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Home Featured Breed’s first big move is to the right

Breed’s first big move is to the right

Board president packs key committees with conservatives and moderates, undermining the city's ability to fight the Trump Agenda

Sup. London Breed now leads by fewer than 500 votes

Sup. London Breed, who ran to her left in November, demonstrated very different political leanings yesterday with one of the most important roles of the board president: committee assignments.

Sup. London Breed gave key committee posts to the people least likely to lead the anti-Trump agenda
Sup. London Breed gave key committee posts to the people least likely to lead the anti-Trump agenda

The two most influential committees – Land Use and Budget – both have a conservative majority. Sup. Mark Farrell, almost certainly the most conservative – and one of the most pro-development – members of the board will chair Land Use. He will be joined by another conservative, Katy Tang, and Aaron Peskin will be the lone progressive on the panel.

The Budget and Finance Committee will be chaired by Malia Cohen. The Examiner reports that Cohen is thinking about running for state Board of Equalization, a job for which she has only the thinnest possible qualifications, and a stint framing the city’s budget could help her.

And, of course, Breed and Cohen are close friends and allies.

But Cohen is still something of an odd choice, since the Budget Committee does a huge amount of work, including holding a series of long, complex hearings with many hours of testimony, and Cohen has made clear repeatedly her impatience with long hearings. She’s told members of the public in past hearings that “we all want to get out of here” and I am not so sure how that’s going to work out with this critical job.

The other two members of Budget and Finance will be Norman Yee, who generally votes with the progressives, and Katy Tang, one of the most conservative, anti-tax supervisors.

The two members who will join the panel in March for the budget process are Jane Kim and Jeff Sheehy.

Breed also named Cohen to head a special select committee to “investigate potential federal funding and policy changes and, working with city departments and other leaders, help plan San Francisco’s defense of our values, diverse communities, and funding priorities.”

That’s a fine idea – the feds are almost certain to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending that the city relies on – but the mandate of the committee is already limited.

Breed talks about “funding priorities,” which is a code word for cuts – gee, some things are more important than others, so those others may have to go. There’s nothing about the need to raise more money to make up for the federal reductions.

The other members of that select committee are Sheehy and Sandra Lee Fewer.

It’s alarming to think that Land Use will be dominated by the two most conservative supervisors, Farrell and Tang.

Jane Kim will chair Government Audit and Oversight, with Aaron Peskin as vice-chair and Breed as the third member. So that committee will be able to stir up some shit. Hillary Ronen chairs Public Safety and Neighborhood Services, and Sheehy and Fewer are the other members, so progressive legislation will have a chance there.

But overall, Breed has done what some of us expected: She’s given power to the moderates and conservatives. Some, like Peskin, are being nice about it, but in a time when the city is going to be under attack in a way that we haven’t seen in a generation or more, she’s putting the people least likely to lead the anti-Trump fight in charge of the committees where that is most likely going to have to happen.

That is not consistent with the politics of the voters of District Five. But she won another four-year term saying she was a friend of tenants and the progressive agenda, and now we see the results.

137 COMMENTS

  1. “false scenarios”:

    2675 Folsom: a proposed new building that will replace an old warehouse

    1296 Shotwell: Affordable Housing for Seniors that will replace a garage/warehouse building

    8 Washington: A project that was proposed to be built on a parking lot near the embarcadero, it was eventually shot down

    Many of the small businesses that are being converted into condos are doing so because the owner of the small business also owns the property, and they want to retire (2918-2924 mission, laundry mat & parking lot -> condos).

    Your thoughts on parking are puzzling me though, do you think its more important for people to have a home or a parking spot?

  2. How is bio TECH not tech? Also, many new building in China Basin were built where existing buildings were previously leveled after the tenants were pushed out.

  3. Old warehouses are places of business that can no longer be used by a family of a small businessperson. Parking lots are places where cars can no longer park. Maybe you’re one of the privileged white techies that live in “The Cloud” and don’t think about who delivers your goods and services, but others who work actual jobs still need a car.

  4. How does building apartments in old parking lots or warehouses, where pretty much all new housing is proposed, displace anyone?

  5. Oh my! Now that is the oldest, and lamest dodge in the book. You have made an assertion, but you expect me to prove a negative. Put up, or shut up. You are, quite simply, admitting that you don’t have the facts. Sorry, but you hold the burden of proof on this one.

