Supe hopefuls claim outsider cred
There are 28 people running for six seats on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and between them they’ve knocked on tens of thousands of doors and struck up conversations with countless city residents.
What do they hear most often? In a phrase, “Throw the bums out.”
Nobody, it seems, is happy with City Hall. In a reflection of the national mood, which has become so anti-Washington, D.C., that we might actually have Donald Trump as our next president, San Franciscans are none too pleased with their elected leaders. In response, candidates with ties to City Hall are painting themselves as political outsiders.
“There’s just a distrust of everyone in City Hall, from the mayor to the supervisors to the supervisors’ staff,” said Joshua Arce, who is running in District Nine, which includes the Mission. “Homelessness has reached epidemic levels. Prostitution on Shotwell Street has reached highs not seen in decades. Property crimes are reaching new levels.”
Car break-ins. Tent
camps. Potholes. Congestion. Dirty streets. If there’s a complaint about a quality-of-life issue being neglected by City Hall, the candidates across the city have heard it. And heard it and heard it.
Arce’s campaign literature reads: “City Hall has failed our community” and “City Hall is broken.” He’s hardly a political outsider, though, having been appointed to the Commission on the Environment by Mayor Ed Lee in 2012 and having served on the Democratic County Central Committee. He no longer holds either position.
Arce’s main challenger, Hillary Ronen ,is considered the frontrunner in the race. Though she’s worked in City Hall for more than six years as the righthand woman of Supervisor David Campos, who will be termed out as representative of District Nine, Ronen appears to be distancing herself from her longtime boss.
In June, Ronen sought to have her occupation on the ballot listed as “civil rights attorney.” She has been Campos’ legislative aide for years and deactivated her law license to take the job. The occupation didn’t fly with the elections office, and Ronen instead chose to appear on the ballot as “legislative aide/mother.”
In her opening statement at a recent Chronicle editorial board session, Ronen began by saying she’d be a very different supervisor than Campos. “Like a lot of you, we have bosses we agree with and bosses we disagree with, and of course I’m no different,” she said.
Ronen later disputed the notion she’s trying to distance herself from Campos. She’s listed his endorsement on her website and has pictures of herself with him there, too.
“I have been frustrated by the fact that Josh has been spending the entire campaign attacking David as a way of attacking me, and I think that’s so typical of male candidates that don’t recognize that I am my own person and will have my own leadership style and my own priorities as supervisor,” she said.
Specifically, she said Campos has focused on the city as a whole, while she will concentrate solely on improving District Nine. She ticked off a number of constituents’ complaints about the district that she wants to tackle, from a lack of affordable housing to tent camps to robberies.
Asked why she’d be able to solve these problems as supervisor when she hasn’t been able to as Campos’ top aide, she said, “You know how City Hall works. I’m not setting the priorities of the office. I’m executing the priorities that are set by the supervisor.”
Ronen isn’t the only one making these distinctions. Ben Matranga, who is running for supervisor of District Seven, the West of Twin Peaks neighborhoods, said his team has knocked on 9,000 doors and that complaints about City Hall are “a consistent drumbeat.” The neighborhood is filled with owners of single-family homes who don’t understand where their property tax money goes and why they’re being asked for more money in multiple tax measures on the November ballot, he said.
Matranga just left City Hall in March, working for the mayor as the city’s first-ever streetsafety director charged with eliminating traffic deaths. Asked whether he wants Lee’s endorsement, Matranga paused and said, “I don’t think it’s important to the average voter.”
Ouch. But that’s about the same response as just about every candidate we asked.
Marjan Philhour, who is running in District One, which encompasses the Richmond, said, “I think the mayor has done so much nationwide for affordable housing, but right now I’m focusing on endorsements from people in the neighborhood.” David Lee, who is also running in District One, said, “I want neighbors to endorse me. I want regular people to endorse me.”
Joel Engardio, who is running in District Seven, said, “I don’t have a comment on that, I guess.” Arce said, “It’s an endorsement that cuts both ways ... his popularity has declined greatly.”
It may be an academic exercise anyway, because Lee hasn’t endorsed any candidate for supervisor this go-around and may stay out of the endorsement game entirely, focusing instead on ensuring the outcome of ballot measures he feels strongly about.
Lee has made a practice of not endorsing in supervisorial races, with the exception of pushing hard for his appointee Julie Christensen to beat Aaron Peskin in District Three last year — and that didn’t turn out so well for him.
Tony Winnicker ,a senior adviser to Lee who is on leave to work on defeating four ballot measures the mayor opposes, said, “There’s a lot going right with the city, but people are rightly concerned about the cost of living, homelessness, public safety and other issues. Candidates who represent a break from the status quo in their districts could have an advantage in that environment.”
He pointed out that could cut both ways. People may be be dissatisfied not only with the moderate mayor, but also with the progressive supervisors, three of whom are termed out, leaving their seats wide open.
Ruth Bernstein ,a pollster for EMC Research, has conducted numerous polls in recent months for various campaigns. She said that overall, San Francisco residents are feeling better about their city than they did earlier this year.
In March, Bernstein found that 35 percent of residents said the city was headed in the right direction, and 50 percent said it was on the wrong track. Those numbers are now reversed, she said.
Whether those more rosy feelings apply to Lee and the supervisors is unclear. A Chamber of Commerce poll in March found that Lee’s approval ratings had tanked, dropping to the low 40s. Those saying they “strongly approved” of his performance were in the single digits. Approval of the Board of Supervisors was at 40 percent.
Asked what her newer polls show about Lee and the board in particular, Bernstein said she didn’t “have anything to share,” which doesn’t exactly give us confidence the results are rosy.