San Francisco’s progressives are all but certain to lose the majority of seats they’ve held on the Board of Supervisors since 2019, according to Sunday’s election updates.
That six-year-long iteration of the board clashed with Mayor London Breed on housing policy and police crackdowns, but also helped shepherd the city through the tail end of the Trump administration and the urban ills wrought by the pandemic.
At the same time, the board is also on the verge of losing several seasoned legislators, with four of its incoming class brand-new to politics. The inexperienced members will take office as San Francisco faces the prospect of a second Trump administration poised to assault the city on several fronts, the continuing downtown vacancy crisis, and an $800 million budget deficit that will likely herald deep cuts to city services.
“This is really difficult to do under the best of circumstances,” said Myrna Melgar, the District 7 supervisor who appears headed for re-election and has often served as a fulcrum for the city’s progressive-moderate divide. The next four years, Melgar said, would be difficult even for the most tested legislators, but with an “inexperienced mayor and a very green” board? “It’s daunting,” she said.
“The bottom line is this mayor” — mayor-elect Daniel Lurie — “and this board are going to have an ongoing set of budgetary and fiscal challenges the likes of which are unimaginable,” said Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who was termed out and lost his mayoral bid.
The next four years, Peskin said, presage “tight times locally” and “a vindictive federal government that’s got its target set on California and San Francisco.” The Trump administration will use lawsuits, funding cuts, deportations, and more against the city. “They’re going to have a lot of tough fiscal sledding. They’re all going to have to be very disciplined.”
Melgar pointed to the past and new targets. Trump, she said, “threatened to take money away because of the sanctuary ordinance; we are going to be faced with that again. We have an Office of Transgender Initiatives; how is that going to go for us? We just passed Prop. O, guaranteeing sanctuary for those seeking medical refuge.”
All six open seats in this year’s supervisorial races were held by progressives, yet progressive candidates are likely to lose in at least two of those races: Already, Danny Sauter, a YIMBY-endorsed candidate and neighborhood organizer, has declared victory in District 3, while in District 5, the incumbent democratic socialist Dean Preston on Sunday night all but conceded his loss to Bilal Mahmood. Mahmood, a tech-company founder, benefited from more than $300,000 in outside spending by the public pressure groups GrowSF and TogetherSF.
Both of their wins would shift the board to being more reliably moderate than progressive: In District 1, progressive Connie Chan is nearly 1,000 votes ahead; in District 7, Melgar is comfortably ahead in her own race; District 9 was a rout for democratic socialist newcomer Jackie Fielder; and, in District 11, Chyanne Chen is pulling ahead of Michael Lai in a tight race. Future vote drops would seem likely to benefit all the leading candidates, but some 42,000 ballots remain and all must be counted.
District 2, currently held by Catherine Stefani, who is headed to the State Assembly in January, will go to another moderate, as outgoing mayor London Breed can appoint Stefani’s replacement.
District 4 is held by Joel Engardio, a moderate who, in 2022, became the first supervisor to unseat an incumbent. But Engardio is now facing opposition in his district for his creation and support of the Great Highway measure Prop. K, which the Westside opposed. The District 6 supervisor is former police communications head Matt Dorsey, while the District 8 supervisor is Rafael Mandelman, who votes between moderates and progressives.
District 10 is held by progressive Shamann Walton, who, for his part, cautioned against predictions that the board will be more moderate: The new members may vote idiosyncratically, or switch positions during their tenure.
“Some of the folks may get a label, but we don’t know how people are gonna vote until they actually get a seat,” said Walton. “I would not be too quick to label anyone.”
The progressive-moderate divide has always been tenuous and inexact: Supervisors do vote along an ideological spectrum, but some supervisors, like Melgar and Mandelman, straddle the fence; others, like the outgoing District 11 supervisor, Ahsha Safaí, have confounded easy labels by voting as a labor stalwart who can espouse both law-and-order rhetoric and a strong defense of sanctuary policies.
Plus, said several sitting supervisors, a silver lining of the Trump administration may be that the heated local rhetoric calms down substantially.
“I suspect that they will all be united around their common federal woes,” said Peskin, who said legislative unity was common during the first Trump term and the pandemic. “There’s nothing like having a common enemy to bring everyone together.”
“You’re gonna see, right out the gate, folks coming with fresh ideas on how to combat his stances on immigration, his stances on people of color,” added Walton. “We’ll be ready and geared up. We’ve gone through this before.”
Melgar, for her part, offered a concrete proposal: An experienced hand at the helm as board president, a powerful position that can appoint supervisors to committees, helping or hindering legislation before it gets to the full board — someone like herself.
“I feel like, at this time, we have a hostile federal administration … we need someone who can talk to everyone and negotiate more than anyone,” she said, adding that she has “played the role of mom,” and can “talk to everyone, and negotiate more than anyone.”
“The government infrastructure below the level of neophyte elected officials has been to this rodeo before,” added Peskin. As to the city’s new legislators, “Hopefully they’ll be interested in the workings of government,” Peskin said, “and not just the politics of politics.”
“Try to work together as much as possible,” said Hillary Ronen, the outgoing District 9 supervisor. “That’s what I hope for this next board.”
Preston’s farewell message was typically petulant, refusing to congratulate his opponent and airing conspiracy-tinged grievances. He goes out as he came in.
