See how they run: Hillary Ronen tells Aaron Peskin to stop talking

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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: Aaron Peskin. Read earlier dispatches here.

“So,” says Hillary Ronen, District 9 representative, San Francisco Board of Supervisors. “I’m gonna chime in here, because it’s getting boring.” 

It’s a beautiful Friday, June 28, early evening, and Charlie’s Cafe, at the edge of Precita Park, is packed with Bernal residents, here for a fundraiser for the mayoral campaign of Aaron Peskin, current president of the Board of Supervisors.

Peskin has just run through the basics on his mayoral run: His decades in city government, his love for San Francisco, his plans for an inspector general to investigate corruption in city government, and his status as least-preferred candidate of the various billionaires who have thrown unprecedented sums of money into the mayor’s race. London Breed was once a billionaire favorite, adds Peskin, but now appears to have been left by the wayside in favor of Mark Farrell — or, if that isn’t possible, Daniel Lurie. 

The Q&A portion of the evening begins. Someone asks how, if donations from individuals to mayoral candidates are capped at $500, Lurie’s mother, Mimi Haas, donated $1 million to his campaign.

“So we have this great Supreme Court, as you all know,” says Peskin, jovially. “It’s called an independent expenditure — a super PAC. How the mother and son don’t coordinate I don’t know, but the mother gave a million dollars to ‘Friends of Daniel Lurie’ as compared to the ‘Daniel Lurie for Mayor’ campaign, where you have the $500 limit. It ain’t right, but it is the bottom line.”

The next question is whether Peskin has any other plans for reforming city government. Why yes, he says, and launches into an explanation of how, currently, the 258 nonprofit service providers working with the city have to apply separately for every contract that they have with each city department, and then figure out how to comply with that department’s rules. “We can actually funnel that through a city administrator, and make it much more efficient on both the nonprofit provider side as well as on the governance side.”

It is at the exact moment that Ronen interrupts and launches into a monologue that is, counterintuitively, a passionate defense of the boringness of this answer. As someone who has spent 15 years on the inside of San Francisco city government, Ronen says, she’s seen the mayor’s office govern by “sexy press release” — give a problem a cute new name and a cute new program, then not follow through with the hard work of actually fixing it.

“Problems get fixed when you put two people that have power in a room and make them coordinate with each other around our arcane laws and the budget,” says Ronen, gesturing emphatically. “The work behind the scenes — which is dull, which is boring, which is hard, which is essential — isn’t happening. That’s why our city is broken. We have gotten way past progressive versus moderate. That’s 1990s. 2000s. We are all on the same side. We want to put a little porch on our house that doesn’t cost a million dollars and take 200 years. We want to fill a pothole that doesn’t cost a million dollars and takes 20 workers. Everything is a fortune. Everything makes no common sense. And that is because we haven’t had the leadership that just does the boring stuff.”

“A boring man for a boring job,” Peskin says, cheerfully.

“Bo-ring!” someone in the crowd starts to chant. “Bo-ring!”

“It’s so liberating not to run for office,” says Ronen. “The muzzle is off!” She takes a breath. “A year ago, if you told me that I was going to put all my work and energy into getting Aaron Peskin elected mayor, I would have told you you were crazy. We fight like cats and dogs. We’re both stubborn as can be. We’re both ruthless when we want something. All those fights we’ve had all those years, I’m just gonna throw them away, because I know you are the one to get this stuff done. I know it.”

“Let me tell you the truth,” says Ronen. “I have a countdown on my phone for how many days I have left in office.” The crowd bursts into laughter. “No shame!” a voice yells. “He could retire,” she continues. “He has a full life he could live. He could travel anywhere. And he’s choosing…”

“He’s going to quit!” someone yells. “Don’t say it!”

“ … to sacrifice all of this because he loves this city and wants this city to thrive. Everyone knows he doesn’t have aspirations to go to Washington. And so that’s why I’m going to ask you all to dig deep, because none of the billionaires are giving him a dime. We are up against insane money, and if you want the same-old same-old, vote for any of the other guys. Honestly, the mayor, because she is a strong Black woman, looks a little different from the rest of that. But the rest of them are all kind of the same. Please do what you can, because if we can get our city back and things just function, we can start to be the envy of the world.” 

“I noticed some of you are sliding checks into envelopes and into people’s hands,” says Jack Shelley, fundraising coordinator for the campaign. “That’s great. Just remember to write your occupation and employer on the envelope or on the check.”

A not-insignificant portion of the Peskin campaign so far has happened at small gatherings like these. Usually, they’re held in people’s homes — a Peskin supporter invites 10 or 40 or 100 people over, Peskin stops by, gives a little talk and answers questions, then asks people to volunteer and, if they can, donate even a small amount, on the grounds that even small donations are amplified because they can help a candidate qualify for public financing.

The proprietor of Charlie’s Cafe, Charlie Harb, says he isn’t sure yet who he’s voting for; hosting events like this are just being a part of the neighborhood. “People ask us to do something, and we do it.” He donated drinks and laid out an impressive mezze spread under a wall of black-and-white photos that a relative recently scanned and sent to him. The photos are of Harb and his parents in 1960s Bethlehem. When someone comments that they look like movie stars, Harb says that he gets that a lot. For years, he’d had vague childhood memories of being followed by people with cameras. Recently, he just found an old documentary on YouTube, made by the BBC when his father was running for mayor of Bethlehem.

Outside the cafe, Ronen alternates between intense political discussion, and intense communion with the child of Santiago Lerma, one of her former legislative aides. “My favorite baby!” she says to the toddler, who is navigating the step between the cafe and the sidewalk with the air of someone embarking on a thrilling adventure. “Do you want to see my glasses? Do you want to hold them? I cannot believe what a good walker you are!”

The pandemic changed a lot about how she views city government, Ronen says. “I thought the mayor was amazing. I was really appreciative of her leadership and the decisions she made. We had always been at loggerheads before that, and so it was nice to just stand next to her and be like, ‘How can I support this?’” But the larger dysfunction within city government made itself known again in no time. Even a seemingly minor problem, like dealing with street vending around the 24th Street BART Station, was excruciating.

Once she terms out in January, though, Ronen’s problems will shift more in the direction of what to do next. “It’s so nice,” she says, “to not be running for office.”

More Field notes from the mayor’s race

See how they run: Safaí chaperones Farrell, ‘mi amigo,’ through Excelsior

See how they run: For Mark Farrell, it’s him vs. Lurie 

See how they run: Can London Breed pull this off?