Former supe Avalos files to take on Safaí in District 11
Former District 11 Supervisor John Avalos is going for a third term on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Avalos — who served on the board from 2009 to 2017 — filed papers with the Department of Elections to run in the November 2020 election. He will challenge incumbent Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who also plans to run next year.
Six seats on the board will be up for election in 2020: Districts 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11. If Avalos wins, he would be yet another progressive addition to the already heavily leftleaning board.
Safaí is seen as one of the few remaining supervisors on the board who could side with the more moderate Mayor London Breed when it comes to key parts of her agenda, such as housing. One of Breed’s few allies on the board — District Five Supervisor Vallie Brown — lost the November election and will leave office before the end of the year. Taking Brown’s place
will be tenants’ rights activist Dean Preston, a wellknown progressive voice in the city seen as an adversary of the mayor.
Rumors of Avalos jumping in the race have been swirling around political circles for at least a year. In an interview with The Chronicle on Friday, the former supervisor said he finally decided to challenge the incumbent because the voice of working people and the middle class has been “lost” in City Hall.
“I’m running for supervisor because I want to unite our district, and I want the working people and middleclass people to have a seat at the table in City Hall again,” he said.
District 11 includes neighborhoods such as the Excelsior, Ingleside and Outer Mission. If he wins, Avalos said he would champion policies such as high percentages of affordable housing in new developments and a public bank.
Avalos got his start in San Francisco politics as a community and labor organizer. He then became a legislative aide to former supervisor Chris Daly, before running for office in 2008. During his term, he championed a localhire law for cityfunded construction projects and redirected funding from police and fire budgets into social and health services as chair of the Budget and Finance committee during the peak of the recession. Avalos also ran for mayor, and came in second to Mayor Ed Lee in his 2011 run.
He was one of three supervisors to vote against the MidMarket tax break in 2011, a tax policy intended to lure tech companies — like Twitter — to a derelict stretch of Market Street. While that policy helped revitalize parts of MidMarket, it was heavily criticized as a handout to wealthy tech companies.
The former supervisor also caught heat during his term for having an affair with his top aide.
Since terming out of office, Avalos has been working for the National Union of Healthcare Workers. His decision to run was first reported by the San Francisco Examiner.
Avalos criticized the current supervisor for catering to the city’s “moderate base.”
Safaí said in a statement, “it’s a democracy and I look forward to him or anyone else that gets into the race talking about how we can positively move our city and district forward.”
If he wins, Avalos said he’ll try to collaborate with Breed. They served on the board together when both were supervisors. As colleagues, he said, they didn’t always see eye to eye. But, if they work together again, he said he would do his best to cultivate a relationship with the mayor.
“I never shied away from asking her to come my way on things, but I didn’t always have her on my side,” he said. “The city has tremendous problems that need to be resolved, and we need people to work together.”