How can anyone see the Board of Supervisors as moderate?

In fact, Yimbys are often politically progressive.

District 5 supervisor elect Bilal Mahmood and Disrict 3 supervisor elect Danny Sauter are Yimbys but not necessarily moderates.

According to Grow SF, a self-described moderate political organization, the latest election produced great results. “Common sense won big in November,” their website says in large, bold type. The smaller subhead reads, “For the first time in years, the Mayor, the Board of Supervisors, and Board of Education are all aligned.” I can’t speak to the Board of Education (look to John Trasviña for our San Francisco Unified School District coverage), but I know a lot about the supervisors who will take office in January, and I don’t know how anyone can see the incoming members as a moderate majority. Combine that with the remaining supervisors representing even numbered districts (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10) who aren’t up for reelection until November 2026, and one last mayoral appointment by outgoing mayor London Breed to replace Catherine Stefani, who won her California Assembly seat in a landslide, and it gets even more interesting.

District 2 — Unknown

Let’s start with that final appointment by Mayor Breed, which must be made before she leaves office. It’s no secret Breed is bitter about losing her job to Daniel Lurie — in her public concession speech, she was gracious, but to her friends and supporters she made no bones about the fact Lurie “bought the election” (a point few could argue with). It’s a stunning but not unexpected fall from grace — incumbent mayors rarely lose their seats, and the last one to do so in San Francisco was Frank Jordan in his 1995 defeat to Willie Brown, ironically, the man who started Breed’s career and helped push her into Room 200 at City Hall. Breed’s administration was plagued by years of corruption scandals, with some of her friends and top officials indicted or sent to prison, and, like Breed, they were also associates of Willie Brown’s notorious City Family. The biggest mistake Breed made was not acknowledging the scandals, but it was hard to do considering she was clearly involved in some of them. For example, one of the stories I broke for the Marina Timesinvolved Breed creating the Fix It Department for Sandra Zuniga, then girlfriend of Breed’s former boyfriend, disgraced former Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, after Zuniga didn’t get a managerial position within DPW. Then, in a break that even Lurie’s Levi fortune couldn’t buy, the Dream Keeper Initiative scandal broke. Cosponsors Breed and Supervisor Shamann Walton made no bones about their pet project being a “the first step toward reparations” (in fact, Walton said the amount was “still far too low”). When they hired their friend Sheryl Davis, head of the Human Rights Commission, to also run the Dream Keeper Initiative, it was a recipe for disaster, which played out over the final months leading up to the election.

Another well-known fact about Breed is that she is fiercely loyal to those who are loyal to her but can be vindictive toward those she believes have slighted her. That’s why her rumored pick of Conor Johnston as a replacement for Stefani wouldn’t surprise me. During the 2018 mayoral election, I referred to Johnston as head of Breed’s Troll Patrol, a group of fierce and defensive fans willing to attack anyone daring to say a negative word about her. Having dealt with Johnston over the years, I find him, outside of his Breed fanaticism, to be a character with an often laugh-out-loud acerbic wit.

Voter records show Johnston’s last address in District 8, but let’s face it, residency rules for district supervisors are loose (current district 10 Supervisor Walton’s primary residence is in Vallejo, though he rents an apartment in the Bayview). For appointed supervisors, it’s even wonkier — the City Attorney’s Office says they only need to reside in the district by the time they’re sworn into office.

Would Johnston be a thorn in the side of Lurie? Definitely. During the mayoral campaign, he repeatedly blasted Lurie as “Malibu Dan” in reference to a multimillion-dollar Southern California mansion Lurie reportedly bought in 2021. Personally, I think Breed appointing Mark Farrell to his old seat would be a more fitting way for Breed to leave office — the former supervisor is a lifelong District 2 resident, former interim mayor, and strong legislator. Farrell’s campaign was derailed by Lurie’s and Breed’s dirty campaign tactics, along with a mainstream media that fell for every tactic and followed along like lemmings off a cliff. While it’s doubtful Farrell would accept or that bitter Breed could set aside their differences, at least it would show that Breed actually cares about San Franciscans and not just about revenge.

