get in? Can you get me a ticket?’ I’ve already, I think, bought four tickets so far,“ she said. And at $79.50 a pop, Breed can afford them. “Beyoncé, no, but Skrillex? Bargain price.”
Boosterism came from Breed all day. At the Indie Night Film Festival at the AMC Kabuki 8 movie theater, Breed said she had been “harassing” the event’s founder “for I don't know how many years” to bring the event up to the city from Los Angeles. “I said, ‘We need to bring Hollywood to San Francisco.’”
And it was there the day before, too. On Friday evening, Breed popped in and out of the San Francisco Fire Department’s 133rd academy graduation ceremony, racing off stage less than five minutes after her entrance. “If you thought my schedule was busy … " started Chief Jeanine Nicholson, addressing an auditorium filled with friends and family of the 44 new firefighters earning their stripes that night.
Nicholson, as a city official, is prohibited from campaigning while conducting official duties or wearing her uniform. But, in welcoming her boss onstage, the fire department’s chief nodded to Breed’s signature campaign theme.
“If there’s anybody from out of town here: Don’t believe the false narrative,” said Nicholson after introducing the mayor. She was speaking in the cavernous hall of the Scottish Rite Masonic Center, across 19th Avenue from Stern Grove, which is decorated with Biblical scenes on towering murals. “This city has seen incredible change for the better over the past year, when it comes to street conditions and crime.” To the graduation class: “133, this is your city now, too. Don’t you let anybody bash your city.”
Breed came onstage escorted arm-in-arm by a uniformed firefighter. She gave a hearty congratulations to the class, eliciting loud applause, and acknowledged the support friends and relatives had shown to “these amazing young men and women” who had endured “really tough training” to graduate. “It is definitely not an easy process.”
She then told the new firefighters they would bear the brunt of ameliorating conditions on which the city’s recovery, and Breed’s campaign promise, depends. It’s not just about leaping head-first into burning buildings or rescuing stranded cats, but reversing overdoses and dealing with “those in crisis.”
“In light of some of the real challenges that we face as a city, with those struggling with addiction and mental illness, it is this department that typically is on the frontline,” she said.
As she often does, Breed made the point personally: When she was a child, the mayor’s aunt was developmentally disabled, and would often rely on “the men and women of Station Five” in the Fillmore to take care of her. (And Breed’s aunt cared for them, too: She would be “very complimentary” to the firefighters back then, Breed said, “because she always loved a man in uniform.”)
Breed mentioned her aunt again on Saturday afternoon, greeting four firefighters from Station Five on the Hamilton Recreation Center’s lawn, between Geary Boulevard and Post Street, the site of the Grillin’ in the Mo’ outdoor party. “Station Five? You know that’s my station, right?” she told the four men, before delving into the story of her aunt.
The event was the only time Saturday when Breed truly put up her feet. Children bounced in inflatable castles arranged behind rows of fold-out chairs, and long lines formed for grilled hot dogs, burgers and links.
Breed pulled up in her black Chevy Tahoe a little after 1:30 p.m., as “Wobble” by V.I.C. played, and she stayed for more than 90 minutes: A long line had formed for the mayor, and an aide took each person’s phone, snapped a photo, and ushered along the next fan. After posing with dozens of visitors, she pulled up a plastic chair and sat alongside Phelicia Jones, the founder of Wealth and Disparities in the Black Community and the Justice 4 Mario Woods Coalition.
Chief of Police Bill Scott and Nicholson, the fire department chief, stood nearby, smiling and shaking hands. The Mary Jane Girls graced the stage, and Breed was handed a styrofoam box filled with corn on the cob, beans and ribs. She sat it on her lap, stretched her legs out, and took in the sun.
The concern about crime hasn’t been so much about its prevalence, but how it seems to be done with impunity. The relatively few who do commit crimes often exhibit behavior suggesting they know they won’t get caught, or if they do, there won’t be any real consequences.
She’s been 100% photo-ops and BS the entire time. More of the same?
HARD Pass.
FIRE BREED and kick the “TogetherSF” Billionaire BS back to NYC.