Progressive SF Supervisors Run Into ‘Anti-Incumbency Wave’ in Early Election Returns

It was a rough night Tuesday for San Francisco’s incumbent supervisors who are up for reelection — all three are in tight races and at risk of losing their seats on the progressive-majority board.

Most likely to be ousted, it seems, is Dean Preston — the only self-described democratic socialist on the Board of Supervisors and a lightning rod for critics of the city’s left who has publicly sparred with people from Mayor London Breed to Elon Musk.

The supervisors’ opponents say the backlash feels like a statement from San Franciscans: they’re not happy with the current state of the city.

“There is an anti-incumbency wave in San Francisco,” Bilal Mahmood, who looks poised to be the next District 5 supervisor, told KQED.

After multiple rounds of ranked choice elimination, narrowed the field to two candidates, Mahmood led Preston by about 6 percentage points, according to San Francisco’s latest update around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. In District 1, fewer than 40 votes separate Supervisor Connie Chan and Marjan Philhour, a local business owner who narrowly lost to Chan in 2020.

Although Supervisor Myrna Melgar leads in District 7, she is in a much tighter race than she anticipated — only about 700 votes, or 3 percentage points, ahead of challenger Matt Boschetto.

Preston’s District 5, which spans the Tenderloin, Western Addition, Fillmore and Hayes Valley neighborhoods, has been the most expensive — and high-profile — of the six supervisor races this election cycle.

While Preston, who picked up prominent endorsements from Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), took an early lead in first-choice votes, ranked choice rounds that knocked out candidates running to his right and redistributed their votes have given Mahmood a significant boost.

Mahmood and one of those candidates, Scotty Jacobs, had a joint ranked choice voting strategy, but Mahmood said his early success points to dissatisfaction among District 5 constituents.

“Something that we heard at the doors is that in the end, the differences between me and [Preston] in terms of what was resonating with voters wasn’t just that he wasn’t talking about the issues, it’s that he wasn’t listening to people,” Mahmood said.

Mahmood and the other main challenger, Autumn Looijen, spent much of the campaign attacking Preston’s record, calling him ineffective and uncompromising as a leader. GrowSF, a moderate political action committee, poured money into a campaign against his reelection focused on blaming him for a lack of new housing and calling him soft on the city’s drug and homelessness crises.

“Look at the priorities of Dean [Preston] and myself,” Mahmood told KQED. “We were both talking about wanting to build more housing, but the fundamental difference was that Dean [Preston] has a track record and a reputation for being ideologically obstinate and very divisive.”

Preston said in a statement on Wednesday that the race is still too close to call, and he pointed to the GrowSF and other moderate influences working against him throughout the campaign.

“We ran a truly grassroots campaign, neighbor to neighbor, and are proud to have been able to match vote-for-vote a two-year disinformation campaign funded by tech and real estate billionaires,” the statement reads. “We are hopeful that the late vote will cut our way and are looking forward to the next set of returns.”

In District 1, a similar story is playing out, though the margins so far are thinner.

The race is a rematch between Chan and Philhour, who lost by just over 100 votes in 2020. This time around, Philhour is leading by only 35 votes. She said in a statement that with “thousands of ballots left to count,” she would be waiting for the city’s elections department to make an updated announcement on Thursday afternoon.

This is Philhour’s third run for the seat in District 1, which stretches from the Richmond District and Sea Cliff to the University of San Francisco. The local business owner has campaigned on bringing a more moderate perspective, including support for a “fully funded” police department and cracking down on homelessness.

While labor groups showed strong financial support for Chan, GrowSF also spent on a campaign to “Clear Out Connie Chan.” The group endorsed none of the incumbent candidates for supervisor.

Melgar, representing the Inner Sunset and much of the city’s west side, is in a closer-than-expected race against Boschetto. She told The San Francisco Standard at her election night watch party that she didn’t think anyone of note would run against her.

“I had prepared for a real race, but I didn’t think I was going to have to run one,” she said. “I left it all on the table. I feel good.”

Boschetto had endorsements from GrowSF and another moderate political group, TogetherSF Action.

Incumbent Mayor London Breed is also at risk of being ousted unless she can make up significant ground in later vote drops.

While the apparent anti-incumbent wave threatens the progressive wing’s Board of Supervisors majority gained in 2019, before San Francisco’s official Democratic Party this spring voted in a new majority-moderate leadership board, one progressive candidate is faring well. In District 9, which covers the Mission District, Jackie Fielder is leading in early returns to fill the seat vacated by termed-out progressive Supervisor Hillary Ronen.

As of Wednesday morning, Fielder held a firm lead with 57% of the votes after ranked choice tallying, followed by moderate opponent Trevor Chandler with nearly 43% of votes.

San Francisco’s Department of Elections plans to post its next round of updated results and begin calling some of the outstanding races on Thursday afternoon.