  6. Then I am sure you will have no problem providing a link to the article where this was stated. Or, perhaps to a FD website where the report is available.

  7. I “always” take this route. What are you? Some moron? I don’t even know you well enough for you to make these assumptions about me. And I suggest you change your profile name because you are no “Geek”.

  8. Yes they have. I live in the Mission and do keep abreast of all the issues here. I am a 25 resident of San Francisco. If the city inspectors do not followup and shut down these businesses, then it is just as much the city’s fault that these buildings burn down.

  9. I notice you avoid addressing what I said, and instead fall back on a straw man argument. I am well aware of how regulations are made, and how companies can influence those processes.

  10. Actually, in each fire, they haven’t made a clear decision as to the cause. And as you point out, they were not kept up, but the owners stand to make a large profit.

  11. And yet another straw argument. You seem to miss the point. A $15 cup of coffee is absurd. Of course, a place has an absolute right to charge whatever some fool is willing to pay. That is the entire basis for the concept of “status.” It is really about proving what a fool you are. One can buy a decent cup of coffee for a dollar, perhaps even one that is better than some fancy brew. In blind taste tests, McDonald’s beats Starbucks. But Starbucks is an entry level status symbol. One can buy a perfectly serviceable purse for about $75, or less on sale. But some have to spend thousands for a purse that is quite ugly, and which is only priced in the thousands because it literally screams to the world, “I am such a complete idiot that I spend thousands on this ugly handbag!” One can buy a perfectly good, reliable car for around $15,000 or spend over twice as much for car that is not twice as good, but which again shows, you have more money than sense. Or you can spend 20 times as much, and really prove you are truly stupid. But, hey, you’ll have status…at least in the eyes of people as stupid as you are.

    But hey, if you think paying people as little as possible, to do work you would consider to be completely beneath you, is a good and proper thing, well, I pity you. It’s not about communism, it’s about being a decent human being.

  12. You mean other than the laws against operating so-called gypsy cabs, or jitneys. Yes, there have been incidents involving taxi drivers, but they are far outnumbered by the ones involving Uber. Uber resists any attempt to regulate it. Their whole business model depends on being able to do as they please, no matter who gets hurt.

  13. Actually it does have an impact. I have at least 3 short term guests who moved to San Francisco. They were not all techies. One is working for a bio tech firm who is researching liver cancer. They all moved into the new buildings in China Basin.

  14. Building more market rate housing doesn’t seem to stop incentivizing greedy landlords from evicting people to try to jack up rents. When people get dollar signs in their eyes, and the powers that be refuse to stop them because our current laws are inadequate and didn’t anticipate this level of greed or lack of morals and values in this area, continuing to level small businesses and existing buildings to accommodate these hideous new tall glass structures doesn’t make an impact. There have been studies that everyone ignores.

  15. There are no laws on the books for those who use their own cars. It is the state’s responsibility to create such laws and they haven’t. So there is no laws to ignore or break. If you think a taxi driver has never raped or assaulted someone you are either delusional or uninformed.

  16. You think you live in a communist country? Even in a communist country there are different levels of employment and wages. Maybe you can start a restaurant or coffee shop where you pay all workers the same wages, huh?

  17. Geek_Girl. Stop being irresponsible by trying to create “Fake” information. In each fire, the Fire Dept has found the fires were caused by old buildings which were cited for violations that were never fixed or followed up by inspectors.

  18. You mean the highly suspicious fires that clear out places that will be replaced with market rate housing? At least they seem to have stopped since people started asking questions.

  19. What’s not to love? Well, we can start with the CEO of Uber saying he wanted to make his customers feel like pimps. Or the fact that Uber and Lyft has ignored laws, refused to comply with reasonable standards for screening their drivers (which has led to a number of assaults, rapes, and other issues), surge pricing, incompetent drivers, mistreatment of the disabled, government corruption, the loss of taxi driver’s jobs, discrimination against minority customers….

  20. Oh, you mean making minimum wage to mop up the floor in coffee shop where they can’t afford to make a purchase?

  21. Ah, another straw man. I am simply making an observation born of years working with computers. Most of today’s programmers would have been less than worthless not that many years ago. They simply lack the skills, and the passion, to accomplish what their predecessors did.

