SAN FRANCISCO — If there’s something Mayor London Breed has realized in workplace, it’s that compassion has its limits.
So when she talks about her regular tack proper lately on points resembling retail crime and homelessness, she’s direct and unapologetic. Sitting on the helm of one among America’s most celebrated cities and attempting to maintain that metropolis on track, she mentioned, has opened her eyes to some laborious truths. Amongst them: That with out guardrails, there are individuals who will reap the benefits of San Francisco’s beneficiant spirit and behave in ways in which drag town down.
“We’ve gone too far in just letting people get away with things,” Breed mentioned. “And as a result, people have been getting away with things.”
Breed, 50, made historical past six years in the past when she turned town’s first Black feminine mayor. She was president of the highly effective Board of Supervisors when then-Mayor Ed Lee died of a coronary heart assault in December 2017. She received a particular election to fill his seat the next June and was elected to a full time period in 2019.
She’s now combating to maintain her seat in November in opposition to 4 different high-profile Democrats, three of them rich white males. This time, her biggest political menace isn’t coming from the left. As a substitute, the challengers with probably the most traction are two fellow moderates who’ve criticized Breed for not doing sufficient to rid town of the tent encampments and open drug dealing pervasive in sure neighborhoods or to hurry its restoration from the financial malaise nonetheless lingering from pandemic-related shutdowns.
Breed mirrored on her tenure throughout a prolonged sit-down interview with The Instances final month exterior a café on the Transamerica Pyramid. The long-lasting constructing reopened in September after an intensive renovation that some see as as a logo of downtown’s nascent comeback.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, left, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are the primary Black ladies to steer their cities.
(Josh Edelson / For The Instances)
Breed has by no means been a bleeding-heart progressive, regardless of San Francisco’s liberal status. However the Breed of six years in the past was extra open to experimenting with a progressive reformist agenda when it got here to fixing intractable points resembling habit and poverty. That included selling “safe injection” websites — basically sanctioned, supervised illicit drug use — to counter the staggering toll fentanyl was taking up town’s homeless inhabitants, and inspiring police to type higher relationships with residents in marginalized communities.
Within the final two years, against this, she has develop into a number one voice in a statewide motion to crack down on homeless folks and addicts who refuse shelter or remedy. And he or she efficiently championed two native poll measures that bolster police surveillance powers and require drug screening and remedy for folks receiving county welfare advantages who’re suspected of drug use.
Though some folks dismiss her coverage shifts as a calculated political ploy, Breed mentioned her selections are about private development, fueled by what she sees as a scarcity of accountability that has allowed social issues to fester.
“San Francisco has never abandoned its values of compassion and second chances,” mentioned Breed, sporting one among her signature fits, this one a daring cerulean blue. “But I think that before the pandemic, we were headed in a direction with criminal justice reform, police reforms, and it went too far. And when I say it went too far, if you commit a crime, you have to be held accountable somehow.”
Born into poverty within the Western Addition, on the time one among San Francisco’s hardest neighborhoods, Breed doesn’t shy from political fight. She was raised by her grandmother, misplaced a sister to a drug overdose and has a brother who’s serving time in jail for theft and different fees. All through her profession, she has fought and received in opposition to critics who doubted her.
“London will fight back. She’ll snap. She’ll show you she’s from Plaza East projects,” mentioned James Taylor, a political science professor on the College of San Francisco and writer of “Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.”
“She’ll go street on you in a second. That’s why the men who are running against her have to be careful.”
“London will fight back,” says College of San Francisco professor James Taylor. “She’ll go street on you in a second. That’s why the men who are running against her have to be careful.”
(Eric Risberg / Related Press)
Breed’s evolution began with the COVID pandemic.
She was celebrated, initially, for her decisive response when she turned the nation’s first large metropolis mayor to declare a coronavirus state of emergency, adopted quickly after by a citywide lockdown. The transfer is credited with saving hundreds of lives and holding San Francisco’s demise fee comparatively low.
However a 12 months later, she was on the defensive.
The mixture of distant workplace work and extended restaurant and bar closures decimated downtown road life. And fogeys fumed as metropolis colleges remained closed for months longer than public colleges in most districts within the nation.
Homelessness and rampant drug use have been a serious marketing campaign problem in San Francisco’s mayoral race.
(Tayfun Coskun / Getty Photos)
Sprawling homeless encampments took root in parts of town as soon as full of life with employees and vacationers, spilling trash and needles onto the sidewalks. Folks overdosed within the streets, unattended. Movies of smash-and-grab retail crimes and auto theft went viral, giving ample alternative for right-wing media pundits to make use of San Francisco as an pressing warning in opposition to electing Democrats.
“People were at home. They couldn’t travel. They couldn’t go on vacation. Their kids were with them all the time. The issues around government and government functioning, that was a real pain point,” mentioned Nancy Tung, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Occasion. “Things were broken, and you knew it.”
Breed mentioned she grew bored with seeing movies of individuals flagrantly grabbing merchandise from Walgreens and Louis Vuitton, as if it have been their proper, and of listening to from police that they didn’t have the instruments they wanted to struggle crime. She was sick of battling supervisors and group activists who disparaged her techniques as inhumane and short-sighted when she known as for giving police extra authority to disperse homeless folks and arrest drug customers.
