Lori Brooke, the No. 2 vote-getter in the June 2 election, has decided not to run for District 2 supervisor again in November. Stephen Sherrill is likely to face no serious opposition.
“While I will not be a candidate in November, I am not going anywhere,” Brooke wrote in a statement, saying she was proud of the campaign she ran. “I will continue to advocate for my community, support the issues I care about, and remain engaged in the neighborhoods that I have spent years working to improve.”
Brooke was Sherrill’s only opponent in June, but she lost 69-31. The race was a special election, so Sherrill must win again on November 3 to get a full four-year term.
Brooke, a longtime community organizer in the district, pitched herself as an independent voice who would be responsive to constituents, particularly on housing. While Sherrill is generally aligned with pro-housing YIMBYs, Brooke is skeptical of new development.
But Sherrill had much more money backing him — about $1.4 million, including from third-party PACs — and had developed a reputation for competence as sitting supervisor. He allied himself closely with the Mayor Daniel Lurie and, in the end, notched a decisive victory.
“District 2 made it clear that they want a Supervisor who is focused, responsive, and committed to San Francisco’s comeback,” Sherrill said. “I’m excited to get back to work and, hopefully, earn four more years this November.”
The field is likely cleared for Sherrill to sweep that election — the remaining candidates are not well-positioned to give him a fight.
One, Nicholas Berg, is the chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party. “One-party rule gave San Francisco lousy results,” he says on his website. Only 10 percent of District 2 voters are registered Republicans, and 62 percent are Democrats; he is unlikely to make any inroads.
Another candidate, Guy McCoy, styled himself a longshot mayoral candidate in 2024 but did not get a single vote.
The third challenger, Monthanus Ratanapakdee, ran a write-in campaign for June’s seat and has received 13 votes so far (the final vote total has yet to be released).
The killing of her elderly father, Vicha Ratanapakdee, became a national outrage during the post-pandemic years. He was pushed to the ground by 19-year-old Antoine Watson in 2021, hit his head and died a few days later. The case became highly publicized as a part of the Stop Asian Hate movement, and Watson was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter this January.
Ratanapakdee has spun up a campaign website where she says that her top priorities are public safety and cleanliness.
Sherrill had some $166,000 in the bank for the November race as of May 27, according to campaign finance filings. No other candidate had declared any money raised.
Can some of the $1million that would have been spent on mailers and door hangers that end up in the garbage or littering our streets be donated instead to a worthwhile cause or 12 in SF instead?
Yes. PLEASE.
In a truly more abundant and equitable world we could opt out of receiving any political mailers or door hangers with enforceable fines for folks who shove them down our throats.
If you are so disengaged that you need someone’s PAC to tell you how to vote, please do us all a favor and don’t vote.
“Sherrill had much more money backing him”
All of these articles about Lurie-opposed losing campaigns talk about how they were outspent, but Saikat outspent Chan by an order of magnitude and she got almost double the votes. Natalie Gee complained, “It wasn’t a fair race,” as if San Francisco elections were played by Marquess of Queensberry rules.
It’s time to stop making money the evergreen excuse.
having an enormous amount of money and tons of free time is obviously a big asset. Chan got the votes she did because she was the only progressive running who’s entire resume wasn’t “I helped write something that didn’t pass for someone who won’t even say my name out loud”. It’s hard to get past that, even if you sit around the city with no job and 100+ million in the bank and your biggest selling point is a website that looks like a teenager wrote it on Wix, espousing a new magical economic system that is open-source on github…. but is really about 100 pages of instructions to Claude.ai on what you wish it did, but nothing run.
But don’t try to tell me that having piles of money doesn’t make it easier for a candidate to get their message out. Chan should get some real kudos for getting the votes she did.
I saw Sue Hestor rolling around the produce section at Rainbow Grocery the other day, and had to refrain from expressing my concerns that she lost the D2 race.
I’m not sure which is the more interesting question, why progs got steamrolled by Wiener and the YIMBY so easily, or why they run someone for a local race who pretends that those YIMBY laws do not exist or that there is a chance of repealing them?