The District 5 election: A preview

From the SF Examiner:

The election to choose the next representative for the Fillmore and Haight on the Board of Supervisors is nearly a year away, but candidates are already raising money and pitching voters in 2019’s only supervisorial race (Attention turns to D5, where SF’s only supervisorial race of 2019 is underway).

The three candidates are raising money and "pitching voters" long before they've made a serious attempt at telling us what they stand for:

For tenant rights attorney and progressive candidate Dean Preston, it’s nothing new. He ran in 2016 against then District 5 supervisor and board president London Breed, who is now mayor, and picked up 47.6 percent of the vote, losing by only 1,784 votes. His volunteer team has remained active since then with efforts around neighborhood projects and political measures.

Preston's strong showing in 2016 was more about Breed's weakness than his strength, as I pointed out after the election. Preston had a strong ground game, with volunteers who helped him get name recognition in the district. But as I pointed out during the campaign, he was timid on the issues and ran an essentially one-issue campaign:

Some suggest Preston’s strong showing in 2016 gives him the edge over current Supervisor Vallie Brown, who Breed appointed in July 2018 to the seat she vacated after her election as mayor...Brown was a legislative aide to Breed and prior to that, an aide to former District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi.

Working for both Mirkarimi and Breed is not an impressive political resume, since both were awful supervisors (see this and this), though the Murk was a pretty good sheriff before City Hall destroyed his political career based on political hysteria over a rather innocuous domestic dispute:

During the District 5 contest, Brown’s independence from the moderate Breed could be an issue in the left-leaning district. But there’s plenty of time for Brown to become “embedded in the community” as the supervisor and distance herself from Breed by having her “own record, if she does it right,” according to [Jim]Ross. After six months on the job, Brown is seemingly hitting the right notes. “I’m voting what I think is right,” Brown said. “I had the progressives tell me I’ve been voting more of a progressive agenda.”

What about Brown's record? Presumably Brown was intimately involved in the Masonic Avenue fiasco. And can we have some names of "progressives" who approve of her voting record? Brown's "independence" is not the issue. Instead it's about how she helped both Breed and Mirkarimi be awful supervisors:

She[Brown] toted[sic] her ability to pass once stalled legislation to permit greater housing density along the Divisadero corridor in exchange for making 20 percent of the units below market rate. She said that was the “highest affordability without developers walking away.” Her secret? “I went out and talked to everyone,” Brown said. “I also talked with developers.” In the end, she believes she was able to gain 90 percent of residents’ support for the proposal.

What exactly does "affordability" really mean in gentrifying San Francisco? And where/when did Brown get "90 percent of residents' support"? Brown and Preston will both need to tell us what they think about the "density" issue, particularly Scott Wiener's ongoing attempt to allow the state to control how California's cities create housing.

All three candidates need to be questioned about development in general in the city, including on Treasure Island, the Market and Octavia Plan, and 19th Avenue:

“A lot of the issues are really similar now,” Preston said. “I don’t think anything’s changed — homelessness, fear of displacement, lack of affordable housing.”

Those issues are all about housing, which of course is the most important issue facing the city. But Preston has never taken a stand on the Masonic Avenue bike project or the Geary BRT project. Apparently he doesn't think development and transportation are closely related.

And what exactly does Preston mean by calling himself a "socialist"? Seems like a clumsy attempt to capitalize on the advent of Bernie Sanders in 2016 (Defining "socialism" for District 5 and San Francisco): 

Shanell Williams, a City College of San Francisco trustee who was born and raised in the district, is also running and recently held a fundraiser that drew around 40 residents...Williams wants to put community health at the center of her platform, which means a focus on services around mental health and substance use and affordable health care. Employed as a UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative community engagement specialist, she entered the race after Preston and Brown and is currently “developing a policy platform.”

Declaring yourself a candidate before you have done some serious thinking about the issues puts the cart before the horse. And does District 5---or the city, for that matter---have serious issues on health care? Perhaps, but Williams needs to also tell us where she stands on housing, development, and transportation.

Maybe we'll find out this year how left-wing District 5 really is.

See also The Examiner and District 5.