San Francisco’s District 3 is the city’s front room, encompassing its best-known and diverse neighborhoods, including Chinatown, Telegraph Hill, and Downtown. As Aaron Peskin, its longest-serving representative, campaigns for a new seat on the other side of City Hall’s atrium, three very different candidates are emerging as leading choices to succeed him.
Peskin stayed in office for much of the last two decades by marshaling a coalition led by neighborhood preservationists and Chinatown advocacy groups. At first glance, that coalition would appear to be split among the three hopefuls; ranked-choice voting could determine how it reassembles.
The natural
Danny Sauter kicked off his second run for supervisor on a sunny Saturday morning last week at North Beach’s JoeDimaggio Playground. The venue reflected Sauter’s love of both the neighborhood — and baseball.
“If you’ve seen my logo on the signs, you can probably tell I love baseball, but that’s not why it matters. It matters because Joe DiMaggio learned how to play baseball in Valparaiso Street two blocks that way … that just happens to be the alley where I first moved in with my wife Chelsea,” Sauter said in his June 1 kickoff speech, going on to relate past years’ struggles to improve the playground and rebuild the adjacent public library branch.
“There were people that filed lawsuits to protect historic bookshelves and warned of 24-7 traffic because we were going to close a half block of Mason Street. Well, we see the result of that all around us, and it’s pretty wonderful,” Sauter told a crowd of about 80 people at the kickoff. “There’s a lot of people here today who were part of that change.”
Sauter, who runs a nonprofit that supports neighborhood centers around the city, moved to North Beach a little over a decade ago. Since then, he’s steered local improvement efforts, including the North Beach Farmers’ Market and Adopt-a-Street volunteer cleanup program. He is a past president of North Beach Neighbors.
In 2020, he ran a solid campaign to challenge Peskin for his seat, raising $300,0000 and garnering over 43 percent of the vote. Over time, he’s assembled a coalition that’s brought together transit-focused urbanists and YIMBYS with more forward-thinking neighborhoodies.
In January, the Examiner published an op-ed by Sauter and fellow North Beach Neighbors board member Tony Wessling urging redevelopment of a long-blighted property at Union and Columbus streets as affordable apartments above a new Muni station for an extended Central Subway.
“It’s far past time for San Francisco to confront its housing crisis, largely of its own making. We cannot continue to shut down housing and shut out families, seniors, and immigrants in our city,” Sauter added in an interview. “As District 3 shows, density and character can go together, and in fact, they thrive alongside one another.”
Sauter supported Proposition E, Mayor London Breed’s measure to reform Police Commission oversight, which passed last March. “We need to recruit more police officers to staff our department fully, but we also need to make our existing officers more productive and give them new technology to keep us safe,” he told The Voice in an interview.
State Senator Scott Wiener, District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, and Recreation and Parks Commissioner Vanita Louie were among those who showed up to support Sauter at the June 1 kickoff. Other supporters include District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio and local Democratic Party Chair Nancy Tung.
According to San Francisco Ethics Commission campaign finance disclosures, Sauter has raised almost $122,000 and spent about $43,000 so far. Two former San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Organization executives, Jim Chappell and Nick Josefowitz, and tech barons Chris Larsen and Emmett Shear have donated to Sauter.
The dark horse
As Sauter’s kickoff went on, Moe Jamil was less than 300 feet away, meeting voters at the farmers’ market. Jamil, whose parents came to San Francisco from Jordan, is on leave from his current position at the city attorney’s office during his campaign. He’s lived on Russian Hill for over 10 years with his Chinese-American wife and family. He’s also worked as a prosecutor and teacher.
That said, Jamil is running on a platform as an activist, not a bureaucrat. He’s placed his neighborhood credentials front and center. He cofounded the Van Ness Corridor Neighborhoods Council and sits on Russian Hill Neighbors, San Francisco Heritage, and the Union Square Foundation boards, and is a past chair of Middle Polk Neighbors.
