Read part 1 here.
The June special election for District 2 Supervisor came into focus at a Tuesday night forum in Pacific Heights, where two candidates with broadly similar policy views revealed starkly different styles and political alignments. Sponsored by ConnectedSF and District 2 Unite and held at the Syufy Auditorium at Sacred Heart Schools, the event’s tone — and its 250-plus-audience — underscored how citywide politics are shaping an intensely local race.
On exhibit at the event were the race’s two remaining candidates: Appointed incumbent Stephen Sherrill, and challenger Lori Brooke. A third candidate, Jeremy Kirshner, has withdrawn from the race. Sherrill was appointed to the seat in December 2024 by former mayor London Breed, hence the special election. Whoever wins the June vote has to face yet another vote in November’s regularly scheduled election for the seat as well.
A family-focused policy wonk
Sherril worked for Breed as the director of the Mayor’s Office of Innovation, where he led the development of an integrated data system to bridge silos across city services, addressing homelessness. Before that, he was a senior policy advisor to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where he oversaw the modernization of permitting procedures and participated in disaster response during Hurricane Sandy.
As a San Francisco Supervisor, he’s worked to improve drug enforcement around parks and schools, tackled commercial and retail vacancies, and urged better performance metrics for homelessness-related services.
Although his presence on the board is a Breed legacy, Sherrill is endorsed by current mayor Daniel Lurie. He began the forum by noting the concord between Lurie and the centrist board majority and attributing the recent apparent drop in crime and the recovery of neighborhood businesses to the current regime at City Hall.
“We’ve seen what happens with our neighborhood businesses, back above prepandemic sales levels,” he told the 250-plus audience at the forum, which lasted close to two hours. We’ve seen progress on public safety, with three new police commissioners and foot patrols on Chestnut Street. We’ve seen what happens when we eliminate unnecessary permitting and keep storefronts open. We’ve seen what happens when we come together.”
He further emphasized public safety as part of “a big goal about families.”
“I think in 10 years, we need to make San Francisco the number one choice for families in America. That’s aggressive. But I think it’s worth it. It’s about public safety, clean streets, a thriving job market, and it’s about affordability,” he told attendees.
A pedigree-focused grassroots activist
Meanwhile, Brooke emphasized her credentials as a native and grassroots activist, as a longtime president of the Cow Hollow Association.
“San Francisco runs deep in my family. I’m a third-generation San Franciscan. My grandfather, my father, and currently my brother all work for City Hall in the San Francisco Water Department,” she told attendees. “My grandmother worked for 30 years in City Hall in the I.T. Department. And my nephew is entering the San Francisco Police Academy. I guess there’s a difference, right? My family has helped build and serve this city for generations […] for nearly two decades, I’ve worked on quality-of-life issues with small businesses and city departments to solve problems and strengthen our neighborhoods. I bring deep knowledge of this community, I do know my way around City Hall, and I’m not running to climb a political ladder.”
The contenders differentiated themselves on the larger citywide issues that have dominated the past few election cycles, most notably drug enforcement and affordability.
Each contender’s priorities were reflected in their responses to the long battery of questions at the event. Generally, they seemed to be in agreement on more granular local issues, such as persistent flooding along Marina Boulevard, where both candidates faulted the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission for, among other issues, its closure of the Pierce Street Outfall, which Sherrill called a “unthoughtful” short-term patch. Brooke called the closure “unacceptable.”
“The community’s ask here is straightforward,” Brooke emphasized. “Residents want the Pierce Street Outfall reopened and want to be compensated for the damage caused by the city’s negligence […] DPW did explicitly advise not to close (the outfall), and yet it happened anyway.”
The contenders differentiated themselves on the larger citywide issues that have dominated the past few election cycles, most notably drug enforcement and affordability.
“Fentanyl is the absolute biggest issue we have right now,” Sherrill told attendees. “We need to keep arresting drug dealers, and we need to make more arrests of public drug users. Law enforcement must be a tool to get people into recovery. And talking about recovery, we need to keep investing in abstinence-based recovery.” Sherrill also criticized pretrial diversion programs as “wildly and inappropriately applied” to drug dealers.
On drug enforcement, Brook elided details but voiced support for increasing police ranks and for more solutions along the lines of “community policing,” a long-standing policy that is vaunted by progressives until it inevitably ventures into quality-of-life enforcement. She grouped public safety concerns into the rubric of “quality-of-life” as the city’s dominant issue.
On affordability, discussion turned to housing development and the still-controversial “Family Zoning Plan” adopted by the city. Sherrill, who voted for the plan, characterized it as necessary for a development plan with more local control and to forestall the excesses of state mandates, and described his role in the road to adopting Family Zoning as making it more effective while protecting his home district’s fabric.
“We got more changes to the draft maps in this district than in the entire rest of the city combined,” he told attendees. “I am extremely proud that we put together a thoughtful plan that prevented a state takeover of local zoning laws. That would’ve been a disaster.”
That said, the fact that developers parachuted in a plan to redevelop the Marina Safeway into a 25-story complex with a new store and 790 apartments under state law before Family Zoning could take effect gave Brooke, who helped lead the fight against upzoning, a rhetorical weapon. “My opponent says he doesn’t like this project, which is good, but he is endorsed by the very senator and the YIMBY organizations that wrote and championed the laws that made it possible,” Brooke said, referring to state Senator Scott Wiener and the state mandates. “Instead of pushing back on those laws and fighting for district-wide protections, he supported a local plan that left our neighborhoods exposed.”
Brooke did give lip service to (presumably subsidized) “affordable housing” as a path to affordability. Still, it’s belied by remarks she made in the previous election cycle about San Francisco “always being an expensive city.”
Tea leaves in the audience
And it’s in these two citywide policy realms where the contenders are the most differentiated. This was also evident in the cheering section Brooke brought to the event, which included a surprising number of people known not only for their progressive activism but also for not living in the district.
These included Nancy Shanahan, the attorney and spouse of the former District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who continues to be, along with Brooke, a lead organizer against upzoning, and Cristin Evans, the recently deposed Homelessness Advisory Commissioner and champion of problematic policies that the Lurie administration maintains they are trying to pivot away from.
The special election may be only four months away, but it looks like it’s going to be a long, drawn-out process that may engender a sequel. So far, Sherrill has raised a campaign war chest of close to a quarter million dollars, according to the most recent compliance reporting. Brooke has raised a little over $100,000.
If you missed this event, several Democratic groups are hosting another at the First Unitarian and Universalist Church on Franklin Street next week.