SAN FRANCISCO — After 17 years wielding energy and affect on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin is dealing with a relatively existential second:
Has this famously liberal metropolis moved too far proper to embrace an old-school progressive like him for mayor?
Peskin, a slight man of 60 with a full beard and glasses, has spent his political profession combating for liberal causes. He’s taken on massive firms, wringing substantial cash from them to bolster neighborhood companies. He’s a vocal proponent of lease management and neighborhood preservation. As a recovering alcoholic, he thinks the town’s homelessness points ought to be addressed by means of a mixture of compassion, reasonably priced housing and companies, relatively than a punitive strategy using encampment sweeps and prison citations.
Regardless of his expertise, Peskin entered the mayor’s contest in opposition to incumbent Mayor London Breed and three different Democrats — enterprise capitalist and former interim Mayor Mark Farrell, Levi Strauss inheritor and nonprofit government Daniel Lurie, and fellow Supervisor Ahsha Safaí — as an underdog.
Peskin joined the race in April, a number of months after Breed and the opposite three opponents had began campaigning. That put him at a monetary drawback in a mayoral election shaping up as one of the costly in San Francisco historical past.
However much more important: Peskin entered the race as the one candidate operating on a progressive agenda, placing him at odds with the rising refrain of voters and tech titans who need to see a extra hard-core strategy to the sprawling tent encampments and drumbeat of retail and property crimes which have eroded their sense of a secure, practical metropolis.
In current a long time, it hasn’t been uncommon for San Francisco to elect mayors who’re centrist Democrats alongside a extra progressive Board of Supervisors. However the tech cash flooding into the race, mixed with frustrations over the town’s gradual restoration from the COVID-19 pandemic, has many citizens questioning progressive insurance policies and the knowledge of a metropolis that governs with a bleeding coronary heart.
Many dad and mom have been livid that the town’s colleges have been closed for greater than a 12 months throughout COVID — longer than most within the nation. The distant studying endured whilst the varsity board engaged in a divisive effort to rename a 3rd of the town’s public colleges whose current names, critics asserted, honored historic figures related to slavery or oppression of ladies or “who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Outrage over the progressive agenda fueled the recall of three faculty board members in February 2022. 4 months later, voters additionally recalled then-Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin, a number one reform advocate whose progressive insurance policies on sentencing and incarceration have been derided by opponents as a menace to public security.
Final March, San Francisco made nationwide headlines when voters authorized a pair of poll measures that Breed had championed to broaden police surveillance powers and impose drug remedy mandates for sure welfare recipients. That very same evening, a slate of reasonable candidates took management of the governing physique of the native Democratic Get together.
Though the 5 main candidates for mayor are Democrats, all however Peskin now fall in that reasonable camp. Breed, particularly, has tacked proper on points akin to homelessness and crime during the last 12 months.
Peskin celebrates the excellence, saying that he joined the race to maintain San Francisco a “beacon” for the artists, creatives, immigrants and LGBTQ+ pioneers who’ve formed the town’s tradition for many years, and that he fights for working-class individuals to make sure they will afford residing within the metropolis.
“Don’t get me wrong, I think that one of the most important things that any government does is to make people safe,” Peskin mentioned. “But, you know, that’s all the other candidates are talking about. They’re not talking about also making it safe and welcoming.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin says he joined the mayoral race to maintain San Francisco a “beacon” for the artists, creatives, immigrants and LGBTQ+ pioneers who’ve formed the town’s tradition.
(Jeff Chiu / Related Press)
Peskin has focused Breed from the beginning of his marketing campaign, arguing that her management is incoherent and dismissing her current crackdown on homelessness as a cynical political ploy.
Breed has countered that compassion has its limits, and that the town must take a harder stance with homeless individuals who have refused shelter or gained’t search remedy for drug dependancy.
Throughout a July mayoral debate hosted by the native firefighters union, Breed mentioned her determination to get robust on the homelessness disaster will not be fashionable however was essential to propel San Francisco ahead.
“We have had to move from a compassionate city to a city of accountability,” she mentioned.
Peskin mentioned he’s targeted on main San Francisco past the “doom loop” narrative that has dogged the town nationally for a lot of the final 4 years and into its restoration period.
If elected mayor, he’s promised to prioritize low-income housing and broaden lease management. On homelessness, he desires to open extra remedy services and broaden shelter capability, relatively than proceed the encampment sweeps that Breed has pushed during the last two months.