District 1 — Progressive

Marjan Philhour lost her third race for supervisor when unpopular incumbent Connie Chan kept her seat. Far left pundits like to claim “Republican billionaires” buy elections, but it wasn’t the case here, with Chan benefiting from more than $1 million in third-party spending from labor groups, which was far more than the $346,000 Philhour received from PACs (something similar happened in District 11). Chan’s win has the most moderates scratching their heads, but it appears to be a strong case of guilt by association: Philhour has had a long, close relationship with Breed, who supported Proposition K to close the Great Highway to vehicles. Philhour opposed the measure, but she wasn’t as vocal about her opposition as Chan was. Though Proposition K passed, the map shows a laser-sharp divide, with the majority of “no” votes coming from District 1, while the “yes” votes came from other parts of the city. In the end, the better candidate was taken out by a perceived connection to the City Family, which overshadowed everything else.

District 3 — Progressive/Yimby

The new supervisor for District 3, Danny Sauter, was the darling of YIMBY groups like Grow SF, but they seem to be confusing YIMBYs with moderates. In candidate statements, Sauter said he did not favor putting fentanyl dealers in jail. He is also a card-carrying member of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, a lobbyist group that gets the majority of its funding from taxpayers via the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Members of the group tend toward the progressive, ridiculously so when it comes to the police.

“Black and brown people are often deeply harmed or even killed by interactions with the police, and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition decided in 2020 to end any formal relationship with SFPD,” their website states. “Because policing is interwoven into nearly all current solutions to bike theft, some of our recommendations do involve minimal contact with the police, but we identify those and try to propose alternatives. We encourage everyone to consider the potential impact to human life of involving the police in any situation.”

On the plus side, current District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s endorsed candidate, Sharon Lai, didn’t win. For the better part of two decades, Peskin has run the office, even when he was technically a private citizen. In between his terms, Peskin endorsed David Chiu, who won the seat, but it was no secret Chiu was Peskin’s patsy. One would-be businessowner told me that when he attended a meeting at Chiu’s office, Peskin was there. He also got a drunken late-night call from Peskin scolding him for not “going to him first.” While he may not be a moderate, Sauter isn’t a Peskin patsy. In fact, Sauter owes nothing to Peskin and favors development in District 3, which includes Telegraph Hill, where Peskin has staunchly defended his home’s unfettered views throughout his career.

District 5 — Progressive/Yimby

As moderate groups and the San Francisco Democratic Party piled behind District 5 candidate Bilal Mahmood as their only choice, I was a little stunned. Mahmood refused to endorse popular, current District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, stating he would “personally be abstaining from the District Attorney’s race.” Mahmood was also against Proposition 36, which repealed some of the soft-on-criminal aspects of Proposition 47 and was supported by 75 percent of Californians.

It appears to me that Mahmood could be a progressive in moderate’s clothing. I personally see Mahmood as a political opportunist looking to climb the ladder to higher office. The real goal of groups that endorsed Mahmood seemed to be getting rid of gaslighting socialist incumbent Dean Preston who believes drug dealers and users have the right to do whatever they please in the Tenderloin, now part of District 5. As a reporter who has long called out Preston for his incompetence — and faced his wrath because of it — seeing Preston leave office is almost worth watching the disappointed faces of those who actually believe Mahmood is going to vote with District 6 supervisor Matt Dorsey, the only true moderate on the board.

District 7 — Progressive

The San Francisco Democratic Party endorsement picks broke the cardinal rule of Ranked Choice Voting when they made sole endorsements in all but one race. While they said running up to the March election they wanted change, for the most part their choices were incumbents like Breed for mayor and Myrna Melgar for District 7. Unlike Breed, Melgar won, with two much more moderate candidates, Matt Boschetto and Stephen Martin-Pinto, splitting votes in the later rounds — the main reason for endorsing entities to offer a second and third choice strategy. Had Martin-Pinto not run, it is entirely plausible that Boschetto would have beaten Melgar, but here we are.

