In a Thursday night debate moderated by Mission Local, incumbent District 1 supervisor Connie Chan and her major challenger Marjan Philhour expressed strikingly similar views on six of the seven questions asked despite fundamental ideological differences.
When moderator Junyao Yang asked why crime has become a top priority in District 1, for instance, saying that both violent and property crimes in the Richmond District have declined significantly, Chan and Philhour echoed each other.
While numbers are important, said Philhour, “It’s also important to talk to our neighbors whose garages are getting broken into” — and the major cause of this is a “severe police officer shortage.” Philhour’s campaign is centered on the narrative that Chan, the incumbent, has made the city unsafe, even though she acknowledged the police statistics that show that the Richmond is getting safer.
Chan, after laying out a list of moves supporting police she accomplished as chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, said, “We also know that feeling safe is important.”
Both oppose Proposition K, the November ballot measure that would close the Upper Great Highway to cars. Both plan to waive first-year fees for new small businesses, and provide more senior support services.
While both say they want to build more housing in the Richmond, they have different visions: Chan prefers affordable housing, and said she opposed a plan to upzone the neighborhood, while Philhour supports the plan and argues that subsidized affordable housing is not the only solution.
All five District 1 candidates attended the Thursday forum at the Internet Archive on Funston Street near Park Presidio Boulevard. It was Mission Local’s final district forum, and was moderated by Mission Local reporter Yang, who has been covering District 1 and asking candidates weekly policy questions for Mission Local’s “Meet the Candidates” series.
District 1 is one of the most contested supervisorial districts; Philhour lost to Chan by only 125 votes in 2020. In the race this year, though Chan enjoys the privilege of running on her experience as the incumbent supervisor, her electorate has also become more conservative: The 2022 redistricting process brought the wealthy Sea Cliff neighborhood into the district.
She is also facing a well-financed opponent: Philhour has raised some $480,000 for her campaign, the second-most of any supervisor, citywide. The incumbent, meanwhile, has raised $417,000. Both also benefit from tens of thousands in political action committees supporting the two candidates.
To some extent, Chan’s challengers also reflect the shift in the constituency. The other three candidates are ideologically more proximate to Philhour than to Chan. When asked about their No. 1 choice for mayor, Chan named Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, for whom she worked as a legislative aide. All four challengers picked moderate candidates: Philhour is supporting Mayor London Breed, for whom she also worked as a senior advisor, while candidates Jeremiah Boehner and Jen Nossokoff picked Daniel Lurie, and candidate Sherman D’Silva backed Mark Farrell.
Similarly, when asked which District 1 candidate was their second choice in the race, two candidates said Philhour, and none picked Chan. Chan, Philhour, and Nossokoff didn’t give a name.
In March, all four challengers voted more in line with District 1 residents on local propositions than Chan did, who voted opposite from her district on Prop. B, Prop. C, Prop. E and Prop. F.
Chan and Philhour, however, probably have more in common than any of their supporters have imagined. Neither of the two, for example, gave particularly concrete examples of a project they would start as a supervisor that would benefit the district for 20 years.
Philhour mentioned a district office, “like a desk in the neighborhood so that folks can get service from their local government without having to go all the way down to City Hall.” Chan, among many other things, wants to “make sure that the Richmond is protected and without displacement.”
And, as residents in a district where the most pervasive issue is “people running stop signs,” as candidate Nossokoff said, neither Chan nor Philhour are frequent Muni users.
Unable to make a distinction in their views on local issues, the two chose to attack each other’s backgrounds.
Throughout the night, Philhour repeated a driving force of her campaign: Getting back to the basics of governance. She cited the requirements for human existence in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — a theory that explains how human needs are organized from basic bodily requirements like shelter and security to self-actualization — twice.
“We’re not meeting the basics of public safety. We’re not meeting the basics around housing, shelter, food security,” said Philhour in her opening statement. Average home values in the district range from $1.5 million in the Outer Richmond to $3.5 million in Sea Cliff, according to Zillow.
