(UPDATED with a correction)
Another one of Mayor Breed’s candidates in the November election just took a tumble, and now appears out of contention.
Ann Hsu, a leader in the School Board recall who was admonished by her own colleagues for a racist statement, has dropped out of the top three vote-getters and her numbers are falling as more votes come in, which means it’s likely progressive challenger Alida Fisher will take that seat.
Fisher, a special education advocate who had wide support across the city, pulled ahead over the weekend, is now up by 1,700 votes, and her lead is growing.
That means two of the three candidates endorsed by the Teacher’s Union will likely hold seats (Lisa Weissman-Ward is in first place).
It adds to a long list of flawed candidates Breed has appointed to public office who were rejected by the voters in the next election. Her candidate for District 5 supervisor, Vallie Brown, lost to Sup. Dean Preston. Her appointee to the Community College Board, Rodrigo Santos, not only lost re-election but was indicted in a corruption scandal.
She appears to have done better with Sup. Matt Dorsey, who has been re-elected in a gerrymandered District 6, and DA Brooke Jenkins, who won despite some serious ethics charges.
Jenkins will have to run again in two years, and I suspect there will be a serious campaign against her.
The District 4 race has been so close that I was unwilling to call it, but at this point it doesn’t look good for Sup. Gordan Mar. As votes come in, the margin of victory for Joel Engardio isn’t changing; every new count, he’s up by between 450 and 500 votes. Each day, the percentage of the remaining votes he will have to win increases, and at this point it’s more than 55 percent, which seems unlikely.
So Breed will have more allies on the Board of Supes, for two main reasons: Matt Haney decided his political ambition mattered more than the progressive community and agenda, and departed for Sacramento, giving Breed a D6 appointment. And Breed’s team successfully gerrymandered Districts 4 and 6 to make them more conservative.
The position of the Yimby ballot measure continues to deteriorate, and it will go down.
An earlier version of this story mis-identified the mayor who appointed Julie Christensen to a D3 seat, which she lost to Sup. Aaron Peskin. The late Mayor Ed Lee appointed Christensen, not Breed.
