Mayor London Breed won the sole endorsement of the San Francisco Democratic Party on Wednesday night, giving her campaign a major seal of approval and robbing her rivals of the party’s second- or third-place picks.
The party also voted to endorse mostly moderate candidates in the Board of Supervisors elections.
Breed won 21 out of 32 votes from the newly elected party committee members, the majority of whom were part of the Democrats for Change slate, which ousted progressives from control of the party in the March election.
Six progressive members of the party voted for Aaron Peskin; two members, Jade Tu and Lanier Coles, voted for Farrell; and Nancy Pelosi and Trevor Chandler voted “no endorsement.”
No other candidate received enough votes to get a No. 2 pick.
In a statement, the mayor said she was “honored and proud to receive the sole endorsement of the San Francisco Democratic Party.”
“As someone who has registered voters, traveled to battleground states, and done the hard work to build our party up locally over the years, I know the value of this endorsement and what it means,” she added. The mayor will hold a press conference to celebrate the win on Thursday at 11 a.m. in Alamo Square Park.
The backing of the Democratic County Central Committee will be significant come November: The party will spend handsomely to send campaign flyers and take out ads promoting Breed and its other chosen candidates, and voters will be looking toward the local Democrats’ pick when filling out their ballots.
Though the endorsement was not a surprise — at the party’s annual fundraising gala earlier this month, the mayor received the largest applause, and her team has been courting votes for weeks — the party members did choose not to endorse any candidate for second place.
In San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting scheme, such second-place picks are important: Voters can rank up to 10 candidates on their November ballots, and if no candidate receives a majority on the first round, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed. The process continues until a candidate wins a majority.
During the second round, three voted for Daniel Lurie, two for Ahsha Safaí and another two for Mark Farrell, but the majority voted to not endorse anyone for the second choice.
No mayoral candidates showed up at the meeting, though many supervisorial candidates did, some of whom spoke during an hour-long public comment session, hoping to win the committee’s consideration.
Some 50 speakers lined up to voice support, mostly for supervisorial candidates. Most of them spoke about their support for Dean Preston in District 5, recounting his housing record and his involvement in the Tenderloin.
In the March election, an upstart slate of candidates ousted progressives from control of the Democratic County Central Committee, winning 18 out of 24 seats on the committee.
The race for the political body drew in more than $2 million in spending.
The changed control of the DCCC was evident during Wednesday’s vote. The votes split neatly along the slate lines in most of the endorsements; 18 members voted for the more moderate leaning candidates, and six for the progressives.
Breed’s endorsement came after each mayoral candidate submitted a questionnaire, answering 22 questions on issues from homelessness and revitalization downtown to climate change. Endorsement interviews took place over the past weekend.
The committee also voted to endorse supervisorial candidates in six districts: Marjan Philhour for District 1, Danny Sauter for District 3, Bilal Mahmood for District 5, Myrna Melgar for District 7, Trevor Chandler first and Roberto Hernandez second for District 9, and Michael Lai for District 11.
Why oh why oh why does even Mission Local refer to rabid anti-democratic candidates and groups as “moderate”? Just because they call themselves that nice neutral term, we don’t have to go along with it. Remember when Bilal Mahmood called himself a neuroscientist? There is nothing moderate about the lock-up-the-poor-and-give-the tech-billionaires-and-real-estate-developers-free-rein-to-do-whatever-they-want policies of many of the candidates the “Under New Management” Democratic party endorsed last night. Even Nancy Pelosi sees through this. It’s time for Liberals and Progressives to set aside some of our smaller differences and save San Francisco from this right-wing takeover.
Blocking housing in the middle of a housing crisis, subsidized and market rate, is the conservative thing to do. Bilal is the true progressive on housing—not nimby’s like Preston
There is no market rate housing crisis in San Francisco.
Bilal was able to “move in today” at 50 Jones, a market-rate gentrification building whose website doesn’t even recognize it is in the TL. Also, it is unclear what “market” Bilal shops at: he has cash to burn, or else he wouldn’t have tried to buy the AD17 seat with $600,000 of his own cash (and take to Medium to brag about the first $400K of his “investment” in that takeover project) , so it would appear he could have gone more upscale than 50 Jones (but he wanted to position himself as a renter in the TL so he could fake affinity with the vast majority of Tenderloin residents who are rent burdened and food insecure). And Bilal and his YIMBY/developer crew don’t want affordable housing on a parking lot in Hayes Valley because they have their sights on turning the well-gentrified neighborhood into a “revolutionary” tech utopia and such a dreamland certainly needs a glorified parking lot to serve as its townsquare and does not need to provide housing to people who come to do the actual work in the neighborhood. There is surely a substantial overlap between those people and the ones who still say “TechCrunchDisrupt” without either busting into laughter or throwing up.