  22. I love Uber and Lyft and I am not a 67 year old Progressive Left-Leaning Liberal Senior. Once I was on 4th street after purchasing some stuff at The Container Store and in spite of the numerous yellow cab taxis lined up across the street at the Marriott, none of the cabs wanted to give me a ride back home. Now you order a Uber or Lyft and someone comes and picks you up in 5 minutes or less. What’s not to love about Uber and Lyft?

  23. You are so correct! When the fires on Mission Street left some people destitute guess who created a fund to help these folks? A young technie!

  24. I am not a conservative. I am a liberal progressive Senior who has lived in San Francisco for 25 years who does not totally agree with the “liberal progressive” agenda sometimes. . It shouldn’t matter who you are or why you came to San Francisco. San Francisco has always been tolerant and right now we should be even more so…

  25. So you would prefer the new arriving techies to use up the existing housing stock which is an incentive for landlords to evict their existing renters and raise rental rates or long-time SF homeowners to sell their homes and and move out of the city?

  26. Actually, the Build Baby Build folks, like SFBARF, have been trotting out “You’re TRUMP!” And playing the victim when anyone dares to question their “right” to displace everyone else and gentrify the entire city.

  27. You’re right, it’s pretty tiresome seeing the Planning Commission greenlight so many mixed use condos and “market rate” complexes for techies and the wealth, while those who really need the housing continue to go unhoused.

  28. They never learn, apparently, and will keep trying to scream “Tech Millionaire is a protected class! And anyone that disagrees is Trump!”

  29. Wow, good for you for standing up for such oppression against misunderstood tech millionaires and entitled douchebags who are displacing working class people, families of color, and small businesses in San Francisco neighborhoods. Not all heros wear capes.

  30. What part of “becoming gentrified” are you confused about? I’m happy to clear up any confusion, but don’t understand what the false scenario that you created about young families supposedly moving to D7 from D5 and supposedly becoming less progressive at that time has anything to do with anything. Can we please stick to one subject, that subject being D5?

  31. I guess they are using the age-old approach of throwing everything and hoping something sticks. No, techies are judged on their behavior, not their race, or other factors.

  32. And notice the invocation of “Trump”. This is a new fun thing we get to hear in every conversation from corporate neo-liberals who are trying to justify their gentrifying ways for a while, apparently. They equate anyone who doesn’t want them to come in and displace us as somehow “racist” (because techie is somehow a “race” now?) and therefore equal to the new Hitler – Trump. This is the new Godwin’s law.

  33. Yeah, it’ll be super duper when this entire city is nothing but fugly glass and steel mixed used condos for wealthy techies! Can’t wait until we’re basically living in an overpriced strip mall!!!!

  34. They are trying to claim that ALL techies are wonderful because SOME techies aren’t turds 🙂

    Speaking of generalizations that they are accusing us of making…

  35. On many issues I would agree with you, esp Wilsey (!!) but I remain in the middle & remember there have always always been a more conservative element in D5 like homeowners & landlords. You realize that Janis Joplin’s apartment in the Haight went for millions right? A lot has changed but again, D5 has always had conservative elements. When I was on the left the conservative element in D5 used to upset me, but, well, one grows up & starts paying a mortgage…etc.

  36. Why anyone came to SF is a good question. If you came here and then want to change it, wouldn’t that change the reason you came here in the first place?

  37. What’s wrong with making money and wanting to buy a house? It is not clear how many moved here to take a job. Traditionally, young talented people moved to SF for the lifestyle and it was that talented labor pool that attracted employers who pay them “too much” money. Even those who work down the peninsula and live in the City came for the lifestyle.

  38. Who is the “we” that should be building housing? I don’t build housing. How do you determine who gets housing?

  39. The majority of San Franciscans remain outraged? How was that determined?

    It is interesting that the vast majority of higher level corporate executives have homes outside of SF in places like Atherton or Belvedere. Many can’t afford what they desire in the City. If you can’t afford $20 million to live in Seacliff you can get a really nice place for $10 million in Marin. But many also have an apartment in the City. I suppose they could claim that as their primary residence and vote in the City.

  40. While I would agree that some tech workers do good things, I doubt it is a one on one divide. As to the immigrants, that is another issue. Lots of companies try to safe money by either hiring immigrants, or by farming work out to India. Since they are pretty much opposite us in terms of time, the programmers work during what is the night here, but is the day in India.

