After 17 years wielding energy and affect on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin is dealing with a quite 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 preventing for liberal causes. He’s taken on massive companies, wringing substantial cash from them to bolster group companies. He’s a vocal proponent of lease management and neighborhood preservation. As a recovering alcoholic, he thinks town’s homeless points ought to be addressed by a mixture of compassion, reasonably priced housing and companies, quite than a punitive strategy using encampment sweeps and legal 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 govt Daniel Lurie, and fellow Supervisor Asha 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 many most 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 wish 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 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.
Myriad dad and mom had been livid that town’s colleges had been closed for greater than a yr throughout COVID — longer than most within the nation. The distant studying persevered at the same time as the college board engaged in a divisive effort to rename a 3rd of town’s public colleges whose current names, critics asserted, honored historic figures related to slavery or oppression of ladies or “who in any other case considerably diminished the alternatives of these amongst us to the best to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Outrage over the progressive agenda fueled the recall of three college 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 had been derided by opponents as a menace to public security.
Final March, San Francisco made nationwide headlines when voters accepted a pair of poll measures that Breed had championed to broaden police surveillance powers and impose drug therapy mandates for sure welfare recipients. That very same night time, 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 yr.
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 town’s tradition for many years, and that he fights for working-class individuals to make sure they’ll afford residing within the metropolis.
“Don’t get me unsuitable, I believe that probably the most essential issues that any authorities does is to make individuals secure,” Peskin mentioned. “However, you understand, that’s all the opposite candidates are speaking about. They’re not speaking about additionally making it secure 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 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.
“She really embraced the Fox Information narrative about San Francisco, quite than standing up and defending this metropolis and embracing and strengthening our insurance policies of compassion and of getting issues performed,” he informed The Instances.
Breed has countered that compassion has its limits, and that town must take a harder stance with homeless individuals who have refused shelter or received’t search therapy for drug dependancy.
Throughout a July mayoral debate hosted by the native firefighters union, Breed mentioned her determination to get powerful on the homelessness disaster is probably not widespread however was essential to propel San Francisco ahead.
“We’ve got needed to transfer from a compassionate metropolis to a metropolis of accountability,” she mentioned.
Peskin mentioned he’s targeted on main San Francisco past the “doom loop” narrative that has dogged 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 needs to open extra therapy services and broaden shelter capability, quite 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 therapy for drawback 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 workers, 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 at all times thought that my job was to look after the group, and I by no means realized that individuals really cared about my well-being,” he mentioned. “The quantity of assist and love and encouragement that I’ve gotten from essentially the most unlikely locations and other people has been simply remarkably heartening.”
However at the same time as 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 powerful 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 embrace 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 constructed for public service,” Agnos mentioned. “What we’ve at this time are tech multibillionaires. Tech multibillionaires who stay like monarchs, and now we’re seeing they’re making an attempt to rule San Francisco like they had been monarchs.”
“I believe San Francisco has at all times led on the social points,” mentioned Kim, who unsuccessfully ran in opposition to Breed in 2018. “The place we battle and battle as progressives has been on the financial agenda, and who advantages economically on this metropolis. Is it the ultra-wealthy and the billionaires, or is it our working class and our low-income employees? And that’s the battle that Aaron is main on.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, proper, says he needs to deal with homelessness by increasing therapy 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 contemplate a canine whistle for “NIMBYism,” a colloquial time period for opposition to massive multifamily housing tasks or different unwelcome growth. He has resisted efforts to amend zoning guidelines for sure neighborhoods to permit for denser housing.
“Peskin could be an unbelievable step backwards,” mentioned Laura Foote, govt director of the advocacy coalition YIMBY Motion, a housing group that endorsed Breed. “We have to defend these individuals in our communities from the ever-escalating price of housing, and meaning constructing extra.”
San Francisco has one of many longest housing approval processes within the nation, and is tens of 1000’s of items shy of its state-mandated manufacturing objectives.
Breed has referred to as for extra housing growth throughout all earnings ranges in San Francisco as rental prices skyrocket and the median house value exceeds $1 million. Farrell, Safaí and Lurie have additionally endorsed denser housing, although to various levels and in some circumstances solely in sure neighborhoods.
Peskin rejects the concept he’s anti-housing as a “developer-funded narrative.” However he additionally argues that it’s attainable to construct extra housing “with out turning Ocean Seashore into Miami Seashore.”
The disagreement over growth highlights one other layer of San Francisco’s drift towards the political middle, with extra leaders popping out in favor of multifamily housing tasks 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 “current damaged housing construction.”
Wiener, who has endorsed Breed, complimented Peskin as expert and “extremely good.” However he additionally warned that Peskin’s model of progressivism would set San Francisco again.
“San Franciscans are fairly progressive. However there’s a pressure amongst some individuals — I believe it’s a minority, however some individuals — the place they equate progressivism to having no change,” Wiener mentioned. “A metropolis that isn’t altering is a metropolis that’s dying.”
Peskin has been prepared, at occasions, to buck the progressive label. He has supported legal guidelines to retain police staffing, and lately informed The Instances he helps a controversial November poll measure, Proposition 36, that might roll again a 2014 voter-approved regulation that turned some nonviolent drug and theft felonies into misdemeanors. Critics of the initiative, together with Wiener and Gov. Gavin Newsom, say it could mark a return to an period of mass incarceration.
Peskin makes use of these examples to argue that he may be compassionate whereas additionally being sensible.
“I’ve at all times thought the foundation of progressive is progress,” Peskin mentioned, “and progress is definitely getting issues performed.”