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

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For the last two weeks before the election, Mission Local’s campaign dispatches are switching daily between the major candidates. Today: London Breed. Read earlier dispatches here.

It’s been a taxing few weeks for the incumbent mayor. 

The San Francisco Chronicle last week endorsed Mayor London Breed’s rival, Daniel Lurie, writing he was “personable” and offers a “welcome balance of compassion and toughness” — Breed, the editorial board wrote, is a “safe pick” but beset by “outrageous mismanagement” and lacking an “eye for detail.”

A Sunday poll from Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin found he and Lurie were the top two, with Breed at No. 3, while the Chronicle’s own poll on Monday found Lurie would best Breed in a ranked-choice vote. Her campaign is hemorrhaging cash: At the beginning of October, it had $563,969 in cash on hand; as of Oct. 22, that was just $106,808. Compare that to $438,782 for Lurie (as of Oct. 14) and $547,004 for Peskin (as of Oct. 16).

Even the betting markets have swung in recent weeks: Lurie has a 54 percent chance to win, according to traders on Polymarket, which calls itself the world’s largest prediction market; Breed is at 14 percent. 

With 12 days left until Election Day, “the Peloton is not getting its rides anymore, like it used to,” said Breed, who earlier this year would use her exercise bicycle every morning. “I’m getting my seven to eight hours [of sleep] if I can, but it’s sun-up to sun-down. It’s something else. There’s no breaks.”

The specific candidate rankings may be off here and there but, still, Breed has a problem: Polls have consistently shown she is deeply unpopular, and voters continue to lay blame for perceived lawlessness at her feet, despite the fact that crime is down, homeless encampments are vanishing, and overdose deaths have plummeted.

There is now a palpable sense on the campaign trail that her well-heeled rival may just run away with this.

Asked on Wednesday if she was worried about Lurie becoming mayor, Breed said no — not because she is confident she’ll win (she is) but because of where she started in life, and where she’s gone.

“I come from nothing, and when I say nothing — I come from nothing. I wasn’t even supposed to be here, and be mayor of San Francisco,” she said, standing in Bookshop West Portal on Wednesday evening, after an hour-long Q&A with a mostly white, gray-haired crowd of three dozen people. “So I’ll never be worried, you know? … I’m not dead. I’m not in jail. I’m not living in poverty. I’ve overcome these obstacles and have been able to use this platform to help make a difference in people’s lives.”

Lurie, she said — and has said throughout the campaign — is dangerous: He is untested as an executive, a man who, as head of the grantmaking nonprofit Tipping Point, has been able to “raise money from people who [he] grew up with, who are also wealthy,” but has never run a major city.

“It makes me nervous. What if something happens that’s serious? Like, this is not a toy office, you know,” she said, rolling out a line she has used often on the campaign trail: The mayor’s office is no place for “on-the-job training.” 

“My concern is what he will do when disaster strikes. Right? Because we don’t know what he’s about. We don’t know what he’s capable of. He’s never had to make a hard decision a day in his life. He doesn’t even know what it’s like to pay rent and to be worried about bills.”

Breed’s rhetoric in the bookshop mirrored some recent campaign moves, as the guns have turned on Lurie: A grinning picture of Lurie on a red door hanger, shown below text reading “San Francisco Republican Party Recommends,” made its way onto doorknobs across the city earlier this month after Lurie bagged the top GOP endorsement. The ads were bought and paid for by Breed’s campaign, hoping to tie him to the Republicans and her to the Democrats — she has the sole endorsement of the San Francisco Democratic Party, after all. 

In statements and public appearances, Breed’s campaign has alit on a familiar refrain: Lurie is a trust-fund baby with little experience. “Lurie would be at 1% if he wasn’t spending an unprecedented amount of money to cover up the fact that he has no experience to be mayor,” read a statement from Breed’s campaign sent out on Wednesday. 

“I’m rooting for her to go all out attacking Daniel Lurie; that would be good for Peskin,” said Jim Stearns, Peskin’s campaign consultant. Anyone facing off against Lurie will have a difficult time, Stearns and others said: He has proven himself to be a favorite No. 2 pick for many voters, and can get those votes from many of his opponents.

But bruising Lurie will not be enough if Breed wants to hold onto the mayor’s office, several campaign strategists said. Her strategy now must be threefold: Assail Lurie, gain Peskin and/or Mark Farrell’s No. 2 votes, and maintain her base.

“How is she going to create a positive contrast between her and Lurie?” asked Jim Ross, a strategist and Gavin Newsom’s 2003 mayoral campaign manager. “The two groups of second choices out there are Farrell and Peskin, and they’re mutually exclusive, so she’s gotta figure out: Does she tack left or tack right?”

It’s clear, several strategists said, that Breed has chosen to tack left: She has already made a play for Peskin’s progressive base, touting herself as the No. 2 pick of former Supervisor Jane Kim, Supervisor Hillary Ronen, and Supervisor Shamann Walton. (Both Kim and Ronen endorse Peskin No. 1, while Walton did not share his ranking.)

On Wednesday, Breed said she had several other high-profile progressive backers who were ranking her No. 2, but that they would not go public without Peskin’s say-so — that’s why she called him last week, she said. “I asked him to release some of his people who said they won’t do it unless Aaron’s okay with it, right? Even though they’re voting for me No. 2,” she said. “He said, ‘I’ll pray about it.’” 

Peskin characterized the call differently, telling the Chronicle it was an ask for an explicit alliance, because Breed was worried about Lurie. Breed said Wednesday that the “lies are getting really … disappointing.” 

Peskin’s No. 2 votes will be crucial if he is eliminated, because in most polls Peskin has between 20 and 25 percent of first-choice votes. Any candidate who gets a good portion of those could be put over the top: In a ranked-choice system like San Francisco’s, whenever a candidate is eliminated, their supporters’ votes go to whichever candidate they’ve ranked second, and third, and so on, until there’s a majority winner.

Breed will pick up some support from Farrell’s No. 2s, strategists said, but many of those will go to Lurie instead. If the contest does become one between her and Lurie, she will need Peskin’s supporters to flock to her.

During the June 2018 election against Kim and Mark Leno, Breed only won by 2,546 votes in the final round — 50.55 percent to 49.45 percent. “It was a very slim margin, and that’s going to be the case this time again,” said Ross, the campaign strategist. “It’s going to come down to five or six thousand votes … and there’s a fair number of undecideds out there.”

Still, though Ross said Breed should be “very worried,” she is still presumed to be one of the top-two candidates. At that point, and with this field, most strategists said, it’ll be a coin flip.

“She could still win,” Ross said. “She’s not out of it.”