    And I made it clear that those who some referred to as “tech turds,” though I would prefer tech bros, are a subgroup. Again, most of them are students who would have, some years ago, majored in business. I remember them well from my early college years.

  41. If you look at who buys BMR condos you may find it is young professionals early in their careers; the fresh out of Cornell set. The BMR program allows them to become owners earlier than otherwise.

  42. I stand by my comments. London Breed was terrified she would lose to Dean Preston so she took his platform and campaign messaging and pretended to be for “doubling affordability” (her words) while she campaigned. Less than 2 weeks before Election Day she threw her 60 day cap on Airbnb Hail Mary pass. Breed barely won by a paltry 4% and now she’s back to her love fest with developers and realtors. I never called anyone “stupid” or “easily influenced”–those are your words. A majority of San Franciscans remain outraged that Tech, the California Realtors Association and Republicans like Ron Conway (who lives in Atherton) and DD Wilsey (who lives in Napa) dumped piles of cash into local district supervisor races. A district supervisor is the constituent’s voice in City Hall.

  43. D5 is becoming gentrified? Some of the young families in my D7 neighborhood moved here from D5 when their children were ready for school. I suspect now that they own a home and have children is school, they are becoming less progressive, at least on money issues.

  44. People think statements like this are bigoted because they ascribe negative features to large, non-homogenous groups of people.

    For every tech worker who posts bigoted comments about homelessness on a blog, there is one who volunteers at a soup kitchen. For every rich tech work just raking in the money and blowing it on cars and vacations, there is an good hearted tech worker who lives a frugal lifestyle so they can send money to their parents who are ill or in a bad situation. For every privileged midwestern transplant ivy league grad tech worker, there is an non wealthy immigrant tech worker that represents the hopes and dreams of their family back in their home country.

    Are some tech workers “turds”, yes. Are stereotypes like “tech turd” useful to describe the hundreds of thousands of tech workers in the bay area, no, they are not.

  45. In San Francisco there is relatively little bigotry against Asian Americans

    Wow. You can just say anything and believe that it is true, regardless of how absurd it is. That is one cool talent you have there!

  46. Well, I suppose you think yourself clever for calling people bigots when you know they are not. No one is singling techies out as scapegoats. We are discussing very real problems. You want to see people singled out as scapegoats, go check out the real bigots who post hateful remarks on SFGate. Check out the Trump followers who seem to honestly hope he brings about a fascist America. They don’t even bother with things like facts.

  47. Nice try at dodging the facts. In San Francisco there is relatively little bigotry against Asian Americans, unlike blacks and Mexicans. As to the number of Jews evicted, far more than techies, without question. Your attempt at a straw man argument is one of the lamest yet.

    It is not bigotry. It is observing real behavior. Or are you claiming that the things mentioned are not true? Are you claiming that tech companies show no disregard for rules, regulations, and the law? Are you claiming that the influx of tech companies has not brought problems for long term residents of San Francisco?

  48. Tell me… How many techies have been gunned down by cops? How many have been evicted?

    What kind of sophomoric self serving criteria is that?

    How many Asian Americans have been gunned down by cops?

    How many Jews have been evicted?

    So therefore there is no bigotry in motion against those groups?

    How many are hated by real bigots?

    Your bigotry is as real as any other. You just can’t see it because it is your bigotry against a group that you feel deserves it.

  49. No, I didn’t make such a comparison.

    But whenever you hear any group being singled out as scapegoats it is important to say something.

    Good people will stand up to disgusting bigots like you. Get used to it.

  50. Only a fool, or a fraud, brags about having the most up votes. This is not a scientific poll, and is easily manipulated.

  51. And they look with utter disdain on those they see as beneath them. They pride themselves as being “disruptive,” meaning they ignore laws, rules, and regulations in pursuit of profit with no regard for who gets hurt. They have posted hateful, and yes, bigoted comments about the homeless. They live in a protected world where they are insulated from reality, never having to actually deal with real issues.

  52. Tell me… How many techies have been gunned down by cops? How many have been evicted? How many are hated by real bigots?

  53. Goog grief!!! Are you are actually trying to claim that tech turds are remotely subject to the same issues as pressed minorities? That some techie getting his feelings so hurt that he just can’t enjoy his $15 cup of coffee compares to the plight of someone displaced by his greed?

