Welcome back to our โMeet the Candidatesโ series, where District 2 supervisor candidates respond to a question in 100 words or fewer. Answers are published every Tuesday.
District 2 covers neighborhoods in the north of the city including the Presidio, the Marina, Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights and portions of the Western Addition and North of the Panhandle.
On Dec. 20, 2025, more than a third of San Francisco residents were plunged into darkness as the power went out.ย
During the outage, caused by a fire at a SoMa substation, residents worried about getting in and out of buildings with non-functioning elevators, losing critical supplies like medications as freezers stopped working, and communicating once their phone batteries went dead.
Businesses lost thousands of dollars as they were forced to close for one of the busiest weekends of the year.
PG&E, the company that owns and operates San Franciscoโs electrical infrastructure, didnโt restore power until more than 24 hours later. Over the next 10 days, several more outages plagued San Francisco residents, including in the Presidio in District 2.ย
As San Franciscans asked what could be done to prevent these outages from happening again, politicians had a suggestion: Public acquisition of PG&Eโs electrical infrastructure.ย
Acquiring electrical infrastructure will be costly โ PG&E turned down a $2.5 billion offer in 2019 โ but proponents point out that, with ratepayers as the priority, not shareholders, cities with public power tend to have lower electricity rates.ย
In addition to power outages, people have been upset at PG&E for high electricity prices, long waits for electrical hookups, and safety issues (its equipment has triggered several of Californiaโs worst wildfires).
Itโs not a new idea. The city has been laying the groundwork for acquiring PG&Eโs infrastructure, either through a buyout or through eminent domain, since 2019.
Most recently, San Francisco State Sen. Scott Wiener introduced legislation this February to shrink the power of the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates citiesโ use of eminent domain.ย
To use eminent domain to acquire PG&E infrastructure would require a two-thirds vote of the Board of Supervisors.
In this weekโs answer, candidates were cautiously supportive of public power.
This weekโs question: Should San Francisco work to acquire PG&E’s infrastructure?
Mission Local color codes the answers to yes/no questions. A green background means the candidate answered yes, a red background means no, and a yellow background means that the candidate dodged the question.
Lori Brooke
- Job: President, Cow Hollow Association
- Age: 62
- Residency: Homeowner, moved to the district 31 years ago
- Transportation: Driving and walking
- Education: Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara
- Languages: English
We need to modernize and improve our cityโs power grid to lower costs and stop the type of outages that recently caused a lot of harm to residents and small businesses. I support the idea of public power, but I want to first ensure that residents trust our cityโs ability to handle the management of a critical infrastructure.
San Franciscans want results now, and redoing our whole system does not produce anything immediate. I will focus on holding PG&E accountable and helping residents and businesses get compensated for recent damages, and work to lower rates while improving services.
Endorsed by: Former District 2 Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, former State Senator and Supervisor Quentin Kopp, AFT 2121, Local 38 (#2) … read more here.
Stephen Sherrill
- Job: Appointed District 2 Supervisor
- Age: 39
- Residency: Homeowner, moved to the district 11 years ago
- Transportation: Driving, public transportation, biking
- Education: Bachelorโs degree from Yale University
- Languages: English
San Francisco should pursue any option that improves reliability, affordability and accountability for residents โ including, but not limited to, acquiring PG&Eโs local infrastructure if it demonstrably delivers better outcomes.
San Franciscans and Californians have seen firsthand the consequences of utility mismanagement, from wildfires to blackouts. As climate change intensifies, resilient and well-maintained power systems are critical for public safety, small businesses, and emergency response.
I support continued evaluation of municipalization efforts, provided they are fiscally responsible and transparent.ย
My focus is simple: Hold utilities accountable and back whichever model delivers the most reliable, high-quality service while reducing utility rates.ย
Endorsed by: Mayor Daniel Lurie, GrowSF, Nor Cal Carpenters Union, San Francisco Police Officers Association … read more here.
Candidates are ordered alphabetically and rotated each week. Answers may be lightly edited for formatting, spelling, and grammar. If you have questions for the candidates, please let us know at io@missionlocal.com.
You can register to vote via the sf.gov website.
Get rid of PG&E, it’s a utility for private profit, not for public service.
Pathetic attempt at a dodge by Sherrill. โWe should do the thing that works better.โ No shit, genius. Which option is likely to work better, in your opinion as a candidate for the board?
Would love to see ML press him on this weak answer, but I donโt know if itโs practical to do so. Hope thereโs a follow up where ML either pins him down on a position or clearly exposes his cynical/incompetent attempts to avoid taking any position.
It’s green. He said yes.
Brookeโs response seems rather ambiguous: โ I support the idea of public power, but I want to first ensure that residents trust our cityโs ability to handle the management of a critical infrastructure. โ Exactly how does one do that? Itโs a conveniently vague condition to hold out for.
But surely it makes sense to determine if the City can handle it? After all not a lot of people think the City does a good job of running, say, Muni or public housing.
This would be a new and large-scale responsibility for the City when it is already struggling to manage what it already has.
The real problem here is that this has become an ideological football. When in reality what matters is who the best parties are to run electricity and gas. And that is not known yet.
Sure, but that’s different than an undefined goal of “regaining trust”. How does one do that and are we supposed to wait on everything until it happens? From the previous “meet the candidates” piece regarding SFMUNI, she replied with a similar “Residents do not want to have their taxes increased, because they have lost trust in how funds are being spent.” I’m a little wary of politicians that run on not trusting government a la Reagan.
Nonsense. Hundreds of US cities successfully run municipal public power. Both the infrastructure and the expertise are there.
And constant budget cuts to a damned good transit system is not mismanagement, it’s a deliberate attack but be fixed with the proper political will.
Other cities do not have the history of dysfunction that SF has. Nor do they have the huge cost of government that SF has.
I just don’t think this is a big enough issue to drive how D2 residents will vote.
You seem to have forgotten that PG&E has been convicted of manslaughter and murder. As such it is an organized criminal conspiracy backed by the state. It may be, according to the propaganda machine that it is performing the maintenance it had deferred for 100 years, but whoโs paying for it?