Who is Melgar? The first year she won office, she tweeted that people shouldn’t enjoy Thanksgiving because it celebrated colonizers. In several speeches before her colleagues, she said San Francisco’s Sanctuary City Law should protect Honduran drug dealers, who are really just day laborers “who may work for two weeks for a boss who then says they aren’t going to get paid — and if they complain, the boss threatens to call the cops and allege that they are drug dealers.” Melgar, of course, cited no evidence to back up her claims, and I wrote a column that fully debunked everything she said.

District 9 — Socialist

Outgoing District 9 supervisor Hillary Ronen, like her boss before her, kowtowed to the bullying groups in the Mission District like Calle 24 and stood by accused serial rapist Jon Jacobodespite persistent rumors about his bad behavior over many years. Before he was publicly accused of his first rape in 2021, Ronen saw Jacobo as her likely successor, but she and her fellow progressives had to pivot. Their pick? Fellow Jacobo friend and supporter Jackie Fielder, who notoriously sold “Defund the Police” facemasks during the pandemic, and during a debate this past summer defended her stance, saying “in 2020 there was a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and at that time, a majority of Americans also supported the burning of a police station.”

Fielder was referencing an obscure survey conducted by Monmouth University, which asked 807 U.S. adults from May 28 to June 1 if they thought the actions taken by protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s death, including the burning of the precinct building, were fully justified, partially justified, or not at all justified. According to the poll, 17 percent said the actions were fully justified and 37 percent said partially justified, for a total of 54 percent. What Fielder ignored, of course, is that “burning of a police station” was just one of the questions and only 17 percent of respondents agreed that all actions taken by protestors were justified. While moderates were gleeful to get rid of socialist Preston, they simply traded him in for another because Fielder is also a socialist. For whatever reason District 9 can’t get out of its own way — candidate Trevor Chandler was a true outsider and was likely the best candidate to bring actual change.

District 11 — Progressive

Chyanne Chen, a progressive labor leader, will represent Excelsior, Outer Mission, Ingleside, and Crocker-Amazon after beating the moderate’s choice, Michael Lai, by fewer than 200 votes (not exactly a ringing endorsement, but hey, that’s how ranked-choice voting often produces lackluster results). Chen succeeds termed-out Ahsha Safaí (who also ran for mayor) to represent the district with the largest Asian and Pacific Islander population of all San Francisco supervisor districts. Chen’s platform focused mainly on expanding child-care subsidies for families making less than $225,000 annually and increasing the number of bilingual police patrols. Like Chan in District 1, Chen raked in $600,000 in outside labor-backed spending, while Lai received just $282,000 in outside spending from groups like Grow SF and the Abundance Network.

The final tally

If you add Walton in District 10, Supervisor Joel Engardio in District 4, Matt Dorsey in District 6, District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, and the unknown supervisor yet to be appointed in District 2, you wind up with something of a mixed bag. Walton is a progressive, while Dorsey, Engardio and Mandelman are more pragmatic. Anywhere else in the country, all three would be considered “raging liberals,” as my sister in Idaho says about anyone left of Donald Trump. Dorsey is the most housing forward and, as a former addict, is often a lone voice on tougher penalties for drug dealers and implementing sober living over ”harm reduction.” Mandelman, whose own mother struggled with mental illness and homelessness, has focused on the need to get people who clearly cannot care for themselves into long-term treatment. Engardio was considered a moderate alternative to his predecessor Gordon Mar, who leaned far left, but has angered Westside residents with his strong support of Proposition K, leading to talk of a recall.

With six of the incoming supervisors qualifying as progressives (with Mahmood and Sauter in the YIMBY category on housing issues), it looks like Lurie will be inheriting a primarily progressive board. And where does Lurie fit in? Prior to his mayoral race, anyone hearing him speak would probably think he, too, was a progressive. Having listened to hours of video for an upcoming article on Lurie, I tend to agree. Suffice to say when January hits, San Franciscans are in for a wild ride, and likely not the one moderates are expecting.