  54. There is a difference between someone who is actually a true geek, and someone who is, to use a more polite term, a tech bro, who is able, because of fast processors and huge amounts of memory and storage, tp put together really bad code that is minimally acceptable. Tech bros are the type who used to go for a business degree, not because it was that they cared about, but because it promised easy money with little work.

  55. Why are you conflating comments critical of tech and tech culture with Trump, racism and xenophobia?

    Because they all target groups of people for harsh treatment. That’s why it is important that good people stand up to bigots like you.

  56. The individuals that you refer to collectively as “Tech Turds” are, believe it or not, people. They eat, they sleep, they dream, they have families.

    I know it’s very hard for bigots like you to understand.

    Why don’t you step way from the computer and do something productive.

    Maybe you can go outside and identify some additional scapegoats to blame your problems on. That will probably make someone like you feel better.

  57. None of the SF supes are conservative. The “progressives” are simply the mirror images of Trump-ian nativists. Completely delusional about basic economics, and seeking preferential treatment for one group of people (long-term residents) over another (new arrivals, everyone who wants to move to the city).

  58. Odd that tech turds fail to comprehend that they do themselves no favors by conflating criticisms of tech and tech culture with racism and gay/religion bashing; this feeble justification might compel others to label you a “tech turd.”

  59. I reserve the right to draw a bright and clear distinction between some of the brilliant and wonderful people who work in Tech and tech turds.

    Remember when Trump made the same type of statement about Mexicans?

    They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people

    So yeah, draw your bright and clear distinction. You aren’t the first.

  60. Equating my comments with “generalizations about Muslims, LGBTQ people and Hispanics” is weak. Next you’ll assert that tech turds are helping to fight “nativism.” Comparing racism and homophobia with people who are critical of tech turds and bad tech culture is silly. Also: it’s noteworthy that you failed to mention sexism and misogyny. Which brings us back to tech turds. Yes it does.

  61. I reserve the right to draw a bright and clear distinction between some of the brilliant and wonderful people who work in Tech and tech turds. Two completely different things.

  62. Right on @sfjazzer . This concept that we should socially engineer the city by only building subsidized housing is as foolish as it is just plain wrong.

    Because people with good incomes will want to live here anyway. And since we won’t be building any new housing for them they will just have to compete for the existing stock.

    Progressives seem to think that they have the right to determine who gets to live here. For example – undocumented aliens are welcome to live here but American citizens people with good jobs are not. Where they got that idea from is beyond me.

  63. Heart…you are so full of S#*T! If not for a Tech Turd you won’t be writing your comments on this thread. If not for a Tech Turd, you would not be able to get directions to an unknown address or know when your Muni Bus is arriving. So don’t hand us your horseshit.

  64. Baloney! We should be building housing for all levels . Sick and tired of this one sided argument about who should get housing in this city!

  65. All of these people are “conservative” —
    some worse than others!

    Peskin failed to campaign for the liberal Preston, so this is what we get!

    The system selects sellout minorities such as Kim, Cohen, Breed, Leland Yee, etc. And then liberal media pretends they are on “our” side.

    These 11 are not IN ANY WAY “progressive,” except in lip service (whatever “progressive” means).

  66. Wow, that’s great @heart. Perhaps you’d like to share your generalizations about Muslims, LGBTQ people and Hispanics next.

    And spare me the protestations. Every bigot thinks that it is okay when they do it. Every bigot thinks that the group that they target deserves it and that criticism directed towards them is justified.

    But the common theme that all of you bigots share is one of scapegoating.

    All of our problems? It’s because of those people over there. THEY cause all of our problems. It’s not as if we should do anything differently. They just cause nothing but problems.

  67. I’ll take a stab at this. A tech turd is someone who moves to a vibrant, lively, healthy and diverse city to displace and evict others so he can Airbnb. A tech turd doesn’t shop at the local, family owned businesses in his neighborhood because he gets a thrill from opening the blue tape on Amazon boxes. A tech turd doesn’t clean up after his French bulldog when it craps on the sidewalk because San Francisco has “too many disgusting people living on its streets and sleeping in the doorways already so who cares.” A tech turd enjoys Santacon. A tech turd doesn’t understand why anyone would take a MUNI bus when you can take an UBER and just sit for hours in traffic and/or be subjected to a driving slave with a family to support and 2 other jobs who drives in from Concord and doesn’t know the streets of SF. A tech turd insists that if you don’t allow door to door Google bus service on all of San Francisco’s streets he will buy a Tesla and get in it and drive just to be one more car on the road to sit in the gridlock to make a point. That’s all I got for now.

