Breed reelection bid battles big-city mayors' widespread unpopularity

In New York, Mayor Eric Adams saw his approval rating drop last December to the lowest of any mayor in the city’s history. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson defeated incumbent Lori Lightfoot in 2023 only to find his approval ratings hovering at around 20%, one poll last month found.

Just 40% of San Francisco voters view Mayor London Breed favorably, according to a poll commissioned this month by political group GrowSF, while a San Francisco Chronicle poll released this week found the incumbent trailing challenger Mark Farrell — a former mayor himself — in first-choice votes.

Whoever wins the November election will take the helm at a time when elected leaders at every level, local to national, are broadly unpopular. San Francisco poses a seemingly endless litany of burdens for the next mayor to bear, including record-high overdose deaths, an existential crisis downtown and a swelling budget deficit.

In a climate such as this one, who the hell would want to be mayor of San Francisco?

“The challenges and the barriers are real,” one local political consultant told The Examiner, but “it depends on the person and how they’re willing to go about it.”

And while San Francisco might have become the butt of jokes, as Farrell pointed out as he launched his campaign this month, many still see an upside to serving as its chief executive.

“We have a national — and international — impact that entirely transcends our weight class,” said Alex Clemens, a longtime San Francisco political strategist with Progress Public Affairs.

Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University, said the growing field of candidates — which includes Breed, Farrell, Supervisor Ahsha Safai and nonprofit cofounder Daniel Lurie — have entered the race because they think they can win.

“You’re getting a lot of these people jumping in and seeing a vulnerable incumbent,” McDaniel said.

Just a few years ago, Breed received high praise for her quick and decisive response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with The City becoming the first to issue a stay-at-home order.

But The City’s reputation has spiraled since, with the rise in overdose deaths and open-air drug dealing garnering national media attention, along with persistent property crime and a hollowed-out downtown.

“The economy, issues around public safety, and schools are three things that we know broadly that incumbent mayors tend to be held accountable for,” McDaniel said. “When things are on the downside on those three things, incumbent mayors can suffer from that — that doesn’t mean they lose, by the way.”

Another political consultant told The Examiner that a key question in the race will be to what extent voters hold Breed accountable for The City’s post-pandemic struggles.

The issues mayors are confronting are not unique to their borders and often reflect broader national trends, observers note. The Atlantic ran a story last January headlined “The Misery of Being a Big-City Mayor” that outlined how a once-plum job in politics has become a nightmare. The publication followed that pessimism up with a March article titled “Big Cities are Ungovernable.”

San Francisco, for example, has seen a startling rise in fentanyl deaths that shows no immediate signs of abating, despite Breed’s effort to disrupt The City’s drug markets with a heavier hand from law enforcement.

Breed has pointed to improving street conditions in recent months — she noted recently that overall crime rates dropped in 2023 and fell further again in January compared to last year — whichmay account for her uptick in approval ratings in the GrowSF poll.

It’s also worth noting that, according to the GrowSF poll, she has better favorability ratings than any other major candidate in the race. The closest to her, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, is rumored to be interested in the job but has repeatedly deflected inquiries.

But the data might not match the vibes.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce’s annual CityBeat poll, released last week, found that 61% of residents feel The City is heading in the wrong direction and — despite Breed’s evidence to the contrary — a majority also feel that crime is increasing.

The next mayor will be forced to tackle street conditions at a time when resources are constrained. The City’s budget deficit is expected to reach more than $1 billion in the coming years, necessitating what will inevitably be steep cuts to city-funded services and social programs.

Furthermore, the vacancy rate of downtown office buildings continues to hit new all-time highs, with most observers predicting that a transition to a more mixed-use and vibrant downtown will take, at best, years to come to fruition.

Again, voters will weigh whether or not Breed should be cut some slack for an unprecedented shift to remote work or be held responsible for failing to diversify downtown and more quickly catalyze a recovery.

Breed’s allies believe The City is already on the upswing and that whoever serves the next four years will benefit from that progress. The artificial-intelligence sector is booming, and national publications that have pounced on San Francisco’s problems are now touting its return to economic form.

And the job still offers what, say, a seat in the state Senate doesn’t — executive power.

“At the local level — compared to the state or federal level — (there is the) power or ability to make change and get things done quickly,” said one of the several political consultants who spoke with The Examiner but asked not to be named.

It’s also prominent in a way few other city jobs are in America. Former Mayor Willie Brown is known across the country. Dianne Feinstein was a titan of the Senate, while Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Nancy Pelosi are arguably the two most powerful women in the country.

“Besides Boston, no other city of similar size has sent as many people to the national stage,” Clemens said.