Laurene Powell Jobs had no problem ponying up the dough for her recent $70 million purchase in San Francisco, and that was certainly a “market rate” price to pay. And, should she find herself in a financial pinch, she can always mortgage or outright hawk one of her four (at least) Malibu houses until she can rectify her cash flow.
Garry “Kill the Politicians Who Get in My Way” Tan lives wherever he lives (not far enough away) but also keeps a party house near Dolores Park.
Multiple (primarily) market rate projects have been flailing as they drown for years, some are even already dead in the water. No one bought anything at the Oak, except for the few who were in line for a BMR unit, so the developer is switching tactics and converting to rentals, which of course makes the BMR purchase units vanish. After all these years, the Nema is still not breaking even because of high vacancy. Hayes Point has died or committed suicide a couple of times already because of “penciling” issues. 555 Fulton, a jewel in the crown of the Mayor and also a leading contender for both the top corruption building and the most bungled project in SF’s crowded field for both of those prizes, has a large enough surplus of unsold units that they are “pivoting” to rentals.
It does not matter how many ridiculous adjectives like “bespoke” and “iconic” the developers and marketers use to hype the projects, there are just too many of them crowding the market. But, hey, developers and real estate interests sure were on the right track when they skyscraperized downtown, until it became clear that hollowing out the residents from a neighborhood might be a bad gamble after the relatively long initial buzz. And now that same free-market anti-subsidy crowd is asking for tax breaks, “entertainment” (open container) zones funded by public cash ($400k for one block of Market Street), planning revisions to help them realize weird dreams of converting the BofA building (or something similar) into housing, and public investment to pump life back into the large part of the city that they strangled.
The Housing Element’s “promise” of 82,000 new units (mostly one person units, unless people double up in a studio/one bedroom) won’t get developers to build them. There are too many of them already. There are, however, far too few larger units and subsidized units. That’s why all but the wealthiest families leave the city or live in cramped quarters and are still rent burdened.
The SF democratic club has spoken and has said a lot about themselves – a very closed club. They never respond to emails. They are out of touch with the voters. They have sealed my vote against Breed.
A chaotic, disorderly and poorly run meeting that started over one hour late. The new moderate slate who took power in the anemic March election thinks they have a mandate; they do not. The new mods completely underestimate the intelligence of San Francisco’s voters, and their rigged endorsements reflect their servitude to the billionaires who fund them: Republican Bill Oberndorf, scary Garry “die slow” Tan, Chris Larson and Michael Moritz. It was striking (and completely insulting) that dozens of members of the public in attendance who spoke in support of the supervisors who champion working people and their families, elders and veterans (Preston, Chan, Fielder and Peskin) were ignored. The vote was rigged. Shame on this new Astroturf slate. See you in the streets!
That meeting was extremely chaotic and poorly run. Did this new slate of amateurs actually skip the class about parliamentary procedure? I also agree with the underestimation of SF voters. We are a very engaged and informed, and it is incredibly insulting to our intelligence for them to assume we don’t see the scam they are trying to run. Lots of tears at the DCCC HQ come November.
So Breed gets the DCCC endorsement. As does Mahmood. There should be some funny things that come of that, at least in terms of what Mahmood has said and implied about Breed.
Mahmood, rightly, has made a number of comments about the it-seems-like-forever wait for a grocery store at 555 Fulton. Okay, it was “only” ten years. The corruption etc. behind that pathetic situation was a large part of the problem, but not all of it. It is also interesting to note that Breed’s ex-boyfriend was at or at least near the center of all that failure.
Despite multiple corruption issues that regularly get press coverage, Breed is still good enough for the sole endorsement from the “moderate” DCCC. Does the DCCC actually want good and competent and non-criminal governing in San Francisco? What does it say about Mahmood that he gets accolades from the same “moderates” who simply don’t care that Breed has messed up?
Mahmood has started to pretend he’s progressive, without giving any sense of what that might mean in terms of specific policy, legislation, coalition building and billionaire disavowing practice. Mahmood is mostly about law and order and at least some of the time has blamed Supervisor Preston for street dealing and overdoses in the Tenderloin.