Peskin mentioned he is aware of one thing about restoration.
In 2021, Peskin entered remedy for downside ingesting amid allegations that he had joined a authorities assembly inebriated. The episode unleashed broader complaints that Peskin for years had bullied colleagues and lower-level employees, and that individuals feared retaliation in the event that they reported his conduct.
Peskin finally apologized. And after spending the preliminary weeks after the uproar in disgrace, he mentioned he’s now grateful for the wake-up name and is greater than three years sober.
“I always thought that my job was to care for the community, and I never realized that people actually cared about my well-being,” he mentioned. “The amount of support and love and encouragement that I’ve gotten from the most unlikely places and people has been just remarkably heartening.”
However whilst Peskin touts his private {and professional} journey, native polls present him trailing Breed, Farrell and Lurie within the metropolis’s ranked-choice voting system. All three have made robust positions on property crime, fentanyl dealing and homelessness a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Whereas Breed, Farrell and Lurie are getting monetary assist from tech executives and rich enterprise house owners, Peskin touts his marketing campaign as a grassroots effort fueled by working-class individuals. His endorsements embody left-leaning LGBTQ+ and tenant rights organizations, labor unions and progressive politicians together with former Mayor Artwork Agnos, former Supervisor Jane Kim and former state Sen. Mark Leno.
“Aaron Peskin was built for public service,” Agnos mentioned. “What we have today are tech multibillionaires. Tech multibillionaires who live like monarchs, and now we are seeing they’re trying to rule San Francisco like they were monarchs.”
“I think San Francisco has always led on the social issues,” mentioned Kim, who unsuccessfully ran in opposition to Breed in 2018. “Where we struggle and fight as progressives has been on the economic agenda, and who benefits economically in this city. Is it the ultra-wealthy and the billionaires, or is it our working class and our low-income workers? And that’s the fight that Aaron is leading on.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, proper, says he desires to handle homelessness by increasing remedy services and shelter capability. He opposes the aggressive encampment sweeps launched by Mayor London Breed, middle.
(Eric Risberg / Related Press)
Together with staunch supporters, Peskin has accrued fierce critics throughout his years in workplace — significantly round housing.
Peskin represents a few of the metropolis’s most historic neighborhoods, together with North Seashore, Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf and downtown’s Monetary District. He usually distinguishes himself as somebody who sticks up for neighborhood identification — what some think about a canine whistle for “NIMBYism,” a colloquial time period for opposition to massive multifamily housing initiatives or different unwelcome improvement. He has resisted efforts to amend zoning guidelines for sure neighborhoods to permit for denser housing.
“Peskin would be an unbelievable step backwards,” mentioned Laura Foote, government director of the advocacy coalition YIMBY Motion, a housing group that endorsed Breed. “We need to protect these people in our communities from the ever-escalating cost of housing, and that means building more.”
San Francisco has one of many longest housing approval processes within the nation, and is tens of hundreds of models shy of its state-mandated manufacturing objectives.
Breed has referred to as for extra housing improvement throughout all revenue ranges in San Francisco as rental prices skyrocket and the median house worth exceeds $1 million. Farrell, Safaí and Lurie have additionally endorsed denser housing, although to various levels and in some instances solely in sure neighborhoods.
Peskin rejects the concept he’s anti-housing as a “developer-funded narrative.” However he additionally argues that it’s potential to construct extra housing “without turning Ocean Beach into Miami Beach.”
The disagreement over improvement highlights one other layer of San Francisco’s drift towards the political middle, with extra leaders popping out in favor of multifamily housing initiatives regardless of outcry from progressive teams involved about gentrification and neighborhood adjustments.
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who has authored a few of the state’s strongest housing manufacturing legal guidelines, has criticized Peskin’s devotion to the “existing broken housing structure.”
Wiener, who has endorsed Breed, complimented Peskin as expert and “incredibly smart.” However he additionally warned that Peskin’s model of progressivism would set San Francisco again.
“San Franciscans are quite progressive. But there is a strain among some people — I think it’s a minority, but some people — where they equate progressivism to having no change,” Wiener mentioned. “A city that isn’t changing is a city that is dying.”
Peskin makes use of these examples to argue that he will be compassionate whereas additionally being sensible.
“I’ve always thought the root of progressive is progress,” Peskin mentioned, “and progress is actually getting things done.”
