San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Brown to take another shot at District 5 seat
Former San Francisco Supervisor Vallie Brown, who narrowly lost her District Five seat to Dean Preston last year, will try to win back the position in November. Brown, who was appointed by Mayor London Breed in 2018, lost the November 2019 election by less than 200 votes — one of the closest races in recent City Hall history. In an interview with The Chronicle, the former supervisor said she wanted to run again so she could help steer San Francisco through the devastating economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I felt strongly that I needed to run, and that I just can’t sit back when the city is in times of economic crisis,” said Brown, who officially filed to run Friday.
Brown’s campaign announcement comes as Preston faces criticism over his support for a sanctioned tent encampment in the HaightAshbury. The 40tent site, which opened Friday, may become an early flash point in the campaign.
Preston has been working with several city departments for the past few months to open a safe sleeping site in the district, which has seen an increase in tents during the pandemic. Critics of the plan at 730 Stanyan St., a former Mc
Donald’s site, are upset at the supervisor for supporting an encampment in such a dense, hightraffic area. A neighborhood group, Concerned Citizens of the Haight, filed a lawsuit on the matter Wednesday. Brown said she had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it directly. But, she said, she would have taken more time to weigh the different opinions of the neighborhood on the location. She also criticized Preston for supporting the handing out of more than 1,000 tents to those living on the streets before having a place that they could also shower, use the
Vallie Brown, former San Francisco supervisor restroom and access services.
“I think that was reckless,” she said.
Preston has been unapologetic about handing out tents and his support for a safe sleeping site in the area. He said there was little time to wait, as people are most vulnerable to the virus when they are in proximity to others and don’t have access to soap and water or hand sanitizer.
“We have a long list of pressing issues,” he said.
“This is helping to address one of the most common complaints in the HaightAshbury neighborhood.”
District Five is a diverse collection of neighborhoods that includes the HaightAshbury, Fillmore, Western Addition, Inner Sunset and Hayes Valley. Like every area of San Francisco, the district faces a daunting recovery from the pandemic as many businesses, restaurants and bars remain closed because of the city’s shelterinplace order.
Supervisors’ terms are typically four years. But there is another election for District Five in November 2020 because Preston is just filling out the rest of the term for Breed, who stepped away from the seat when she assumed the mayor’s office.
Meanwhile, Stevon Cook, a member of the San Francisco Board of Education, said he ended his campaign for the District Five seat Friday because of challenges from the pandemic. When she was in office, Brown helped write legislation to open the city’s first safe RV parking lot and also crafted a plan to streamline lengthy permitting processes for small businesses. But she was only supervisor for a little over a year when she lost in the contentious race that pitted her, a close ally of the mayor, against Preston, who pledged to be more critical of the administration.
Since joining the board in January, Preston, a former tenants’ rights activist, has not been shy about speaking out against the mayor. He and the majority of his colleagues on the board have been particularly vocal about what they view as a sluggish response to moving the city’s huge homeless population into vacant hotel rooms.
Other issues Preston is working on include: legislation that prohibits evicting a tenant who cannot pay rent because of issues related to the coronavirus; a proposed ballot measure to nearly double the city’s transfer tax on commercial real estate deals of $10 million or more to generate funds for rent relief and affordable housing; and creating more bike lanes and slow streets in the district.
As he also keeps a “laserlike” focus on the city’s pandemic response, Preston said the November election is one of the last things on his mind.
“Political campaigning is secondary to getting that job done,” he said.
“I felt strongly that I needed to run, and that I just can’t sit back when the city is in times of economic crisis.”
Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani
Rose Bird, then a Santa Clara County public defender.
It was also a time when female attorneys had to wear dresses in court, said Equal Rights Advocates’ current executive director, Noreen Farrell. She said Babcock recalled the single, loose dress left hanging in the closet for each advocate to don before heading to court on her own — “the infamous suit of gender justice.”
Babcock was “a brilliant, charismatic, extraordinarily accomplished, extremely funny woman ... who was dedicated to advancing equality for those whom society labels as the least among us,” said the organization’s current board chair, Drucilla Ramey. Henderson also joined its board, the only male member, before his judicial appointment.
After three years as an assistant attorney general in Carter’s Justice Department, Babcock returned to Stanford in 1980, assisted on the law school’s first clinic in a lowincome neighborhood, and remained a professor until her retirement in 2004. She wrote a 2011 book, “Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz,” about the woman who became California’s first licensed female attorney in 1878, and a 2016 memoir, “Fish Raincoats: A Woman Lawyer’s Life.”
Babcock, whose first marriage ended in divorce, is survived by her second husband, Thomas Grey; stepdaughter Rebecca Grey, a granddaughter and two brothers. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Equal Rights Advocates.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko