Aaron Peskin Wants To Lead San Francisco’s Journey to Recovery

San Francisco voters will choose their next mayor this November, and KQED’s Political Breakdown is bringing you interviews with all the top candidates.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin is looking to take his nearly 25 years of City Hall experience to the mayor’s office.

Here are five key takeaways from our interview.

A Berkeley native with White House ties

Peskin was first elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2001, serving for eight years. He returned to the Board in 2015, winning reelection to his current position as board president.

However, long before his political career, Peskin grew up in Berkeley with his mother, a social worker born in Tel Aviv, and his father, a clinician psychologist originally from the Bronx in New York. “I come from a family of healers,” Peskin said, describing his upbringing.

Peskin was also a classmate of Vice President Kamala Harris. The two were part of a cohort entering kindergarten in 1969, the second year of the district’s voluntary integration.

“My recollections of Kamala back then was that she was calm, confident and reserved,” Peskin said of his earliest memories with the Democratic presidential candidate.

He wants to bring opposing sides together to focus on good government

“My relationships with people in the government and outside of government uniquely position me to move San Francisco forward at a tough time,” Peskin said.

San Francisco still has major strides to make when it comes to pandemic recovery, both in terms of real on-the-ground change and public perception of the city, he said.

“Attacks on San Francisco within the city and outside that have changed our narrative and perception,” Peskin said. “That’s going to be a tough job to deal with, but I’m up for it.”

Combating corruption is a key priority as mayor

Several major corruption scandals have rocked City Hall in recent years. In July, Kyra Worthy, the former leader of the nonprofit SF Safe, was arrested for allegedly misusing public funds and donations intended for crime-prevention programs. Prosecutors accused Worthy of improperly funneling more than $700,000 through a combination of fake invoices and employee wage theft.

Peskin criticized how current and recent administrations have handled misconduct, which he traces back to Willie Brown’s era. “The sad thing about this is that the federal government has taken out all of our dirty laundry,” he said.

“Many of the same players remain… or did not set a tone at the top against that kind of behavior and it proliferated under (Mayor Ed) Lee and has continued to proliferate under (Mayor) London Breed,” Peskin said. “It not only erodes public trust, but it makes the government function less well.”

To change that, Peskin has placed a measure on the November ballot that would create an Inspector General whose primary purpose is to check for conflicts of interest in City Hall and outside contract work and hold government officials accountable if they don’t play by the rules.

He wants more affordable housing but says neighborhood integrity must be protected

Peskin’s opponents have cast him as a foe of the YIMBY movement (aka Yes In My Backyard, a pro-housing development group) after blocking some housing proposals around the waterfront and other historic neighborhoods in his district. But the Board President defends his record, saying he’s approved over 100,000 units throughout his tenure on the Board and has remained progressive, pragmatic, and focused on his own district.

“I have sided with developers a supermajority of the time. But in due process, there are people who make good arguments about displacement, gentrification, and building market-rate housing in low-income communities that will face adverse impacts of that,” Peskin said. “I honor those things. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.”

Peskin’s housing activism goes back to his college years at UC Santa Cruz, when he sued the university over its plans to build student dorms on undeveloped land, arguing that the project’s environmental report was inadequate. Peskin said the issue was “not with building housing, but where it would be built. It came to a good resolution, which is that the Chancellor at the time decided he would convene the academic senate and that there would be rational discussion about where housing should be located.”

Peskin is also campaigning on promises to better protect renters from evictions and provide more rental relief to keep people housed in affordable units.

His personal recovery journey shapes his views of San Francisco’s rebound

Peskin has been sober from alcohol for more than three years and said his journey with recovery has shaped the way he views both himself and his city. He said the experience has taught him about working with the community, taking accountability and choosing hope at a time when the city is struggling to combat crises in housing, public health and economic vitality.

“One of the most profound things I realized is I’m not in this by myself. I spent the last few years trying to reach across to get things done and let down that defensiveness,” Peskin said. “I also just wake up much more grateful now. That whole ‘doom and gloom loop’ that people like the harp on is not how I’m feeling. I know we have real challenges, but I want to make things better, and that’s the experience that I’m living now.”