Why does Matt Dorsey have no competitive challenger? Start with the D6 map.

Four years ago, Matt Dorsey had to fight for his seat.

In a six-month brawl between Dorsey, who had been appointed District 6 supervisor when Matt Haney was elected to state office, and Honey Mahogany — Haney’s chief of staff and preferred successor — Dorsey came out on top: He won by a 53-47 tilt.

This year, it will likely be a far greater margin. The moderate District 6 supervisor is heading toward November without a competitive challenger.

His only opponent, Alex Behrend, identifies himself on election documents as “Neglected Voter Organizer,” a reference to his effort, he said, to try and “open up the black box” of why some registered voters repeatedly sit out elections. 

Behrend has reported no campaign contributions or spending as of Sept. 8. According to Behrend, he has yet to receive any endorsements. 

To understand why Dorsey has such an open road, former District 6 politicians and organizers refer to an event that happened just weeks before he was appointed to the Board of Supervisors in 2022: San Francisco redrew district lines.

The most consequential change, they say, was the removal of the Tenderloin, which was excised from District 6 and grafted into District 5. The change removed one of the centers of tenant and progressive organizing from District 6.

“The nature of D6 changed with redistricting,” said Sue Bushnell, president of the District 6 South Beach Democratic Club. Before the Tenderloin was removed, she said, it was more competitive. 

Bushnell likes Dorsey, describing him as accessible and hands-on. But she has also wondered why he has drawn no real opposition.

“It’s relatively standard that you have a serious competitor or challenger,” she said. “In this situation, there isn’t.”

New map, new electorate

Chris Daly, the District 6 supervisor from 2001 to 2011, described the district he led as a disparate collection of neighborhoods and constituencies, where some of San Francisco’s poorest blocks sat alongside some of its wealthiest. 

That divide has not disappeared. The current district still includes residential hotels, public and affordable housing cheek-by-jowl with some of the city’s newest and most expensive residential towers. But the Tenderloin brought with it a large population of low-income renters and long-established tenant and progressive organizations.

Daly said those organizing networks helped make progressive campaigns viable.

Sunny Angulo, a former aide to District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim and District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who once considered running for District 6, said Kim later built a broader coalition, connecting single-room-occupancy hotel tenants and Filipino residents in SoMa with young tech workers and residents of new towers.

The few elections held under the 2022 boundaries suggest the district’s political balance has shifted.

The redrawn district retained SoMa and includes Mission Bay, South Beach, Rincon Hill and Treasure Island — neighborhoods that encompass much of the city’s recent housing development.

At the same time, its registered electorate shrank by nearly 9,000 voters between the June and November 2022 elections, when the new supervisorial boundaries took effect, even as registration citywide increased.

District 6 remains overwhelmingly Democratic and votes much like San Francisco as a whole in national partisan contests. But registered voters are about four percentage points less Democratic than the city overall, and three points more likely to have no party preference. 

“Redistricting really changed the dynamic of the neighborhood,” said Mahogany, the vanquished 2022 candidate. “It’s a hard district, and I don’t know that people know what to do to tackle it.” 

Behrend disputes the idea that the current district is inhospitable to progressives. He calls Dorsey “MAGA-lite,” arguing that the supervisor too often sides with wealthy interests while offering insufficient support for renters.

He points, among other things, to Dorsey’s opposition to the “Overpaid CEO” tax. Behrend said he entered the race after realizing this spring that Dorsey appeared headed toward reelection unopposed.

“I wanted to make sure that Democratic voters had an option and an alternative,” Behrend said. 

He points, in particular, to voters who have stayed home. Behrend said he was struck that Dorsey won in 2022 with just 8,546 votes after ranked-choice tabulation, in a district that then had nearly 34,000 registered voters.

He argued that the large number of registered Democrats who do not participate in local elections represents an untapped constituency for a more progressive candidate. 

Behrend insists that he can win the race, pointing to the district’s large pool of Democratic nonvoters. Asked how he plans to mobilize them, however, he acknowledged that his strategy is still taking shape: “I don’t know yet.”

Dorsey, for his part, rejects the idea that keeping the Tenderloin in District 6 would have fundamentally changed his political appeal. He said many Tenderloin voters share his support for police staffing, drug treatment, housing and transit.

Dorsey, the former communications director for the police department, has also positioned himself squarely within San Francisco’s shift toward tough-on-crime approaches.

Dorsey said he advocated keeping the Tenderloin in District 6 in 2022, partly because dividing Mid-Market between two supervisors made little geographic sense to him.

Since taking office, however, he said residents of Mission Bay, the East Cut and West SoMa have told him they feel their neighborhoods receive more attention without the Tenderloin competing for City Hall’s focus.

Dorsey calls District 6 San Francisco’s “quintessential urban district,” a place where many residents choose density and life without a car, while also caring about public safety. 

“I think I’m very representative of my district,” said Dorsey, who does not own a car and says he walks, rides Muni and uses bikeshare.

Tricky campaign terrain

The district’s urban form has long shaped how campaigns reach voters. 

In the Tenderloin, candidates had to reach voters inside SROs and other buildings that could be difficult to enter, often for relatively low-turnout precincts. Progressive campaigns nevertheless benefited from a dense network of tenant groups, nonprofits and neighborhood organizers with longstanding ties to residents. 

Large residential buildings still complicate how campaigns reach voters. Much of the district’s housing is concentrated in large condominium and apartment buildings.

According to the Planning Department’s 2025 housing inventory, Mission Bay has nearly 11,000 housing units, the Financial District/South Beach about 20,000 and SoMa more than 20,000. Nearly all units in Mission Bay and the Financial District/South Beach — and more than 85 percent in SoMa — are in buildings with 20 or more units.

Those towers create a canvassing challenge. Candidates have to gain access to buildings, and cannot simply go door-to-door as in more low-slung neighborhoods. They increasingly rely on mail and digital advertising, putting newcomers without a fundraising network at an early disadvantage.

“Where do you even begin?” Angulo said. “Where do you have the relationships to fundraise?”

Dorsey agreed that traditional door-knocking does not work particularly well in his district. In 2022, he said, supporters sometimes escorted him through their buildings, while his campaign relied heavily on house parties and repeated morning appearances at coffee shops, gyms and dog parks.

“It’s a very different kind of field program than going out, you know, in Noe Valley and knocking doors,” he said.

The payoff for that costly outreach is a relatively small electorate. District 6 has just under 39,000 registered voters, the smallest electorate of San Francisco’s 11 supervisorial districts. Its turnout also consistently trails the city: Just 41.8 percent of registered district voters cast ballots in the June primary, compared with 50.9 percent citywide.

Dorsey’s incumbency also helps: He enters the race not as a mayoral appointee, as he did in 2022, but as an incumbent with years of relationships with constituents — and his colleagues. He is a potential candidate to succeed Rafael Mandelman as board president. 

And, Bushnell said, whatever voters think of his broader politics, Dorsey has been effective at the most basic task of district representation: Responding when constituents call.

Dorsey, she said, “has been a very available and easy-to-deal-with, easy-to-work-with supervisor.”