Chan then attacked Philhour on being endorsed by monied groups, including GrowSF and TogetherSF Action. “For the last decades, speculators, investors, corporate developers and landlords and now even billionaires are trying to buy the Richmond and buy San Francisco through election,” said Chan. “The Richmond is not for sale.”
Philhour, for her part, returned to her idea of basics.
“We hear a lot about the bogeyman who are coming for the rich, for billionaires, for downtown interests,” said Philhour. “We need to get back to basics, because we know what is scarier. The billionaires, the skyscrapers and all these things that are coming to get us? Doing nothing [is scarier]. We can’t keep doing nothing. We have to do something.”
Notice that Marjan misses the point when she castigates the legit criticism that she is accepting money from real estate moguls who want to end rent control. She uses the word “boogeymen” when there is no “boogey” to the “men” that are actually truly in reality trying to end rent control because they are ideologically blind and have short term conceptions about what it means to have a vibrant urban economy.
In another excellent Mission Local post, the question about rent control and Prop 33. Notice that Marjan’s answer was equivocal. Apparently rent control is “important” BUT …. don’t let that stop you from tossing out the corporate bromides about what prop 33 might about “inhibiting” development — which is completely pablum. Prop 33 is just allowing local districts to “be able” to decide on how to implement rent control. It says absolutely nothing about property development or developer projects.
So that tells you everything you need to know about how phony Marjan is. She had an opportunity to define herself, and she chose to trot out the corporate misinformation. Mind you these are large corporate landowning interests that purchase swaths of properties, regularly jack rents for no reason, and then pretend that they are “good stewards” for the properties they manage.
Connie is at least genuine. And no one “owns” her. Marjan? not so much. That’s why she still supports our current feckless buffon of a mayor.
If Marjan wins, D1 better brace themselves for an upzoning of a lifetime, she’s got a lot of people she’s going to be indebted to.
God forbid!
Keep the Great Highway open. It’s the #1 issue in the Richmond.
Thanks for organizing this forum, was really happy to attend. Realistically, with redistricting, it seems a given that Marjan will win.
I’ve read plenty of her prepared, written remarks over the years and had hoped to hear her actually speaking her own mind. I felt disappointed though, as many of her statements felt like excerpts of stump speeches. This was especially obvious when candidates were asked on 20 year goals, and Marjan, who answered immediately after Jen, appeared to accidentally endorse her idea of closing Clement to cars.
We all know this is a race between Connie and Marjan, but I’ll say the other candidates at least spoke more genuinely. I really appreciated Jen noting that the biggest safety risk, by far, are the unchecked motorists that went from treating stop signs as yields to downright ignoring them. In the past month alone, a pedestrian has been killed by a motorist, and a kid sent to the hospital unconscious in critical condition.
Meanwhile, Marjan repeatedly referred to a “market” at 17th & Geary that’s been broken into twice with a car driven into it, and how they plan to vacate when their lease is up. It’s a cigarette store, and only added snacks and drinks during the pandemic to qualify to stay open.
I’m not indifferent to their plight, but I personally won’t miss them. But much like many other incidents of this nature, from high end stores in Union Square to dispensaries, to a consulate, one has to ask why part the solution isn’t to install bollards (which the consulate at least sorta did).
Hopefully Marjan will rise to the role and seek to actually improve things. But I’m not encouraged.
Please google Ms Chan on her phone during a board meeting . Please do your research before voting . Learn about who you think will best represent the wellbeing of all including your interests.
Marjan Philhour is a City Hall insider having formerly worked in a top level position as a surrogate and messenger for London Breed. Philhour’s kids go to private, not public school. And never forget: the last time Marjan Philhour ran (this is her third attempt) she and her campaign team invented a fake tenants group that they said supported her. She is an ego tripping, petulant, pathological liar and an enemy of renters.