But Breed controls SFPD in a way that the supervisors do not (individually or collectively). SFPD insists they are woefully understaffed (so much so that some cop made half a million bucks in overtime pay last year), but they will not explain why they need (and fill up) approximately 50 on-street parking spaces at/near Tenderloin Station.
The cops have taken over most of Eddy west of Jones and changed the south side of the street to back-in angle-parking to create more spaces for themselves – and SFFD is too scared to tell them that their new parking arrangement exacerbates traffic flow problems that restrict emergency response.
There’s a garage under the precinct building and all those on-street parking spaces, but all those more or less legitimate police-only parking spots still aren’t enough for all the apparently necessary cop cars.
SFPD still “needs” to park in the bus stop on Eddy east of Jones. Non-cops are not amused and there has been discussion of creating a bulb out boarding area to make it more difficult for cops to be so gross with their cars. People who use Muni shouldn’t have to be hindered by cops who park in the bus zone. Mahmood, do you have any comments about accessibility?
There are often several SFPD vehicles double parked on Jones south of Eddy. Cop cars are parked in the new state-mandated daylighting zones at intersections (and in front of fire hydrants).
I can’t speak to actual staffing at TL Station (though the then-captain told me and a bunch of city staff and community members that only six or seven cops were on duty at any given time during the pandemic), but I can say without a doubt that if the station is woefully understaffed, SFPD does not need nor should be they allowed to have so many dozens of street parking spaces plus a bunch of illegal parking spots.
Maybe law and order Mahmood can get them to go on the record explaining this issue and proposing a solution that doesn’t continue to disrespect the community.
More than two years ago, Chesa Boudin was recalled and replaced as District Attorney. The tough-on-crime, blame-it-all-on-Chesa crowd, including Brooke Jenkins, for all intents and purposes guaranteed all would be lovely from then on out. The current rhetoric dripping/spewing from the mouths of “moderates” pretty convincingly shows that they don’t believe their triumphant removal and replacement scheme has made much if any difference. Why should we believe their latest dreams and schemes for solving the problem do anything?
Oh, and while we’re talking endorsements, former Supervisor and current Assemblymember Matt Haney was a strong supporter of Boudin, including endorsing him, when he ran for DA. Now Haney is endorsing Mahmood for supervisor. Candidate Mahmood, would you care to comment on what you must consider to be Haney’s poor judgment? You can even craft your answer with input from Haney, so you can both go on the record.
And…..as Patti Smith would say “the People have the power to redeem the work of fools. Believe it!!!!”
The newbie hypocrite DCCC slate enthroned and funded by Big Tech, venture capitalists and real estate are power giddy with their self proclaimed mirage “mandate.” Carpet bagger candidates like Bilal Mahmood, Trevor Chandler and supervisors like Breed’s twin lapdogs Engardio and Dorsey won by cheating. Chandler & Mahmood think that dirty tricks like last night’s vote is how they win; rather, it is how you anger and alienate voters. The new fake DCCC slate also dissed members of the public (elders, immigrants, workers and people of color) who came all the way down to attend the endorsement meeting and to make their voices heard. Face to face convos, transparent public hearings and door knocking are the antidote to rigged endorsement votes and lies on social media and on the campaign trail. Credible, vetted journalism from independent publications like Mission Local is another antidote. The rigged vote and obscene power play by the newbies to hijack the election and Board of Supervisors will fail spectacularly. But only if informed, thoughtful people across our distinct districts organize and expose the in transparent and undemocratic dirty tricks of the new DCCC. vote
it’ll be funny when she loses
The newbie hypocrite DCCC slate enthroned and funded by Big Tech, venture capitalists and real estate are power giddy with their self proclaimed mirage “mandate.” Carpet bagger candidates like Bilal Mahmood, Trevor Chandler and supervisors like Breed’s twin lapdogs Engardio and Dorsey won by cheating. Chandler & Mahmood think that dirty tricks like last night’s vote is how they win; rather, it is how you anger and alienate voters. The new fake DCCC slate also dissed members of the public (elders, immigrants, workers and people of color) who came all the way down to attend the endorsement meeting and to make their voices heard. Face to face convos, transparent public hearings and door knocking are the antidote to rigged endorsement votes and lies on social media and on the campaign trail. Credible, vetted journalism from independent publications like Mission Local is another antidote. The rigged vote and obscene power play by the newbies to hijack the election and Board of Supervisors will fail spectacularly. But only if informed, thoughtful people across our distinct districts organize and expose the transparent and undemocratic behavior of the new DCCC.