Regarding housing development, Jamil rejects what he calls an “extreme urbanist model” prevalent in centrist political circles. Instead, he aligns his stance with Peskin’s: maintaining existing height limits and discretionary review and prioritizing area plans that cater to neighborhoods’ unique needs. Jamil labels his position as “SHIMBYism: Sensible Housing In My Back Yard,” a pro-neighborhood stance that supports a more incremental approach to new housing.
“That means the continuation of what we’ve been doing for decades, the tradition of neighborhoods and the development community sitting down and agreeing to rules and expectations on where housing should be built,” Jamil told The Voice in an interview. “We need to continue that tradition and start looking at places like Geary Boulevard, start looking at some of the corridors out on the west side, but bring the community in and do it thoughtfully.”
However, his approach to public safety is far from business as usual. Of the three frontrunners, he’s the only one who supported Measure F, Mayor Breed’s plan to direct drug screening and rehab for some welfare recipients.
“I’m the most law and order candidate in this race. I’ve gotten the key support of folks like Matt Dorsey because I’ve worked with the police for a long time as a neighborhood leader. One of the first things you do when you’re a neighborhood group president is bring in the police and build trust,” Jamil added.
Jamil is one of two frontrunners endorsed by Peskin. He’s also supported by former mayor Art Agnos, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, and Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Hillary Ronen. So far, he’s reported raising $100,672 in campaign funds and spending $45,414. His donors include Peskin, Chinatown business advocate Betty Louie, and former Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards.
The designated hitter
Sharon Lai kicked off her campaign early with a press conference at Portsmouth Square Sept. 15. Standing behind her were favorites from both sides of the aisle of the Asian-American political community, ranging from former supervisor Jane Kim to School Board commissioner Jenny Lam. Also, there was current District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan— now facing a particularly rough reelection battle.
Such relatively broad elected support puts Lai, an urban planner who’s worked in both the public and private sectors and is a former Metropolitan Transportation Agency board member, in the catbird seat as a consensus frontrunner who could restore some balance to Asian representation on the board. She’s also endorsed by incumbent Peskin, which might come as a surprise given her technocratic background.
But it also makes her a target in a political year where the city’s progressive establishment is still weathering a popular backlash, egged on by firebrands in the business community like Y Combinator’s Garry Tan, who tweeted some shade for Lai on the day of her kickoff:
Others in the business/centrist/urbanist axis defended Lai:
Upon seeing a copy of the press release, Tan evidently noted that it was drafted by Jeremy Lee, a manager at the Chinatown Community Development Center, one of the city’s more powerful affordable housing nonprofits. Lee is also something of a firebrand himself, as evidenced by his conduct as a member of the city’s redistricting task force in 2022. Lai told The Voice that Lee helped out as a volunteer in the campaign’s early stages and is not connected with its staff or management.
Tan’s characterization is ironic, given that Lai first gained public prominence by calling attention to public safety issues. Appointed to the SFMTA board in 2020, Lai pushed for better response to assaults on Muni, better outreach to monolingual riders, and a hike in the service’s public safety budget. She’s also worked to make agency contracting more transparent. Nevertheless, being the establishment favorite probably remains her most significant liability in a political year where voters demand change.
Lai is sticking to a consensus narrative. Interviewed by Erica Sandberg on her YouTube channel San Francisco Beat, Lai stressed the need to include workforce housing in future affordable housing plans and defended the current crackdown on illegal street vending. But when asked by The Voice whether she supported Proposition E, her take was it would have been better to pass it at the Board of Supervisors and that she “also had concerns about the measure leading to more high-speed chases.”
Lai is also supported by former Mayor Willie Brown and several current supervisors, from Catherine Stefani to Shamann Walton. As of May 28, when she filed her public financing threshold notice with the Ethics Commission, she had raised $110,000 in contributions and spent about $19,000. Notable donors include Peskin and Chinatown Community Development Center founder Gordon Chin.
Attorney Wendy Chau, investment manager Eduard Navarro, and real estate startup executive Matthew Susk round out the District 3 race. Jconr Ortega, a drug policy and homelessness activist, told Mission Local that he is dropping out of the race.
Updated Aug. 12, 2024: Reference to Brett Gladstone’s donation has been removed; his donation was refunded in November 2023 per Sharon Lai’s campaign and verified by the S.F. Ethics Commission.