  68. Tom: this article is about London Breed. Comparing Brad Phillips views on affordable housing to Trump and Hitler is just silly. And lame. Relax and have a cup of hot cocoa.

  69. Read the profiles of the people who upvote you. You get right wing Trump supporters, someone called Christian Patriot and you vote for yourself. But if you know a man by who he walks with you walk in a group of Republicans, big business lovers (say hello to your pals at GE) and other non-progressive types. Out of central casting tech employee – rock climber who is libertarian hangs out on 48 Hills on a Saturday night complaining about bay area housing prices. Its the antithesis of everything that once made SF intresting. You bash California hippies in your GE report. You like the idea of California because it represents everything your not but you can’t wait to make it more like the man you are as confirmation you belong.

  70. Ok, so its not progressive to build housing for Cornell Grads, duly noted. Can we build housing for everyone else then? Is that progressive?

  71. In our system people like you are never excluded for very long. It might feel like it’s been long – four year out of school and all – but trust me – rich white guys are never ever excluded.

  72. I’m not claiming I am a victim. I am claiming that your views, and our president cheeto hilter’s views share an interesting theme of exclusion.

  73. Hang on, don’t besmirch us GOP people here in SF. SOME of us agree with limited building not overbuilding & making SF unlivable. Thx. Basically I’m in agreement with you.

  74. “No one’s buying what you’re selling” -> My original comment is currently tied as the highest voted comments in this article

    “Your out for yourself” -> no, I am out for pretty much everyone: wealthy tech workers, poor single moms, immigrants with little opportunity, the person who makes 80k a year at an office job which would be good anywhere in America but here, the teachers in SF schools, who cannot afford to move here, the children in those schools whose are not getting the attention they need because the school can not hire anyone to fill the job, the college students at Cal State universities, where 10% of the students are currently homeless. Every one of these people needs a home, and we don’t have enough homes for them, so we make compromises, like commuting for 2 hours each way, or living with an abusive husband because the alternative is homelessness, paying a thousand dollars a month to live in a garage, delaying having kids until your 40, or never, or moving a hundred miles away because you were evicted and literally cannot afford anything between here and Tracey. We as a society have an obligation to do better than this.

  75. Here is where the Ivy league grad making six figures expropriates the experience of Mexican labours. “See just because I’m 26 and white and rich I’m a victim. Much like a day laborer” You are not a victim. You did not move here because you were getting beat up for being gay or you did not fit it or you had no other choice. You moved here to cash in and in a few years cash out.

  76. No one’s buying what you’re selling. Your out for yourself. A kid four years out of school making too much money wanting to buy a house. You and the most reactionary forces in the bay area many who moved here to take a job, not because they HAD to live in a progressive place, are eager to make it more Ron Conway like.

  77. “We will build the biggest wall, to keep out all the tech workers, and we will make google pay for it”

  78. We should only be building affordable housing. Not homes for the entitled fresh out of Cornell “where’s my house” set.

  79. Change the “or” to an “and”; “tech worker” and “SJW” aren’t exclusive and a lack of secure housing opportunities here is the biggest social justice issue in the SFBA.

  80. Tom, I know you are really a social justice warrior and all concerned about affordable housing, right. Or maybe some rich kid four years out of school making too much money and wanting these graying hippies out of the way so you can “innovate” in your new crash pad. But don’t worry, just keep trolling progressive sites with your conservative comments.

  81. Breed’s record says it all. She crows about the resurfaced basketball courts in the Panhandle. Meanwhile the north and south pathways (which residents use daily) are missing chunks of pavement, potholed and crumbling. But she had those anti theft signs installed at Alamo Square to alert tourists to remove valueables from their rental cars. Crumbs for D5 constituents. Meanwhile Airbnb is unregulated and without a central registry, the busses are crowded and there are more homeless people sleeping in residential doorways than ever before. Breed is big on window dressing.

  82. Yes. I agree with heart. Breeds “compelling life story” and the fact that most voters are now lazy and swayed by identity politics has allowed a corporate shill like her to screw our city and turn a formerly progressive district like D5 into a gentrification wonderland.

