San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Stefani laps the field for S.F. seat
This year, San Francisco will lose one of its most experienced lawmakers in the state Capitol when Democrat Phil Ting terms out of the Assembly seat he’s held for 12 years.
Unfortunately, residents of the 19th Assembly District — which includes San Francisco’s west side and swaths of San Mateo County — have a dearth of options to replace him. Only four candidates are running, and in interviews with the editorial board, neither of the two Republicans — freelance filmmaker Nadia Flamenco and inventory manager Arjun Gustav Sodhani — put forth anything that even remotely resembles a coherent policy platform. (Sodhani’s top priority, for example, is increasing California’s population to 101 million. His solution? “You put two people in a room and another person comes out.”)
That leaves us with the two Democrats. Catherine Stefani, 54, is a San Francisco supervisor representing District Two — which includes Presidio Heights, the Marina and Pacific Heights — and a former legislative aide and prosecutor. David Lee, 54, is director of the Asian Pacific American Student Success Program at Laney College in Oakland and executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, a San Francisco nonprofit that helps register voters.
Some see this matchup as a proxy war between San Francisco’s moderate and progressive factions. Stefani is perhaps the most moderate Democrat on the Board of Supervisors, and Lee, after positioning himself as a centrist in several unsuccessful supervisorial bids, now touts his support for such progressive policies as eliminating student debt, offering free college and raising the state minimum wage to $25 per hour.
Others see it as a battle for representation. The district, which is about 40% Asian American, has been represented by a Chinese American lawmaker for more than 20 years. Ting, who endorsed Lee, told us it’s “really important” to maintain that trend, especially given the recent decline in
Chinese Americans elected to San Francisco’s top political offices.
We wholeheartedly agree with Ting about the importance of representation. But we left our interview with Lee deeply concerned about the candidate’s preparedness for the job.
Lee was unsure of the extent to which he supports state laws restricting local government’s ability to deny housing developments. Nor was it clear where he stands on some Democrats’ efforts to toughen aspects of Proposition 47, which downgraded certain theft and drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. He was similarly vague when discussing education policy — saying merely that he wants to increase state funding for education, which seems improbable given California’s huge budget deficit. Although we were intrigued by his idea to make community college campuses reentry hubs for formerly incarcerated people, it wasn’t clear he had a pragmatic plan to enact this initiative at the state level.
Ting acknowledged that Lee “definitely needs to improve his understanding of all the varieties of policy,” but has other valuable qualifications, including experience working with and advocating for lowincome immigrant students and a “deep knowledge of the Chinese American community.”
That argument might be more persuasive if this were Lee’s first rodeo, but it isn’t. He’s run for public office three times before, and he no longer has an excuse for not being conversant in topics as fundamental as housing and criminal justice.
Stefani, meanwhile, is wellversed in many policy areas. She has received the endorsement of several prominent Asian American Democratic clubs, who told us they feel she’s the candidate best positioned to represent their communities in Sacramento.
“Catherine Stefani has been a leader and a fighter for us and protecting our values,” Selina Sun, president of the Edwin M. Lee Asian Pacific Democratic Club, told the editorial board. She described Stefani as “instrumental” in efforts to rename a city street after Vicha Ratanapakdee, a Thai American grandfather whose brutal 2021 killing galvanized campaigns against antiAsian hate.
Sam Kwong, a board member and past president of the Chinese American Democratic Club, said that Stefani is more aligned with the group’s members on issues such as criminal justice, education and fiscal responsibility.
“I’d rather have someone who knows policy,” Kwong added.
We agree.
Stefani has a strong prohousing record and is endorsed by San Francisco YIMBY. We also appreciate her pragmatic approach to criminal justice: She told us she doesn’t “want to be the kind of Democrat who makes Republicans relevant” by allowing ideology to interfere with the pursuit of an effective balance between punitive and rehabilitative measures.
Stefani, who has a long history of fighting for stronger gun violence prevention laws, is also uniquely well-positioned to help the state Legislature address the disturbing link between domestic violence and mass shootings. In our interview, she described herself as a “child witness” to her mother’s decades-long abusive relationship and spoke passionately about the need to expand and improve services for domestic violence survivors and ensure offenders are enrolled in effective rehabilitative programs.
Stefani has also pushed San Francisco to increase oversight of the many nonprofits with which it contracts for critical city services and could bring a much-needed fiscal accountability lens to the Legislature as it figures out how to close California’s projected years-long budget deficit.
We would have appreciated Stefani outlining more specific details of her legislative agenda. But her plans are still far more defined than those of her opponents. She is the strongest candidate in an otherwise weak group of contenders and deserves your vote accordingly.