“I can hit the ground running,” newly-appointed Supervisor Vallie Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle after she was chosen to succeed Mayor London Breed as District 5 Supervisor. That’s good for her, because there’s a reason they call it “running for office” and not “strolling casually for office.” Run she will, because run she must.
Brown had an opponent even before she was a candidate. Dean Preston declared his candidacy even before there was an election.
All of this makes sense because Brown’s district (District 5: the Haight, Cole Valley, Hayes Valley, Western Addition) narrowly re-elected the woman who appointed her, now-Mayor London Breed, in 2016; and even more narrowly voted against Breed for mayor.
Though we’re going to have to wait until November 2019 to find out who wins, this could very easily be among San Francisco’s closest supervisorial races.
Decline in turnout appears to favor Preston
Breed beat Preston by 2,000 votes in 2016 in a extremely high turnout environment, and then Leno beat Breed by 241 votes in a slightly lower turnout election in 2018.
Only 6 out of every 10 voters who cast a ballot in the November 2016 election returned to vote for mayor in 2018. This 18,000-vote decline came disproportionately from precincts that supported London Breed’s reelection to the Board of Supervisors.
This map shows the winner of the 2016 District 5 Supervisor race by precinct (Preston red, Breed blue).
While turnout declined across the district (and across the city), the decline was most acute in neighborhoods that most supported London Breed. This map shows decline relative to the average; areas in blue had larger than average declines; areas in red had lower than average declines (colorless means perfectly average decline in turnout).
More precisely, of the 18,000 fewer ballots cast in 2018, about 11,000 came from precincts London Breed won in 2016, while only 6,700 came from precincts Dean Preston won.
When she was running for mayor, London Breed received about 10,000 fewer first choice votes than she did when she ran for reelection as supervisors. Mark Leno and Jane Kim’s combined vote total was only 4,500 votes fewer than Dean Preston’s 2016 total.
London Breed’s reelection was undoubtedly aided by the 2016 presidential election surge in turnout. As her successor, Vallie Brown will probably have no such surge to depend on when she runs in November of 2019.
If previous trends about London Breed’s voters and past elections hold true (and I make several other broad assumptions about past candidates being analogous to future races), Vallie Brown would want to see about 57% city-wide voter turnout in the November 2019 election. While 57% sounds high—and it is—turnout has been trending slightly upwards since 2013, and 57% is just north of where that trend could be if it continues apace.
Brown, who already has a long history of neighborhood activism, will need to use the next year and a half winning over voters who would likely be more inclined to vote for Dean Preston to combat any attrition among voters who turned out for the 2016 presidential election, but may not in 2019.
District 5 Voters are Divided on Candidates, Not on Issues.
The closeness of the recent supervisor and mayoral elections might give you the mistaken impression that district 5 voters are quite divided. In fact, these voters have quite clear policy preferences and express them quite unanimously when voting on ballot initiatives. Here are more than a dozen examples from the last two elections:
District 5 deviated from the citywide results by about 7%, usually in favor of raising taxes, limiting power of the mayor, restricting police power and land-use, and more education and infrastructure investment.
The challenge for Brown and Preston is to be seen as the greater champion of these issues. Preston, whose statewide nonprofit organization Tenants Together led the campaign for 2018’s Proposition F, hardly has to shore up its pro-renter bona fides, especially with Prop 10 on the ballot this fall to expand rent control. Likewise, Brown will have many opportunities as Supervisor to engage with her constituents and put forward and support policies that appeal to District 5 voters.
Can Vallie Climb to the Peak?
It’s easy to look at the fundamentals of this district and conclude that his race will be a shoo-in for Preston. However, if that were the case, he would have won in 2016. Can his loss be attributed to the fact that Breed was an incumbent? Or was it that his negative messaging against Breed, a renter of color who grew up in public housing in the district, backfired by highlighting the fact that he is very wealthy white male homeowner?
If so, Brown, who is part Native American, may benefit from having a similar life story and will have the advantage of having the mayor’s support (and associated fundraising prowess) in the same year that the mayor is running for reelection.
If the self-identified “progressive bloc” on the Board of Supervisors wants to secure a supermajority, they need Preston to win. Likewise, Mayor Breed will need as many supporters on the Board as she can get if she wants her policy agenda to pass. A lot will ride on the outcome of this election, and any appointed candidate faces an uphill battle. Perhaps the only person who can climb this hill is a Vallie.
Andy Mullan is the Beacon’s very own data guy. He analyzes data and their impact on local politics in our regular feature, SFByTheNumbers. Find more in-depth, obscure data analysis and adventures in new adulthood at his blog, Lord of the Fails and his twitter @askmullan.
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