  83. She made a lot of campaign promises she’s not keeping. And you should hear how she talks about her constituents behind our backs when she thinks we’re not listening! Got her office on a conference call once, and when she thought we couldn’t hear she called us all kinds of choice expletives. When she realized she was still on speaker phone, she giggled and hung up. I guess that “compelling life story” is really working out for her, because professionalism and values sure aren’t.

  84. The part about putting Peskin on Land Use but surrounding him by Farrell and Tang is genius. I think she dramatically limited the amount of damage that Peskin will bring to the city for the next two years.

  85. Breed won because she is duplicitous. We all see it and know it.

    Apparently not. Apparently only 48% ‘see it and know it’.

    Breed being reelected in D5 is akin to a Republican senator being reelected in Massachusetts.

    I get it….you think it wouldn’t have happened if a majority of D5 voters weren’t naive and gullible.

  86. Great plays by Breed. Hopefully the moderate majority will bring some sanity to the land use policies in this city.

  87. Um no actually playland: you have thrice missed the point. London Breed had all the sway, the range, the $$, the endorsements. Preston had none. Nothing. Nada. Your comparison of the standard “Battle of the (politically monied) Titans” like Obama vs. Romney to the Breed vs. Preston race is silly. Breed won because she took Preston’s platform and made it her own, and she took a shit ton of money from Tech and Realtors (which is closer to the reason why she won). Breed won because she is duplicitous. We all see it and know it. Breed is predictable. Breed is arrogant and accountable to no one, which is not terribly becoming in an elected supervisor.

  88. Got it. But 52% to 48% is pretty standard in these elections. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney 51.1% to 47.2%. Eric Mar’s protege won 52% to 48% this year.

    But D5 used to be the progressive stronghold of the city. Now Breed represented them for 4 years and was pretty firmly aligned with the Mayor most of that time. As you mentioned, Newsom, Brown and Feinstein all made it clear that she was their candidate.

    And she was reelected in D5. So maybe, maybe, things in D5 aren’t the same in 2017 as they were in 1997. It might make you feel better to dismiss the results as ‘paltry’ but what really matters is that a clear moderate candidate won.

    Nobody expects a moderate to win 60-40 in D5. Yet.

  89. I stand corrected playland. Breed beat Preston by a paltry 1789 votes, 589 more than I previously stated. That’s still ridiculously slim for an incumbent and President of the BofS with all that yummy Tech and realtor $$$$$. Breed isn’t fooling anyone. She is predictable and consistently unresponsive to her constituents. Your original post implied that she had some sort of mandate. She doesn’t. You’ll see.

  90. I know that.

    There are only two election outcome types in San Francisco — the ones where progressives win and the ones were voters were blinded by money.

  91. OK, thanks @heart.

    the ridiculously slim margin of less than 4 percentage points–FEWER than 1200 votes

    I was confused because the Board of Elections says that she won by 1,789 votes:

    http://www.sfelections.org/results/20161108/data/20161206/d5/20161206_d5.html

    I didn’t realize that the BOE is putting out bogus numbers. My apologies.

    And you’re right…she did campaign hard, which obviously discredits her victory.

    And finally:

    And London Breed won because she pretended to be a progressive.

    Yup. I agree with you on that one also. The D5 voters are morons. She was their representative for 4 years and she was still able to fool them.

  92. London Breed is a speech maker and shape shifter. I too am not surprised. She’s all talk. And predictable. D5 is energized and organized thanks to Preston.

  93. This D5er is very disappointed in Breed’s appointments, but hardly surprised. I do hope I get the opportunity to vote for Preston again.

  94. playland: London Breed won D5 by a cat’s whisker….by the ridiculously slim margin of less than 4 percentage points–FEWER than 1200 votes. Breed was so terrified of the momentum that Preston was gaining among the 70% of renters who comprise D5, that, less than 2 weeks before Election Day, she threw her 60 day cap on Airbnb Hail Mary pass. Dean Preston was virtually a political unknown. Breed had all of the $$$ (from RonConway, DeeDee Wilsey and Airbnb). She had ALL of the heavy weight endorsements from the usual suspects like Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, Diane Feinstein et al. Heck Breed even had Samuel L. Jackson making robocalls for her. Breed had the name recognition and the stature of her role as President of the BofS and yet she nearly lost to an outsider and an unknown. Breed is extremely unpopular in D5. She won by the skin of her teeth. You clearly know very little about District 5 and its residents.

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