After 17 years wielding energy and affect on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin is dealing with a fairly 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 group companies. He’s a vocal proponent of lease management and neighborhood preservation. As a recovering alcoholic, he thinks town’s homeless points needs to be addressed by means of a mixture of compassion, reasonably priced housing and companies, fairly than a punitive method using encampment sweeps and felony citations.
Regardless of his expertise, Peskin entered the mayor’s contest towards 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 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 the crucial 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 method to the sprawling tent encampments and drumbeat of retail and property crimes which have eroded their sense of a protected, purposeful metropolis.
In latest many years, 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 have been livid that town’s faculties have been closed for greater than a 12 months throughout COVID — longer than most within the nation. The distant studying continued whilst the varsity board engaged in a divisive effort to rename a 3rd of town’s public faculties whose present 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 risk 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 remedy 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 Occasion.
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 similar to homelessness and crime over the past 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 town’s tradition for many years, and that he fights for working-class folks to make sure they’ll afford dwelling 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 stated. “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 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 latest crackdown on homelessness as a cynical political ploy.
“She actually embraced the Fox News narrative about San Francisco, rather than standing up and defending this city and embracing and strengthening our policies of compassion and of getting things done,” he instructed The Instances.
Breed has countered that compassion has its limits, and that town must take a more durable stance with homeless individuals who have refused shelter or received’t search remedy for drug dependancy.
Throughout a July mayoral debate hosted by the native firefighters union, Breed stated her determination to get powerful on the homelessness disaster will not be in style however was essential to propel San Francisco ahead.
“We have had to move from a compassionate city to a city of accountability,” she stated.
Peskin stated 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 remedy services and broaden shelter capability, fairly than proceed the encampment sweeps that Breed has pushed over the past two months.
Peskin stated he is aware of one thing about restoration.
In 2021, Peskin entered remedy for downside consuming 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 folks 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 stated 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 stated. “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 powerful positions on property crime, fentanyl dealing and homelessness a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Whereas Breed, Farrell and Lurie are getting monetary help from tech executives and rich enterprise house owners, Peskin touts his marketing campaign as a grassroots effort fueled by working-class folks. 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 stated. “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,” stated Kim, who unsuccessfully ran towards 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 needs to deal with 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 — notably round housing.
Peskin represents a few of the metropolis’s most historic neighborhoods, together with North Seaside, Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf and downtown’s Monetary District. He usually distinguishes himself as somebody who sticks up for neighborhood id — what some contemplate a canine whistle for “NIMBYism,” a colloquial time period for opposition to massive multifamily housing initiatives or different unwelcome growth. He has resisted efforts to amend zoning guidelines for sure neighborhoods to permit for denser housing.
“Peskin would be an unbelievable step backwards,” stated 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 targets.
Breed has referred to as for extra housing growth throughout all revenue ranges in San Francisco as rental prices skyrocket and the median dwelling 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 that he’s anti-housing as a “developer-funded narrative.” However he additionally argues that it’s attainable to construct extra housing “without turning Ocean Beach into Miami Beach.”
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 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 stated. “A city that isn’t changing is a city that is dying.”
Peskin has been keen, at instances, to buck the progressive label. He has supported legal guidelines to retain police staffing, and lately instructed 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 always thought the root of progressive is progress,” Peskin stated, “and progress is actually getting things done.”
