San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Breed not on ballot — but her reputation is
Voters to decide on 5 of mayor’s appointees running for first time
You won’t see London Breed’s name on the ballot for the November election.
But San Francisco voters will decide the fates of five of the mayor’s appointees running for election for the first time and a slew of ballot measures, some of which she backs, others she opposes.
“The mayor is always on the ballot,” said political consultant Jim Ross, who is not working on any
November races.
Breed will get tested in an election weeks after a Chronicle poll showed many residents were upset with her performance and controversy erupted over a legally questionable practice related to her appointees to city commissions and boards.
The mayor is under fire for requiring 40 of her appointees to sign undated resignation letters, first reported by the San Francisco Standard. While her office claimed the letters would only be used in an emergency, her critics said it was a way to control appointees, and the city attorney denounced the practice, saying it threatened to jeopardize the independence of oversight bodies. She has discontinued the practice.
Breed didn’t ask her appointees running in November to sign letters, but the perception makes it easier for critics to paint them as puppets, a jab already used in the district attorney’s race.
Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University, said the letters wouldn’t change the fate of Breed’s appointees or her own future re-election, since voters are quick to forget and most are already cemented in their stances. But her opponents might jump on the controversy in this election and the next time she’s on the ballot.
The news follows results from a recent Chronicle poll that indicate dissatisfaction with the mayor, with 35% of respondents reporting Breed has done a poor or very poor job at making the city a better place over the past three years, and less than a quarter saying she has done an excellent or good job. Some political consultants said that voter frustration could hurt her chosen candidates and causes, while others said voters will make decisions based on individual candidates and their own beliefs.
“Voters who are dissatisfied with the job Mayor Breed is doing do not have the opportunity to vote against Mayor Breed on this ballot, but they do have the opportunity to vote in races where she’s appointed incumbents and for measures that she has made central to her political agenda,” said political consultant Eric Jaye, whose firm has made some digital ads for John Hamasaki, a district attorney candidate running against Breed’s appointee Brooke Jenkins.
“To the extent that (Breed) wants to make these a referendum on herself, that is not likely to end well for her.”
But Corey Cook, a politics professor at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, said voters don’t always make a direct connection between the mayor and her endorsements when going to the polls.
“We overstate the results when we say this is a referendum on mayoral leadership or popularity,” he said.
But he didn’t deny that the “stakes are very high for the mayor,” since the failures of Breed’s appointees and measures could hamper her ability to push her political agenda.
Consultants said it wasn’t likely any failures would make or break her re-election, though. Past failures on the ballot haven’t determined a mayor’s political survival: Breed herself defeated a Mayor Ed Lee appointee to win her first supervisor race, and Lee went on to win re-election.
Other consultants said her political future is less about what happens at the ballot than what happens on the streets, with improving homelessness and public safety the voters’ top demands.
The highest-stakes test for Breed is likely to be the district attorney’s race after Breed pushed public safety to the top of her agenda. Jenkins, a prosecutor who quit District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office and then joined the recall as one of his fiercest critics, faces her first election.
Jenkins has introduced some tougher-on-crime policies, while pledging to keep important criminal justice reforms, parroting Breed’s talking points on “balance.”
Ross, who worked on the campaign against Boudin’s recall, said if Jenkins loses, “it’s a pretty massive repudiation of (Breed’s) policies.”
It’s not clear if Jenkins’ recent misstep — claiming she was a volunteer on the recall campaign while getting paid by a closely affiliated nonprofit — makes her vulnerable. She faces three challengers — former police Commissioner Hamasaki, civil rights attorney Joe Alioto Veronese and Maurice Chenier, a former district attorney candidate against Kamala Harris.
Also on the ballot are Breed’s appointees for the school board, picked after voters ousted their predecessors in a landslide recall in February. Breed now has a slim majority of allies on the seven-person board: her three appointees and her former education adviser Jenny Lam, who’s the board president.
But Breed could lose her majority after one of her appointees — Ann Hsu —came under fire recently for offensive comments on a candidate questionnaire, possibly making Hsu more vulnerable in November’s election.
Hsu wrote that “unstable family environments” and “lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning” were among the biggest challenges in educating Black and brown students.
Hsu apologized. While a host of public officials called for her to step down, Breed stood by her.
Finally, Breed’s appointee to supervisor in District Six, which includes SoMa and Mission Bay, will also face voters. Breed picked former police spokesman Matt Dorsey as supervisor to replace Matt Haney after he left to serve in the state Legislature. In doing so, Breed passed over Haney’s former chief of staff, Honey Mahogany.
Now Dorsey and Mahogany are in a tight race, joined by two other candidates.
Incumbent supervisors overwhelmingly have an advantage. A Chronicle analysis found that since 2002, incumbents won 91% of their election bids. The only four who lost were appointed by the mayor and facing voters for the first time.
One of the unsuccessful incumbents was Breed’s appointee to District Five supervisor, Vallie Brown. She lost in 2019 to Dean Preston. That same year, Breed appointed interim District Attorney Suzy Loftus, but Loftus lost to Boudin.
Voters will also weigh in on ballot measures in November, eight of which Breed is supporting and six she’s opposing.
The most contentious is Proposition D, meant to streamline affordable housing. Breed’s allies drafted the measure after supervisors rejected the mayor’s previous efforts to push reforms through the board.
To counter Prop. D, supervisors placed Prop. E, a competing measure also meant to streamline affordable housing, on the ballot. The measures have emerged as a proxy for fights between the city’s moderates and progressives over how to solve the city’s housing crisis.
The second hot topic is another pair of dueling measures, Prop. I and Prop. J, to decide the fate of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park. The road was closed to car traffic at the start of the pandemic and became a lightning rod in the city’s debate over how to use public space.
Earlier this year, Breed came out in support of legislation to keep JFK car-free, which supervisors passed. However, opponents are now taking that decision to voters.
Breed is supporting the less contentious Prop N. to let the city use public money to run public parking in the underground Music Concourse Garage in Golden Gate Park. She also supports measures to extend the library preservation fund, create grants for the school district, continue a sales tax for transportation projects, adjust retirees’ cost of living supplements and retain the current Public Works department.
Breed opposes Prop. C, which would create an oversight commission for her homelessness department, arguing it would add unnecessary bureaucracy. She also opposes a tax on vacant units and another tax for City College.
This November will also determine when Breed is on the ballot.
If Prop. H passes, Breed won’t be up for reelection until 2024 instead of 2023. Preston introduced the ballot measure to align mayoral elections with presidential ones. A study from Los Angeles, which made the same change, showed voter turnout increased.
Breed has opposed the change, telling a local radio station it’s a “power grab” by democratic socialists. In her official letter of opposition, she wrote that the city needed more time to review it.
There’s no clear consensus from politicos yet on whether the change would be good or bad for Breed. A Chronicle data analysis found that areas with moderate voters are likely to have higher turnout, which could benefit her.
Pushing back the election could avoid Breed fighting to keep her job the same year that the city must renegotiate union contracts while possibly facing a budget shortfall. But it could give more time for residents to grow increasingly disenchanted and for a challenger to emerge. And, if Breed has any aspirations to run for Congress in 2024, a mayoral race the same year could disrupt those plans.
As of now, Breed’s spokesman said she’s focused on her re-election.