$1 billion in cuts need to be the budgetary starting point. And all those ballot initiatives that voters just passed are adding big dollars to the budget, not cutting.
I guess being “progressive” is like a day on the teeter-totter. Weee!
It’s really not that difficult. Boudin was a progressive. Preston is a progressive. Fielder will be a progressive. Call the rest moderate, left-center, conservative, liberal, right-center… whatever you want but progressive.
For as much as YIMBYs bash the “progressive” flank, they are dying to capture the flag and plant it firmly atop Mt. Let’s-Grow-Together-Neighbors, a la Iwo Jima. And that any supervisor could attend Coffee & Condos with Garry Tan and still be in consideration is blasphemy.
I dunno,
I think Chan and Waltham are Progressive but it really doesn’t matter much in my opinion.
Keep in mind that all of the Supes together hold about 10% of the Power in San Francisco and that we made (in my opinion) a quantum leap in improvement in the Mayor’s Office.
I know that Lurie worked on New Jersey Senator (also Knicks and Princeton and Crystal City High basketball star and Oxford grad) Bill Bradley’s run for the U.S. Presidency and I watched that guy as a high school senior take his tiny high school to the State Championship – there was only one division then … he made the ‘Hoosiers’ fictional character look lame with his talent … I was on leave from the Navy and my friends took me to see Oscar Robertson as a Sophomore at Cincinnati and Bradley was better and a high schooler …
One thing is for certain and that is that Lurie doesn’t owe poop to the crooked SF Political Machine or turncoat unions or clueless techie billionaires.
Go Daniel Lurie !!
(start by appointing Aaron Peskin as your Chief of Staff)
He’ll have your back.
Go Niners !!
h.
Do Chan and Walton even want the label? I have no idea, but being a center-left liberal does provide more runway and those two have plenty blue sky ahead, if they so desire.
With Preston you get consistency. You don’t have to question where he stands. He will stick to his guns, live or die. Not everybody can say that.
Oh no! A neophyte board of supervisors! Their inexperience may lead to San Francisco facing enormous budget deficits, a deteriorated economic base, high crime, corruption investigations at all levels of government, and a downtown packed with drug abusing vagrants from all over!
Jake,
Everything you mention there is the responsibility of the Mayor.
What we have here is basically a return of a Board of Supervisors chosen City-Wide depending upon who has the supporters with the deepest pockets.
I believe the Swells spent more money on the D-5 campaign for a nearly powerless (one of eleven dividing ten percent of power) single supe position than Gonzo and Gavin together spent in the 2003 Mayoral mixup.
Go Niners !!
h.
That’s nonsense. The Board of Supervisors routinely stood in the way of actual solutions to fix our drug and housing problems. Thank goodness it has gone moderate and good riddance to Preston. Maybe we can actually get something done in the next 4 years.
Engardio will be recalled. Sunset district sees through his BS Weinerisms.
ELECT LOCALS.
San Francisco ‘progressives’ were Trumps best advertising. Congrats to them for enabling him as effectively as they enabled the vagrant hordes in San Francisco!
This is nonsense. I hope you feel better for venting the el spleeno dishonestly.
If the progressive agenda in the City is so popular and needed, I’m sure San Franciscans will support it regardless of what the vibe of the Federal gov’t is. As far as the sanctuary city issue goes…gonna guess there are more than a few closet opposers that are breathing a sigh of relief while still being able to clutch at their pearls…
Trump, she said, “threatened to take money away because of the sanctuary ordinance — we are going to be faced with that again. We have an Office of Transgender Initiatives, how is that going to go for us? We just passed Prop. O guaranteeing sanctuary for those seeking medical refuge.”
— Thank you for cheering me up! I have been crushed by Trump’s win. But thank you for reminding us that he’s not wrong about everything. You found three things he’s right about!
San Francisco is broke and shouldn’t be giving money to (checks notes) illegal immigrants with serious medical problems. Or transgender people because they’re transgender. And do we get to vote on this “sanctuary city” nonsense?
disgusting, hateful rhetoric.
jrrd v: When someone asks who ended the grownup discussion of issues and started the name calling, I hope you are honest that it was you.
we must be ever-vigilant and call out hate wherever it occurs!!
jrrd. v. is absolutely right. bravo!
with gusto, fascist
“… Prop. O guaranteeing sanctuary for those seeking medical refuge.” – that’s actually misleading explanation. Prop O is only about reproductive issues, i.e. abortion. It has absolutely nothing to do with any other kind of health care, nor is in any direct way associated with the SF undocumented immigrant sanctuary policy.
The catastrophizing of the far left is so nauseating. I don’t like Trump, but he has never said he is coming after adult trans living their lives in society. He is going after biological males competing against biological women in high school sports, and the progressive obsession of wanting teenagers/middle schoolers/grade grade schoolers to have the ability to permanently alter their sexual/hormonal makeup before they are even adults. The majority of Americans agree with Trump on this, so do I, and so does essentially all of our European allies.
You haven’t been to rural Idaho. Trump’s “Christian ” synchophants are doing it for him. Going after Doctors and queers.
disgusting, ignorant, and hateful.
Only to an ideological zealot of toxic society ruining narratives. But to rational people, it’s a path of redemption back to a healthy society.