Throughout her sit-down with The Instances, Breed mentioned her choice to declare a state of emergency within the Tenderloin stemmed from a go to per week earlier with households and native enterprise homeowners. One mother informed Breed how laborious it was to lift her son within the neighborhood. Enterprise homeowners shared their struggles working their retailers amid break-ins and different crime.
“My heart broke,” Breed recalled. “They were tired of living like that. And, more importantly, they were hoping that we could help.”
Her emergency declaration enabled town to chop by means of bureaucratic pink tape to extra rapidly transfer folks off the streets and into shelter and companies. Individually, she pledged to assign extra officers to the neighborhood.
Breed additionally took her grievances to voters.
In June 2022, voters ousted progressive Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin over frustrations that he was targeted extra on sentencing reform and addressing the basis causes of crime than on truly prosecuting criminals.
Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin and his spouse, Valerie Block, depart an election night time gathering after Boudin’s recall.
(Noah Berger / Related Press)
Breed didn’t endorse the recall, however she and Boudin had traded barbs within the press over who was in charge for rising crime. After the recall, Breed appointed Brooke Jenkins, a extra conventional law-and-order prosecutor who had give up Boudin’s workplace and labored on the marketing campaign to take away her former boss from workplace. 5 months later, Jenkins was elected to fill the remainder of Boudin’s time period.
Breed continued her campaign to push San Francisco towards the political middle final spring, when voters authorised the poll measures she sponsored to bolster police powers and enhance oversight of individuals receiving county advantages. In the course of the summer time, she applauded a pivotal U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruling that allowed cities to extra aggressively implement legal guidelines in opposition to homeless folks tenting on public property. On the heels of the choice, she has launched an aggressive effort to clear tent encampments, resulting in a whole lot of arrests.
“Like a good politician, perhaps her best fuel this last year or two has been reading where the electorate is at,” mentioned Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State College. “Voters have become fed up with this. There’s just no patience for a more systemic, root-cause kind of approach.”
The query earlier than voters is whether or not they see Breed’s efforts as too little, too late.
“There’s no mayor that has overseen a steeper decline in our city’s history than London Breed,” mentioned challenger Mark Farrell, a enterprise capitalist and former supervisor and interim mayor who’s working a formidable marketing campaign to exchange Breed in November.
“She had her chance. It is time to turn the page on this mayor and all of the City Hall insiders,” mentioned challenger Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit government and inheritor to the Levi Strauss fortune, who can also be thought-about a front-runner.
Like Breed, each Lurie and Farrell are reasonable Democrats by San Francisco requirements. And like Breed, they are saying they need to filter out tent encampments and finish rampant drug dealing within the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods. They’ve targeted their pitch to voters on revitalizing the financial system and reviving downtown.
Each blame Breed for town’s continued struggles, they usually argue she is undeserving of one other 4 years in workplace.
Voting for Breed, Lurie mentioned in a latest interview, can be like “getting onto a plane with a pilot that you know has crashed the plane over and over again.”
Breed’s supporters stand by her, hailing her as a homegrown champion who has led town throughout a interval of disaster that included a worldwide pandemic and the insidious rise of fentanyl.
“They’re just going to blame everything on her, because she’s the mayor, and they are going to take whacks on her day and night,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) mentioned. “I am 100% confident none of them would have done better than London Breed on these massive issues that go well beyond San Francisco.”
“She sees the big picture on housing,” state Sen. Scott Wiener says of London Breed. “And she’s willing to spend political capital and take heat and take risks.”
(Josh Edelson / For The Instances)
Wiener disagrees with Breed on a few of her felony justice insurance policies, however mentioned she’s the one candidate who will prioritize the development of hundreds of properties in a metropolis determined for inexpensive housing.
“She sees the big picture on housing,” Wiener mentioned. “And she’s willing to spend political capital and take heat and take risks.”
Breed additionally has the help of the San Francisco Democratic Occasion, whose chief, Tung, recalled one other time when Breed took a daring danger: shutting down town throughout the pandemic.
“She kept our city safe,” Tung mentioned. “She got people vaccinated.”
Talking to the Noe Valley Democratic Membership at a neighborhood pub final month, Breed listened as members shared their frustrations. One man requested why they need to vote for Breed given town’s issues. One other complained that police didn’t do something after his house was burglarized.
Breed listened intently as they detailed their grievances. And in her responses, she was candid about errors.
“After the pandemic, it’s like, man, crime was out of control,” she mentioned. “I’ll be very honest, we weren’t prepared.”
“We’ve gone too far in just letting people get away with things,” says San Francisco Mayor London Breed. “And as a result, people have been getting away with things.”
(Eric Risberg / Related Press)
She touted her efforts to forge change, and smiled as she talked about enlivening downtown with night time markets and music festivals on the waterfront.
Consequently, Breed mentioned, crime is receding. Homicides are down 40% in contrast with final 12 months, in response to the Police Division’s crime dashboard, and robberies have fallen 23%. This month, Breed introduced 60% fewer tents throughout town.
For individuals who need to see a greater day in San Francisco, Breed mentioned, “I am the change.”
The town’s ranked-choice voting system — which permits voters to decide on a number of candidates and rank them so as of choice — makes it tough to name out a transparent chief within the mayoral race. Latest polls present Breed with a slight — however not decisive — benefit.
Nonetheless, Breed doesn’t surrender simply. She mentioned she’d wish to be referred to as the mayor who guided San Francisco “through unprecedented crisis after crisis” and acquired town “out to the other side.”
She is satisfied she will get there. She simply needs one other 4 years.
