Public safety is the No. 1 issue among the District 3 supervisorial candidates. And, when asked about it at a Tuesday night Mission Local debate in North Beach, all five contenders present echoed each others’ responses: Crime rates have gone down, thanks to the work of tough-on-crime public officials like Mayor London Breed and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, the city should hire more police officers, and reporting crimes must be made easier.
Candidate Moe Jamil, a 46-year old deputy city attorney, claimed the San Francisco Democratic Party is overlooking public safety. “We need to make the focus of San Francisco back to basics: Public safety, cleaning our streets and having our government work for ordinary people,” he said. “That needs to dominate the conversation.”
It already does: The mayoral campaign trail is rife with red meat for voters in revolt over perceived lawlessness, and news accounts of car break-ins and street chaos are still a daily occurrence.
Still, most of the candidates to replace termed-out District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin, now running for mayor, indicated that they would double down on tough-on-crime policies they said are having an effect.
“I’m happy to see that crime is going down,” said Danny Sauter, 36, executive director of Neighborhood Centers Together. “But I’m not satisfied with that. I don’t think you’re satisfied with that. Certainly our tourists who still experience car break-ins are not satisfied with that.”
Attendees filled the second-floor meeting room of the North Beach Library on Columbus Avenue to watch the District 3 debate, moderated by Mission Local reporter Yujie Zhou, who has been covering the district for the “Meet the Candidates” series. The event, which featured all but one of the candidates — Wendy Chau, the newest entrant, was absent — was the third of six district debates Mission Local is hosting or co-hosting ahead of the November elections.
The District 3 seat is one of the few open races this year for district supervisor: Peskin is termed-out after four non-consecutive terms representing the area, meaning the candidate elected in November will have the rare chance to chart a new course for the district.
Most of the District 3 candidates indicated they would diverge from Peskin in some way, even those endorsed by him.
Jamil who, alongside Sharon Lai, has nabbed Peskin’s endorsement, called himself a “non-YIMBY moderate” when Zhou asked him to define himself, and took an oppositional tone to homeless housing more similar to candidates like Mark Farrell than Peskin. (Left unsaid were Jamil’s efforts to differentiate from his main competitor: Sauter is generally considered a YIMBY moderate.)
Unless nonprofits that have been contracted to build homeless housing have been audited and the housing is substance-free, Jamil said he would not support any in the district. “Until we do a whole, complete investigation — full audit — I do not want to burden the residents of District 3 with more facilities that are going to be overrun and poorly run,” Jamil said.
Lai said she supports more homeless housing in District 3, but “it needs to be done in accountability, and we have to make sure that we uphold neighborhood self-determination.”
On housing and transportation too, candidates sparred on some points but largely sang the same tune. On housing: They by-and-large supported expanding rent control in the city, and by-and-large opposed three tall residential tower proposals on Sansome Street. Matthew Susk, 32, who previously worked in private real estate, and Sauter opened their answers with nearly identical lines: I don’t support those projects, but I do support housing.
On the Biking and Rolling Plan, District 3 candidates repeatedly underscored the importance of multimodal transportation while criticizing a lack of community input in the planning process. Jamil and Susk took jabs at cyclists — Susk called them a “special interest” — and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, where candidate Lai, 41, was previously a board member.
“It was clear they took all the feedback from the bicyclists ahead of time, and they came to talk to everybody else and give us their ‘plan,’ without, really, interest in our feedback,” Jamil said. “I think that’s a problem at MTA.”
“SFMTA is a rogue organization,” Susk agreed, saying the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has too much power within the transit agency.
But Lai leaned into her MTA background, saying she held the agency accountable for how it conducted public outreach. “Staff head threatened to file administrative interference because I asked too many questions,” Lai said. “And that is the kind of legislator I will be.”
Questions about formula-retail restrictions, which prohibit retail stores with more than 11 locations nationally from setting up shop in most parts of the city, brought out more obvious disagreements. Jamil and Lai said the current restrictions seem to be working for North Beach. Susk strongly disagreed, citing a 21 percent sales tax drop since 2019, further compounded by inflation.
Sauter touted work he led to petition for loosening retail restrictions in the neighborhood, adding that people are now talking about a “North Beach Renaissance” because of his work. Susk retorted that North Beach is not having a Renaissance. Citing sales tax and inflation numbers again, Susk said: “I hope this isn’t what the Renaissance was like,” to scattered laughter from the audience.
For all the high-level trends across the District 3 candidates’ platforms, not one would name their second-choice candidate in the race. Rather than forming alliances, a key element in ranked-choice races, the candidates appeared focused on constructing individual identities.
Lai, who is also endorsed by Peskin, noted she is endorsed by eight current supervisors — her “future colleagues,” she said — which will help her hit the ground running on day one. But not all of those supervisors will necessarily remain on the board following the election: Some are termed out or running for other public offices, and others are up for reelection in contested races.
Eduard Navarro, 44-year old tech startup founder, is the free-market guy. He referenced free markets in his positions on formula retail restrictions and housing. “There’s no reason why we have to regulate how many houses we can [have] or not,” Navarro said. He said the city should implement a “design framework” and then let the market do its job within that. And Susk portrayed himself as the “outsider.”
“I didn’t come from the political world like my opponents,” Susk said, to immediate pushback from Navarro and Lai; Navarro’s background is in architecture and finance, and Lai has never run for office before.
Sauter has the coveted sole endorsement of the San Francisco Democratic Party. Still, he scrambled to self-differentiate when asked to name a specific distinction between his policies and those of Sen. Scott Wiener, one of his key endorsers.
Last night, he could not name any specific differences. But “I am my own person,” he reassured the audience.
Wondering if there are any other photos of the event? These two just show the same candidates, and there are more than 3. Both photos also feature the same candidate.