City of peace and love votes for drug screening and more police surveillance

SAN FRANCISCO — The liberal bastion of San Francisco pivoted rightward in Tuesday’s election as voters responded to ongoing drug, homelessness and crime crises by approving policies that bolster police and require drug-screening for welfare recipients.

The results represent a major victory for embattled Mayor London Breed, a moderate Democrat who faces a tough fight for a second full term in November. She hitched her political future to a slate of three ballot measures that aim to move a city struggling with its slow post-pandemic recovery in a strikingly more conservative direction.

Voters approved all three of her measures on Tuesday, including her proposal to screen and mandate addiction treatment for people receiving county welfare.

“We want San Francisco to be exactly what the people who live here want to see,” Breed told supporters at a jam-packed craft-cocktail bar in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. “And that is a safe, affordable place to call home.”

Just a handful of years ago, attaching such strings to cash assistance for low income people — a policy more common in red states — would have been political suicide for any official in San Francisco. The city’s progressive activists have historically led movements to rein in police and prosecutors and emphasize approaches to addiction that favor treatment over punishment.

But the political ground here has rapidly shifted, in a way that could presage similar moves by blue-city leaders grappling with voter anger over public-safety and quality-of-life issues.

In 2022, San Francisco voters backed the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin and school board members blamed for focusing on progressive causes amid extended pandemic-era closures. That same year, wealthy tech executives including billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, helped build the political advocacy group Together SF into a political juggernaut. The group has poured millions into city elections, along with like-minded outfits that rely on a shared donor network.

“They’re so frustrated that they’re willing to try something different,” Kanishka Cheng, one of Together SF founders, said before polls closed on Tuesday. “They want to send this message that ‘We’re no longer going to be a destination for drug tourism.’”

The effort by well-funded centrist forces to reshape San Francisco government extends beyond ballot measures to a slate of moderate candidates angling to take control of the county Democratic Party’s central committee in Tuesday’s election, as well as November’s elections for the Board of Supervisors mayor and mayor.

Breed, a lifelong San Franciscan who was raised by her grandmother in poverty, was first elected in 2018 to fill the unfinished term of Mayor Ed Lee, who died in office. Breed was carried to victory over more lefty opponents by a coalition of business-friendly Democrats, Asian Americans and centrist-leaning voters on the city’s more suburban west side. She won a full term in 2019.

San Francisco was particularly hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, as large employers shut their downtown offices and tech workers fled to lower-cost areas.

Breed responded with a slate of policy changes she said would remake the city. Besides the drug-screening requirement, she proposed expanding police officers’ authority to chase suspects and use drones and video surveillance. She also joined pro-development YIMBY advocates to back waiving a local tax for developers who convert office buildings into housing. After her proposed changes were bucked by the left-leaning Board of Supervisors, Breed took them directly to voters.

Critics attribute her move to the right to desperation amid dismal approval ratings and a growing field of mayoral challengers. They accuse her and groups like Together SF of trying to turn the city of “peace and love” into a city catering to the interests of the wealthy.

John Avalos, a former supervisor and longtime progressive organizer in the city, vented about the forces trying to move San Francisco rightward as he passed out brochures to voters Tuesday morning.

“Everyone is operating on the terrain that’s set by the mayor and the billionaire class,” Avalos said, speaking to POLITICO on the phone as he walked the rain-soaked, steep streets of Bernal Heights, one of the city’s most liberal neighborhoods. “It’s a politics of fear, and we need a politics of hope. We’re losing our standing on the hope side.”

Breed’s measures were all slated to pass comfortably on Tuesday night, carrying large margins as she reassembled the coalition that first put her in the mayor’s office in 2018.

The striking change of political winds in San Francisco will likely be felt most immediately in the mayoral race, where Breed desperately needs a jolt of momentum. She faces two major challengers — former interim Mayor Mark Farrell and Levi Strauss heir and nonprofit executive Daniel Lurie — who have similarly championed a shift toward more conservative policies on crime and drugs.

Breed has used the ballot campaign to persuade her coalition of moderate-leaning Democrats from jumping ship, and to convince voters more broadly that she is an agent of change.

“While everyone is talking about what they’re going to do, I’m actually making it happen,” Breed said as she wove between baby strollers and yapping dogs on leashes at a bustling Noe Valley farmer’s market last weekend. “They’re basically saying everything I’m saying.”

The mayor said her shifts on crime and drug policies weren’t made lightly and weren’t motivated by her reelection. She broke down into tears Saturday as she invoked the memory of her younger sister, who died from a drug overdose in 2006. Compassionate responses to the crisis have led to more deaths in the streets, she argued.

“It’s very personal in wanting to see my people live,” Breed said as she wiped her eyelashes while chatting with a young couple at the farmer’s market. “I don’t care about the risks that I take.”

For Breed, the primary was about convincing voters that San Francisco is no longer the pandemic-era city in decline that became the butt of national ridicule for its open-air drug markets and lax attitude towards shoplifters.

She counters that crime — reported thefts in particular — has fallen in the last six months as the police department beefs up enforcement, a trend she attributes to the presence of state and federal agencies whose assistance she summoned. The number of homeless encampments has also dropped as the city expands sidewalk clean-ups. And a boom in artificial intelligence has brought tech investors back.

But the setbacks keep coming. A record 806 people died from drug overdoses in the city last year. Retailers continue to leave downtown by the dozens; just last week, Macy’s announced it will close its iconic store in Union Square.

A February poll from the San Francisco Chronicle found that 71 percent of likely voters disapprove of Breed’s performance. Her path to reelection could be further complicated by the city’s ranked-choice voting system, which often allows the victor to be determined by who voters list as their second- and third-choice candidate.

That’s especially true in a crowded field of mayoral challengers. In addition to Farrell and Lurie, Breed faces opposition from Ahsha Safaí, a swing vote on the Board of Supervisors. A more formidable progressive challenger, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, could also join the field before the mid-June filing deadline.

But even as centrist groups notched wins in Tuesday’s election, the rightward shift in San Francisco might not necessarily be enough to save Breed from an angry electorate — and could raise alarms among several members of the Board of Supervisors who face their own reelection in November.

Farrell, a moderate Democrat who surged into first place in a recent poll, showed up at the same election-night party as Breed. He praised the passage of her ballot measures, but doubted voters will give her much credit.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other,” Farrell said as he mingled with activists. “This is simply a shift to common sense here in San Francisco.”