San Francisco might not be ‘liberal’ city anymore as progressive mayoral candidate is underdog, says LA Times

San Francisco is known as a reliably liberal city to most of America, but a Los Angeles Times editor believes there are signs that the City by the Bay has swung to the center, as voters are sick of rising crime rates and ramped-up drug use and remain shaken from COVID-era shutdowns. 

The L.A. Times published a piece on Thursday headlined, “San Francisco has shifted to the center. Can a progressive still compete there?” Times audience engagement editor Defne Karabatur kicked off the piece by asking, “Has famously liberal San Francisco moved too far right to embrace an old-school progressive for mayor?”

The L.A. paper noted the presidential election will be here soon and that “outrage over the progressive agenda is playing out in an unlikely place: The San Francisco mayoral race.” 

“My colleague Hannah Wiley looked into the race this week and found that only one of the race’s five candidates, San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, is running on a progressive agenda. And he’s the underdog,” Karabatur wrote before fretting, “What does it all mean? Is San Francisco no longer a bastion of progressive politics? What even is progressivism?”

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Aaron Peskin, seen as the most progressive of the Democrats to enter the mayor’s contest, is seen as an “underdog” compared to incumbent Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed, former interim Mayor Mark Farrell, Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie and S.F. Board of Supervisors member Ahsha Safaí, according to the Times. 

The L.A. Times piece noted that San Francisco was “famous for being a pioneer of progressive political discourse,” but has “tottered toward the center” in recent years. Voters approving ballot measures to broaden police surveillance powers and impose drug screenings on people receiving county welfare benefits are mentioned as examples of the community distancing themselves from the far left. Both examples were pushed by incumbent Mayor Breed.

In addition, “San Francisco’s slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the city’s culture and shaken voters’ trust in the city’s leadership,” according to Karabatur. 

The piece also said that San Francisco’s “ascendent tech class has led the rightward shift.”

“In recent decades, it hasn’t been unusual for San Francisco to elect mayors who are centrist Democrats alongside a more progressive Board of Supervisors. Tech executives and wealthy business owners are pouring money into the campaigns of moderate candidates — including the current candidates, apart from Peskin,” Karabatur wrote. 

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Karabatur feels a “growing number of voters,” including powerful tech moguls, “want to see more punitive measures against the sprawling tent encampments and the outpouring of retail and property crimes that have diminished their understanding of a safe, functional city.”

Karabatur then tried to explain what “progressive” actually means these days.

“Peskin says he joined the race to keep San Francisco a ‘beacon’ for the artists, creatives, immigrants and LGBTQ+ leaders who have defined the city for decades, and to fight for working-class people to reposition San Francisco as an affordable city,” Karabatur wrote.

“He’s promised to prioritize low-income housing and expand rent control, and says he wants to open more treatment facilities and expand shelter capacity for homeless people,” Karabatur continued. “But he also touts ‘neighborhood preservation’ and has resisted attempts to amend zoning rules for certain neighborhoods to allow for denser housing.”

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The author wrote that for some residents, Peskin claims the “progressive” label when it comes to housing, but others believe his “perspective reflects an impractical, even conservative, approach to the city’s housing crisis.”

“Whether Peskin is a textbook progressive is up to interpretation — including his own. He told The Times he’s willing to defy the label and supports a controversial November ballot measure that would reverse a 2014 voter-approved law that turned some nonviolent drug and theft felonies into misdemeanors,” Karabatur wrote.

“It just goes to show you: Few candidates fit under a neat box, even if they try to claim or eschew one,” she added. “It’s the policies, not the label, that will define the next few years of San Francisco’s political landscape.”