This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors moved forward with a charter amendment to modify existing term limits for the mayor or members of the Board of Supervisors to a lifetime total of two terms instead of the current limit of two consecutive four-year terms, which allows for a “loophole” to run for and serve further terms after a hiatus. The measure, intended for the June primary election, already has support from a majority of supervisors but was nevertheless subject to extended debate at meetings of both the Rules Committee on Monday and the full board the following day.
“Every campaign, every four years, when you have turned out politicians with the ability to come back, it closes off the opportunity for the next generation to raise their hand and say I’d like to have an opportunity to represent my community as well,” lead sponsor and District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood told colleagues at Rules Committee on Monday.
“If we look even over this last year, a little over a year ago, there was not a single millennial on the board of supervisors. A year later, a majority of the board is now representative of a new generation of leadership,” he continued. “As a result of that new generation of leadership, we’ve had amazing progress on housing, safety, and small business. It shows that representation leads to results. And lastly, this is important in the context of the times that we’re living in today. It gives the voters the opportunity this June, in San Francisco, to send a message to Washington. To say that when our charter says that it’s two terms, it should remain as two terms with no loophole.”
Most objections to the charter amendment came from the board’s progressive bloc, led in this case by Rules Committee Chair Shamann Walton, who repeatedly dubbed it the old bureaucratic saw, “a solution in search of a problem.”
But instead of trying to defeat the measure outright, Walton moved for amendments that would apply it to all elected positions, including district attorney, city attorney, and sheriff, which require specific credentials. The amendment failed in both the committee and at the full board, with most members citing that the other elected positions required greater continuity given their institutional nature.
“As someone who spent 14 years in the San Francisco city attorney’s office, I would argue that the absence of term limits for that office has enabled it to have continuity that really has made it a more formidable force for change than it would have been otherwise,” District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey told colleagues Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Board President Rafael Mandelman opposed both the measure and Walton’s amendment.
Only one member of the Board of Supervisors has abused the two-term loophole since the current city charter was adopted in the 1990s. The supervisors effectively confirmed that the member is on everyone’s mind.
“Term limits are inherently antidemocratic. They prevent us from voting for people who have gained experience in time and office. The ancient Athenians believed that some of their offices should be filled by lottery and that any citizen could do them … maybe this is just because I’ve been in this job for so damn long, but I do think that we get better over time, that we learn things, that we pick up skills, that we are less likely to make mistakes. And that’s a benefit for our constituents,” he told colleagues. “Now, term limits may be necessary because there is a power of incumbency. There is a difficulty in challenging someone who is sitting in the seat. But in my view, the voters of San Francisco solved that problem when they enacted the term limits that we have now.”
The board voted to continue the item until their meeting on Feb. 3, which is standard procedure for charter amendments. But the debate lasted just over half an hour Tuesday, which was notable considering that the board on the same day routinely and quickly passed without dialogue some fairly heavy items, including approval of a massive $71 million tax settlement payout to General Motors over misapplied gross receipts taxes, including the infamous homelessness and “Overpaid CEO” taxes, on the automotive giant’s subsidiary Cruise, as well as a $535 million earthquake and safety infrastructure improvement bond measure, also destined for the June ballot.
The board also elided the most important point in the debate over strengthening term limits. Only one member of the Board of Supervisors has abused the two-term loophole since the current city charter was adopted in the 1990s, and by not mentioning that former member, the supervisors effectively confirmed that he is on everyone’s mind.
That person is Aaron Peskin, who served on the board, representing District 3, first from 2001 to 2009, and then, after a six-year hiatus, leveraged his former incumbency to defeat a recently appointed supervisor, Julie Christensen, in a special election. He was reelected twice, serving an additional 10 years on the board from 2015 to 2025, and concluded his tenure with a second stint as board president during his final two years. During both periods as supervisor, Peskin was the champion of San Francisco’s vetocratic coalition of progressives and conservatives.
But is Peskin the Harrison Bergeron of San Francisco politics? Not really. Ironically, a confidential opposition research memorandum drafted in 2015 pointed out that he was “power-hungry, petty and vindictive, a bully, uncooperative, verbally abusive and confrontational.” A creature of the current scheme of district election for supervisors, which came into effect at the turn of the 21st century, pollsters have long surmised that he could likely be reelected forever to a District 3 whose politics were dominated by placating Chinatown and catering to narrow interests in North Beach and Telegraph Hill, but would never get elected to any citywide position.
That prediction played out in the 2025 mayoral race, where he placed a distant third. Nevertheless, Peskin continues to wield considerable unelected power behind the scenes in current political struggles and was instrumental in organizing opposition to recently passed upzoning legislation and in making it an issue in future elections, including the upcoming June primary.
Maybe, just maybe, San Francisco’s incumbency problem lies in district elections, not term limits.
We reached out to former Supervisor Peskin for comment.